North America Archives • Page 4 of 4 • GloBelle Affairs

April 17, 2013

We’ll Put A Boot In Your Rear: It’s The American Way

When you are an American living overseas you start to view the things that go on in your homeland a little differently. You have other standards to compare the American way.

In America, we often like to think we are the standard of excellence. I’m sure many countries believe the same. But with only 30 percent of Americans owning passports, how much expose to other ways of life do we get? Do Americans understand that there are countries that exist were women can walk down the street, intoxicated, at night, alone without fear of attack? Do they realize there are schools that are not locked down and checking students for weapons? Do Americans consider, that, in some countries, if they leave their front door wide open while on a long weekend get away, their belongings will be safe and secure when they return home four days later? I have seen all of those scenarios play out here in Germany and each time I thought, Man, if that was in America, things may not have turned out the same way. Safety is part of the way of life here in Germany. I left my designer purse on a train with my credit card and cash and do you know the finder tracked me down on Facebook to get the purse back to me. I’ve had a busted window for two weeks, and no one broke into my home. I travel alone.

I was once on a train when I met a Nigerian Universität student who was getting his graduate degree in mathematics. I will never understand why people will pay to get a degree in math but that is beside the point. He said something that was so profoundly simple:

“You will never do things excellently if you have never been exposed to excellent ways of doing things.”

When I sit here, saddened and feeling helpless by all the terrible tragic news spawning out of my country, I wonder if Americans are aware that there is a better, safer way. Now, media sensationalism is an issue on its own, but just the fact that terrible tragedies and massacres happen for the news to report on is a concerning issue. Americans are quick to believe that bad, crazy things like the Boston Marathon bombing happens everywhere, we just don’t hear about them. As if it somehow makes the regular occurrence of violence in America more normal. I just don’t think most American have been exposed to a non-violent way of life.

I hear those who oppose gun control. The moment they hear the phrase, “gun control” they know they are opposed without hearing how guns will be controlled. I hear the common argument from gun enthusiast, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”; “Guns causing deaths is like saying a fork causes obesity” ; “Gun laws only are only followed by law abidding citizens.” I get it. But I wonder if those people would change their tune if they were the ones frantically calling their teenager who went to the movies on a Friday night with friends that got shot up. I wonder if they’d change their argument if they were standing in the lobby of that movie theater surrounded by dead, brace-faced teens with phones going off in their pockets.

Photograph by Nick Ut/AP Photo

I am a southern girl who believes no civilian needs to own an AK-47 or an AR-15. The purpose of these guns is to stop battalions of approaching, adversary armies equipped with equally deadly weapons. And what American, with the except on of the less than 1% in the military, will ever be faced with a situation where they need to protect themselves with a machine gun? No one shoots a deer or a dove with a machine gun! So why have one? So really the only reason for one is to use on humans. A machine gun is overkill (excuse the pun) for self defense. And how can one even practice shooting with one? What gun range allows such weapons? If you are not in the war fighting industry, in the profession of arms, protecting your country against an enemy army, what right do you have to won a military weapon? We often confuse rights with privileges. And Americans have abused the privilege of legally owning military-style weapons. If a zombie apocalypse happens let the U.S. Military handle it. They are trained and equipped far better than the paranoid folks down home who are storing up arsenals for it. Besides, 40% of the military comes from the south. They will defend their homes first, no doubt.

Some argue the simple point that gun control is unconstitutional. They argue prohibiting them infringes on their constitutional rights. Really? Every American has the right to own a weapon of major destruction? Americans have the right to bear arms. No one is taking away our right to own a gun. But just because someone is American does not give him the right to spray bullets at anyone. And concerned Americans should not wait and punish such people after they do. They should make it more difficult to allow it to happen in the first place. I’m pretty sure when Thomas J and his buds wrote up the constitution they had no idea America would be turned into a vigilante, child-killing state.

Yes there will always be ways to kill. But hitting 20 kindergarteners to death with a baseball bat will take more effort than hosing them down with an AK-47. The National Rifle Association released an advertisement hours before Obama spoke on gun control that accused him of hypocrisy for accepting armed Secret Service protection for his daughters. The White House only called the ad “repugnant” and didn’t dignify it with any other response, but allow me to state the obvious— the secret service does not carry machine guns to protect little Sasha and Malia! Besides, those two little girls are targets for evil doers. Most Americans are not. I’d bet most who own or lobby for semi-automatic rifles are not high interest targets for attacks.

So how should Americans prevent violent massacres from becoming common place? Americans do not want their rights to own whatever guns they want taken away. They do not want limits on violent media — that would be censorship and a violation of freedom of speech and expression. What do we do when it is our liberties that breed our violence? Some say stop shielding kids from disappointment so they learn they don’t always get their way, put God back in public schools, parents need to know what’s going on in their kid’s lives, better yet, and women should stop working so they can focus more on their family. I do think families are key. But not everyone has good a good family. How do you enforce parental responsibility? Just shrug our shoulders and say it’s not our problem…until someone comes to our children’s school, mall, or movie theater?

When do we get tired of having to set out memorials?

Since I’ve lived in Germany I’ve watched a list of shootings happen: Tucson Shooting, Portland mall holiday shooting, Aurora, Colorado Movie Theater Shooting, Sandy Hook shooting, and now the Boston Marathon bomb. But nothing of the sort has happened in Germany during that time. In fact, I can only find three school shootings in German history on in 2002, 2009, and one before I was born in 1964. The most recent ones, committed by teenagers just as American shootings are usually committed by young people. The Washington Post and New York Times reported that America’s homicide rate is 20 times more than any other developed country. No other developed country has this problem! Are we leading or trailing? America is on par with war-torn, poverty-stricken, developing (or formally third world) countries. Violence is becoming a common part of our culture like Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. And yet we pride ourselves at being world leaders and the standard of excellence. If I were from a developing country with America’s crime rate, I wouldn’t be out of line to file asylum and get to stay in Germany as a refugee.

The European political science students I run into just don’t understand our need to balance our constitutional right to own arms. “Why does your country allow crazy people to have guns and kill children,” Hugo, a Political science student at Valencia Universidad in Spain asked. I had the same conversation with a French guy in a bar. It’s so difficult defending our politics to Europeans.

We’ve got to try something. Some politician has got to be confident enough to try to do what’s right without regards to what is going to keep his nice pay check flowing. In Germany, only sportsmen can have guns after getting a license and testing. Either we acknowledge that access to the most deadly weapons are part of the problem or we just shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to our culture. We just accept that school shootings, and killings in public places are just a part of the American way just as those in Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, and Pakistan have adjusted to life with bombs constantly going off around their homes. I say let’s try the president’s plan out. Let’s be concerned with mental health. Let’s do more to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people. Let’s do more than just sit around talking about the travesties then oppose every idea to prevent future tragedies. If we care let’s just try to put laws in place. If they don’t work we can re-evaluate later. Otherwise, let’s just accept violence as an inherent part of our liberties.

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Where Are Your People From?

People in the U.S. are generally less mobile than those in Europe. Certainly, you can point out a few exceptions: President Barack Obama, singer Amerie, basketball player Kobe Bryant, actor Boris Kodjoe, missionaries, and military members, and so on who have had experiences living long-term abroad. But for most Americans, the biggest move they will ever experience is the one they make when they leave home to attend college. Or perhaps they move across town, across the state, or in more rare occasions across the country. Some estimates say only 3 0 percent of Americans own a passport, thus even less than that have been out of the country, and even fewer have ventured outside of the North American continent. The concept of remaining in one’s own country is simply unheard of in Europe. Why? Because the European countries are small enough that a two hour drive can launch you across international borders into neighboring countries with different languages and varied cultures.

I believe it is because of our lack of travel experiences that we Americans are particularly comfortable putting simplified labels on other people in an attempt to categorize their background and make assumptions of their beliefs and upbringing. It bothers us when we cannot readily categorize someone — in essence, simplify our understanding of their being. I am not saying Europeans do not do the same thing as well, however, I do believe they are more aware that simple labels do not adequately classify people because they have the opportunity to come across a diversity of people every day. You may say, “America is very diverse! We have so many different ethnic backgrounds that make up Americans.” But that’s just it…at the end of the day we are all Americans with the same primary culture.

In Europe, these simplified categorizations become, well, not so simplified. When you ask a person where he is from, you can expect a variety of answers. Truly, what does that question mean? In the U.S. you will either get a response that articulates where a person was born, where that person grew up, or where that person identifies as home. On rare occasions you may get an answer that deals with lineage to another country. Recently at a Mexican restaurant in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, the owner had the strangest accent that I could not place. My friends and I asked where he was from.

“I’ll give you your meal on the house if you can guess,” he said, “But you’ll never guess.”

I guessed he was a Brit. I would say I was closest, but was I really? He was born and reared in South Africa by parents of English decent. He served in the United States Military, lived in southern California where he learned how to cook Mexican food, and then he moved to Germany for, what else, love. So how is a white South African of English decent who served in the United States military and has lived in Germany for a large portion of his life identified? He didn’t grow up with the same experiences as a British child. He’s kind of South African…but not a Dutch South-African, as he made certain we were aware. According to the article, “Black, White – or South African”, 82 percent of white South Africans identify themselves as South African as opposed to only 44 percent of the black majority of residents there. Yet only 5 percent of white South Africans consider themselves as African. Seems inconsistent right? How can one be South African but not African?

The South-Africa-with-English-lineage-Mexican-restaurant-owner asked how I’d describe where I was from.

That’s been the kicker since I have lived in Germany. Do these people want to assume I’m a tourist and desire to know where in the United States I am from, or do they want to know where in Germany I live, or do they want to know about the origins of my European last name? During a visit to France, a man refused to call me an American. I told him my German & Scottish heritage. African was the only label he would accept. African — as if that label is not complex enough in itself. The Mexican Restaurant owner talked about how he’s called folks back in the United States “African American”, and they corrected him with more accurate labels which influenced him to no longer label people, or to live by the labels incorrectly adhered to him.

The discussion with the restaurant owner led me to recall a student in one of my undergraduate courses who discussed her dilemma whereby she was encouraged to apply for an African-American scholarship. The problem? She was actually only “African”. She emphasized that there was a big difference between African, African-American, and Black American. The cultures, heritage, and traditions are different. That same year, a white South African who earned his American citizenship applied for that same scholarship, causing a stir when it was awarded to him. Some claimed he was more representative of the title “African American” than the intended scholarship target group who were actually black American students who had never been to the continent; yet some refused to accept this pale-skinned man as African even though he lived in Africa for the majority of his life. Perhaps South Africans do not consider themselves as African since others on the outside have a hard time accepting them as such. Is saying that a white person cannot be an African equal to saying that a black person cannot be American or European? How is it different? That was the year I no longer considered myself African American but a Black American.

Then there’s the concept of the Black American vice the American Black which stems from the consciousness of how one self identifies. The differences lie in the distinction of meaning when the words “Black” and “American” are used as an adjective or noun. Is one a Black (noun) who identifies with the world’s collective Black population and you happen to be the American (adjective) representation of Black? Or is one an American (noun) who identifies with America as a whole and happens to be a brown-skinned (adjective) representation of “American-ness”? My college roommate said she thought all the
Jews of the world were united as one until she made a pilgrimage to Israel. She then realized she is certainly a Jewish American and not an American Jew.

I have two friends whose identities are a patchwork of beautiful culture, birth, and residence. Annie is a first Generation American from Ghana. Bibi is a first generation American from Nigeria. They speak to their parents in Twi and Yoruba respectively. They grew up with African dress, manners, music, family gatherings, and seemed to know everyone from their countries within a 100 mile radius. Annie had both a traditional southern debutant ball as well as a Ghanaian event where she was introduced to society. I have had classmates who were first generation Americans from Senegal and Sierra Leone, they seemed more representative of the term “African American” than me. I identify more with the “Black American” whose roots are so deeply embedded in America’s history that I cannot claim a particular country in Africa, but could certainly lay legitimate claim to origin from countries on the European continent.

In Europe I find more and more intriguing stories of identity like this. Just recently in the Canary Islands someone approached my beau and I. “American Accents!” he exclaimed before asking where we were from. He called himself a native Virginian (but didn’t call himself a Southerner, though he did label me as such.) He said he left a lucrative job as an attorney after being disgusted when he discovered that justice was dependent on income. Instead, he chose a profession as a videographer recording whales and sea life in Spain. His mother was from Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and he held dual citizenship in Spain and the U.S. He spoke with quite a strange accent. He almost sounded British, which made me wonder if he developed his dialect while hanging around the Brits who inhabit the islands, or perhaps his mother was a British Canary Island dweller or a native Spaniard. There he was, a fellow southerner with a complex identity. I wonder if he ever reflects on his unique identity.

One of the most intriguing conversations of my life was with someone with an unclassifiable identity. My beau and I were dining in a fancy French restaurant in downtown Stuttgart (Le Cassoulet you’ve got to try it if you’re ever in the area). Our interest was inexplicably drawn to a party of four at a nearby table. They flowed smoothly in conversation switching back and forth from French to German. My Beau, a mildly talented French speaker, eavesdropped to see what he could understand. Finally, the most verbose of the group had enough wine to break the ice with us. We asked if he was French or German. The three men and one woman in the party chuckled. “Where are we from?” the lady pondered, buying time until she could decide how she would tell the story. The lively man’s German-Jewish parents knew something was heating up in Germany before WWII, they fled to Shanghai just before he was born.

“Why Shanghai?,” I asked.

“Why not?,” was her response.

The West had restrictions on immigration at that time. So the only place to go was east, “and who wants to go to Poland?” the man joked (or so I think). So his family, like many others, went Far East where he spent the first seven years of his life in China. When it was safe to return to Europe, his family settled in France. His first European home was France. Now he is a well-traveled business man who frequents Stuttgart. So where is he truly from, and how does a one-city or one-country response to “where are you from” adequately articulate anything about this man’s experiences?

In The South you’ll often times hear, “Where are your people from?” as if the answer will validate your existence and shed light on your character and what is to be expected of you. Sometimes people will proudly tell you the county or state they hail from or even what schools they attended as if that should tell you all you need to know of them. It’s not uncommon for folks in The South to live on the same family land for generations, so perhaps that question was appropriate many years ago. But since WWII, people have been set in motion and are constantly on the go. Among the hundreds of discoveries I’ve made about myself and the world through my European experience, I am learning that it is less apt to try to define people by where they are from than to get to know their story. Accents, bone structure, skin color, eye shape, language, teeth, and mannerisms can help gauge where a person is from but you’ll miss out on their amazing story if you stop there and don’t get to know them. Although our history forms the building blocks of our collective societal foundation, it’s our personal experiences that completes the construction of the individuals we truly are.

I challenge my readers to venture out and get to know someone’s story; even someone you think you know quite well (like a family member or co-worker with whom you sit beside every day). You may have to build relationships up or break barriers down to get past the “What are your hobbies, how many kids do you have” type questions. Wonderful soul-revealing conversations include discussions of what drives and motivates a person or how they overcome conflict. You might be delightfully surprised to find that your unassuming aunt has stories that offer a depth to who she is, and that could inspire you for years to come.

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