Valley Girl--look for the pain
This story was recounted to me first hand by a student who attended one of my courses in the years when I was working in Santa Monica.
Jennifer had a part time job in a department store in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles above the San Santa Monica Mountains for those not familiar with the area). Her Japanese ancestry was visible in her face.
She recalled that a customer had stared at her a bit and then asked, "Where are you from?"
"Here in The Valley," she responded."But where are your parent from?" the woman continued."Oh, they're from The Valley, too, Jennifer answered, trying not to show annoyance.The customer persisted, "But, then where were your grandparents from?""Oh, they weren't from The Valley," Jennifer continued, "They were from Fresno."
One of the things I learned from this story is to "look for the pain." Frequently US Americans are quite vehement in denying culture and roots, and, for me in the context of intercultural work, quite resistant to talking about culture as a factor in employment and social life.
posted by gfsimons @ 7:46 PM
4 Comments:
I am US-American born currently living in Mexico. I've lived outside the US more of my life than I've lived within it. Same here though. Nearly everyone's first question to me is, "De donde vienes?/Where are you from? When I say I live here in Mazatlán, the response is, "But where are you FROM?" Amazing how in these days of passport country not making a major difference in who people are, it still really is a label people need.
I can add another cultural slant to what you say, Dianne. "Where are you from?" is a more common question here in France even among French people. Region is important. Perhaps since almost everybody in the US is from someplace else, either in their own lifetime or that of their recent ancestors, it is not a very productive question. On the other hand, we ask. "What do you do?" ("What have you made of yourself?")rather than, "Where are you from?"
Additional comment: As handshaking is supposed to come from the fact that the hand holds no weapon, our choice of initial greetings and questions about the other may have safety, security and success factors culturally embedded in them.
In the 1980's my partner Phil McCrillis, working in the Men's Movement and I did extensive interviews of both men and women to discover their reactions to seeing and meeting others the first time. The primary men's inner conversation on meeting another man seemed to be, "Can I whup his butt or will he whup mine?" On the other hand, women seemed to be, "Am I safe with this person?" Both are conversations about security though quite different.
Perhaps we have culturally developed preferences for asking what we need to know from the stranger to be successful and to succeed. We ask what is comfortable and useful to understand who the other is and have developed cultural preferences in this regard to the point that this is largely automatic.
We try to leave the "right" first impression when meeting others. When "networking" came into vogue in the US, people were taught to present and advertise themselves in their initial greetings, e.g., "Hello, I'm George. I'm an interculturalist and I am here tonight to find out what people need to know about working across cultures." In other words, what I do and what am I attempting to do right now. Not just survival or comfort greetings but success efforts.
Yes indeed in France the region of origin is important: every region is supposed to carry a specific set of sub-values and potential behaviors. Example: people coming from the North are supposed to be hard-working, honest and dependable, whereas those "coming from" Marseille (in the South) are "notoriously" unreliable, lazy and downright liars.(Those having tried to have the plumber come to their place in that region at a given time on a given day will understand what I mean). Well, France is a very old country made of various historical "Provinces" having fought one another for years, having had different sets of laws, rules and regulations (some of them still in (weak) legal force today). This has shaped provincial differences, and people are uneasy with differences and uncertainty. They prefer likeliness and categories. Answering the "Where are you from" question helps the person meeting me for the first time define the category where I belong, our degree of likeness/unlikeness, and provides her/him with an (pre-conceived) idea of how I will react and behave, thus producing an impression of reduced uncertainty in the interpersonal relationship to come.
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