I dove into my collection of fortune cookies this morning and came out with this gem.
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| A diversity of friends is a credit to your flexible nature. |
My immediate thought was that this is one of those rare fortunes that is actually accurate. I DO have a very diverse group of friends. But on further reflection, I realized that this diversity was actually forced on me.
I haven't lived in America for 4 years. In fact, my Facebook Memories this morning had a video of me showing off our empty apartment in Indianapolis hours before leaving it for the first time. We left our home four years ago today.
Since then, we have lived in China for 20 months and have now been in Vietnam for over two years. And we have a wide diversity of friends.
I am sure there are a few I haven't thought of, but these are the people we associate with. And with so many different cultures over the years, a level of flexibility is necessary. However, I have to acknowledge that it wasn't our flexibility that gave us such a diverse friend group. It was our circumstances.
When you live the expat life, you meet a lot of other people doing the same. Yes, we get to know many of the locals, but we also meet up with and get to know the people who are "foreigners" here. Wherever they may be from.
When I lived in Indianapolis, I guess I had a diversity of friends. I met a lot of people through my job at Amazon and had friends from all walks of life. People of various colors, creeds, religions, and countries. There I had friends from six different African nations. Immigrants from Tanzania, Kenya, Senegal, Namibia, Egypt, and Ghana. However, once again, I met these people because of my job. I guess it does require some flexibility in order for us to form friendships, but work gets the credit for putting us together.
I grew up in an all-white, Polish Catholic community. A very small town.
I don't write this to make it sound like it was a racist place. Many small towns across America are the result of settlers from a couple hundred years ago settling there. The town I lived in and a few of the surrounding towns were heavily comprised of people with Polish ancestry. In fact, a few of the old-timers still spoke Polish. A few towns over was a town of heavy German ancestry. That's where you could go to buy the best sausages. You still can. There was another town that was heavily French. These cultural distinctions are still evident today despite it being many generations since the towns were founded by people emigrating from those countries.
However, being all European settlements meant basically all white residents. Growing up, this was my group of friends.
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| Can you say DRUNKEN REDNECKS? |
There are a few of my old crowd missing from that picture, but you can trust me when I say they would just be more of the same. The only diversity among our group was when we decided to spring for Stag beer instead of our usual cheap Milwaukee's Best.
I am not saying anything bad about these guys. They were (and still are) some of the best friends I ever had. And as for the lack of diversity, it wasn't because of a deficiency of flexibility or racism. It was because of proximity and geography. Most of us had no real interactions with Asians, Latinos, or African-Americans until we turned sixteen and had to get jobs in the bigger city where there was work.
Other cultures just weren't around. There were Polish people and the few of us who weren't. Even if we had a black friend from the city, it's not like they would have wanted to come hang out in our redneck haven anyway. And I can't say I would blame them.
I am not trying to claim there was no racism in my small town. There was, but I have to admit that I was probably blind to most of it since it didn't affect me and, other than the occasional after-school special, I'd never been challenged to even think about it.
I remember going off to college when I was about 30 and loving the fact that I had a neighbor family from Myanmar. Across the hall were three roommates from three African nations. All men who had left their families behind to get an American education and would then return home. I have never had this kind of proximity with the outer-world before.
So, thank you to the cookie for having so much faith in my flexible nature, but location must be given its credit also. I am sure that if I had never left Scheller, IL, I still wouldn't really have international friends or friends of different colors other than people I might meet at work.
I am so grateful for the intercultural experiences I am having now and wouldn't trade them for anything.
Thanks for your perspective, this is good stuff.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I was wondering how this would sound. I didn't want it to sound racist or uncaring about racism. I just wanted to cover my experiences.
DeleteI don't know why my comments publish as "anonymous", this is Cameron. Love you, bro!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your explanation. I always wonder who the anonymous people are. Supposedly, if you are logged into whatever Google account you have, it should give your name.
DeleteAnd I thought my hometown (in Orange County, CA) was lily white. I mean, we only had a handful of Black students in our high school. I mean, of course we had tons of Asians and Latinos. But I didn't think we were that diverse. Compared to your hometown, we were positively cosmopolitan.
ReplyDeleteIt was a tiny tiny town. My high school was comprised of student from FIVE different town and still only had a student body of about 120 students.
DeleteWe can only make friends (or not) from among the people we meet, that is true. That said, you are flexible enough to be open to others' perspectives without judgment. I'll give you "flexible".
ReplyDelete