Thank you and welcome to guest blogger Kai-Duc Luong.

Kai has lived in the US for the last 11 years, 10 of them working in corporate America.  He left the corporate side to fully pursue his dream of being a filmmaker a year or so ago, to devote his attention to finishing the feature-length documentary he co-directed with Avishe Mohsenin.  Their website describes the film, which debuted at the Asian American Showcase at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago last April, as:

Part musical documentary, part personal meditation, Someplace Else is the engaging portrait of a soul-blues-funk musician (Vance Kelly and his Backstreet Blues Band) from the South Side of Chicago through the director’s personal film journal.

Weaving the narrative, photographic and lyrical content of the music in an unconventional and rhythmic way, this feature debut transforms the visual experience of a documentary into a fresh captivating journey of many facets.

Kai’s father was murdered during the Killing Fields in Cambodia, and his mom managed to escape to France with Kai, then 1, and his siblings, then 3 and 4.  “Someday I will tell the story of my mom when I can afford a full fledged production because I feel her story like many others is part of our human heritage.”   Here are Kai’s thoughts on interculturalism and cultural identity:

Intercultural themes are definitely part of what I’m interested in, as you may have noticed “Someplace Else” includes a wide array of ethnicities, from the filmmakers being Asians (I was born in Cambodia of Chinese descent, lived in France before emigrating to the US. My co-director is Iranian born in France, lived in Iran before coming to the US around the same time as myself) to the lead and his band being African-American, the club owners quite a few of Italian descent, and all the fans/interviewees spanning the wide interracial spectrum of various genders and ages.

As an Asian, I’ve faced many difficulties often overlooked, as the media often portray things as white vs. black and tend to trivialize it that way… things are changing with the word brown coming in the spotlight in recent years… and also Muslims and yellow also taking some kind of acknowledgement these days in political speeches for instance, those of our dear Illinois junior senator.

One of the things that I’m interested in these days is that they are more and more people of multi-ethnic or multiple-country backgrounds that transcend this white vs. black vs. brown vs. yellow classification or just the simple notion of Diaspora and immigration from one country and the sense of being just say American, or just French for instance. What also is interesting is that there are also many hurdles for these populations to overcome as a result of this… a search for identity and roots that isn’t as easily defined as in the past.
And even in Europe, I was dating this wonderful person who was of multiple country-backgrounds within Europe being Czech-French-Swiss born in Austria, and she told me it was hard for her to define really where she came from and say for instance that she was from this country or another, or had this culture more than the other. Ditto for me, I can’t really say I’m Chinese since I never lived there, nor did I fully embrace its traditions having lived in France ever since I was 1-year old and absorbed the model of integration most known over there for its desire to remove any cultural heritage other than that of being French as in being white French, nor can I say I’m Cambodese because my only attachment to Cambodia was that it’s the country I was born in and had to escape because of Pol Pot. People in Paris then would call me Americanized, whilst here in America, people would have a hard time understanding that I’m French… They would say “But you’re Chinese!”… Deep down inside, I don’t know… I know I value some traits of my Chinese heritage (not all), some from my French upbringing, and some from my American adulthood experiences… not a single one is better than the other in globality, or inherently.  Some say I should fully embrace my Chinese look, but I don’t always value the cultural standards in traditional Chinese families, and I’m more westernized for that matter.

The next screening of the Someplace Else is at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, August 5-10, 2008.  

 My 7 year old son, L, was telling me a story this week about the slip-n-slide at summer camp, and how much fun it was.   He said the first time he went so fast he slid off the end and got so covered with mud he “looked like a black man.”

It was just the two of us, having a conversation at home, but I was taken aback by the analogy, and paused.  As an actively anti-racist parent, what would even make L think of that reference?  While certainly not intended that way, was his statement racist?  What he said felt wrong to me.  But why? 

“I don’t think I would say that,” I started.  With all of the studies in the media lately about unconscious bias and whites being afraid to talk about race for fear of offending, I didn’t want him left with an ambiguous sense of shame that might inhibit him from healthy conversations about race as he grew. 

While I assured him I knew he was innocently trying to convey the extent to which his skin was covered in mud, which is dark, I was stuck on the fact that it was mud (e.g. ‘dirty’), and that there was something not right about the idea of covering oneself to look like another race (e.g. you don’t ‘dress up’ to look like a Native American).  “Well,” I started slowly, “one reason might be that it doesn’t make sense to use an image that relates to someone’s skin color to describe something.”  But I was still missing the “why?” (and any language that could actually be understood by a 7 year old.)

A nagging connection materialized from my subconscious.  “Maybe it’s because a long time ago there was something called “Minstrel shows” where white people would put black, mud-like paint on their face and pretend to be black, but they would act stupid or in a way that didn’t make sense, implying that people of color weren’t smart, which of course isn’t the case, and of course it was offensive.  We don’t have minstrel shows anymore, but maybe someone might make that connection, and of course you don’t want to say anything that might be prejudiced.”

Nearly a week later, I find myself thinking about a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit that took place at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston two decades ago.  Critics condemned the exhibit as pornographic.  Defenders said the photographs were innocent, it was society that was sick, and any pornography was the projection of our own disturbed thoughts onto the images.  I remember one quote in the newspaper from a City Councilman that seemed particularly lascivious.  “I’m going to go through every inch of that exhibit, and if I see anything dirty or nasty I’m going to shut that exhibit down.”  You could almost see the drool at the corners of his mouth, imagining him walking through the exhibit searching for obscenity.

In the end, L understood what I taught him.  But the bigger question was did I teach him a lesson, or did I perpetuate my own unconscious bias?  Was what he said wrong, or was I analyzing too deeply and making a racist connection that wasn’t there?  By describing a specific racist behavior and a little of the history of racism-did I teach him not to be racist, or was I actually teaching him to look at people differently, which he might not have thought of before. 

Honestly, I don’t know.  But perhaps I did teach him the “power of one” and “personal accountability” and how our words really do matter.  Politicians and media personalities make offensive comments out loud and in public, unfortunately, all the time.  I say by the time it gets to the mouthpiece, the underlying prejudice is already ingrained. 

I do know that my intent is to start at the core…with “L’s” heart and mind.  I tell him it’s because when he grows up he might be a great arbitrator who finally brings peace to the world.  Why not?  Someone’s got to do it.  Why not start, today, at home, with me and L?

 I’ve been pondering this issue of “Cultural Tourism,” and realize that the better term for what I am talking about, experiencing and appreciating other cultures in a way to diminish prejudice, is more accurately named Urban Anthropology.  A tourist, by definition, is “someone who is traveling for pleasure.”  It is a passive view from the outside, with no commitment to learning or change, hence the perhaps valid criticism of it’s ineffectiveness as a meaningful tool to combat racism. 

Urban Anthropologists, on the other hand, “look at how people living in diverse communities cope with current social and cultural changes.  They study the kinds of social relationships and patterns of social life unique to cities.” (per Rosa Cabrera, Center for Cultural Understanding and Change at The Field Museum.)  Plus, anthropologists get to do “ethnography” and “participant observation,” where they become part of the ‘culture’ they are ‘studying’ and participate in activities along with the culture they are observing and learning about.

It’s along those lines that my son L and I took off with another of his 7 year old friends on a road trip from Chicago to Ephraim, WI, to see the Norwegian Fyr Bal festival and experience what I think of as real “Americana.”

We saw a statue of Romeo the Killer Elephant in Delavan, WI (according to roadsideamerica.com he trampled 8 people to death but was spared because he was sad after the loss of his female companion, but the statue in town square just identified him as a symbol of Delavan’s history as the Circus capital of the Midwest in the late 1800’s), we then saw an exact, full-scale replica of an Easter Island head on someone’s lawn in New Berlin, WI, where we also happened upon a rummage sale with Pokemon Cards on sale for 50 cents, had Ice Cream Sundae’s in Two Rivers, which claims to have invented them, and took our picture with the World’s Largest Grandfather Clock, before settling into Ephraim for the fish boil and bonfire ceremonies that are a tradition for this festival (we stayed at the Trollhaugen Lodge, which of course had statues of trolls all around, and had breakfast at a restaurant with goats on the roof-real, live goats who graze on the grass covered roof of Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant). 

You have to really like this type of thing to thoroughly relish stretching a four hour drive into eight hours, with all of our stops and using the county highways and side roads (wind surfing with your hand out the window while speeding through farm fields along a two-lane county highway is pure freedom!).  At any rate, this is a polite way of saying it was just me and the boys, because anyone else might spontaneously combust.  Granted, I planned the trip out, had detailed directions from AAA, knew we would only drive during the day, and had covered basic safety issues, but other than that had no apprehension that we would not be welcome or that we would face any safety concerns out of the ordinary. And my expectations along those lines were fully met. 

Which makes me wonder.  Is this a universal experience, or is the fact that I am fearless throughout this entire trip an indicator of my white privilege?  I’m left with a nagging feeling it is–the idea that as a white person I can go anywhere.  But what am I saying if I believe minorities should be afraid of taking this same road trip?  I set out to discover true Americana in small town America, but am left wondering if that is an oxymoron, and if this was at the end of the day, completely ‘white’ Americana not only showing the divide in our day to day experiences, but also acknowledging the deeper need to understand our possibly separate experiences of growing up in the same country.

 While I risk being called a traitor as a St. Louisan defending a possible purchase of Anheuser-Busch by a non-American Company, as the wife of a Brazilian I must defend the fact that there are, indeed, ‘real businesses’ in Brazil. 

This stems from a conversation I was having yesterday.  I can’t remember the genesis of the conversation, but somehow it was appropriate to throw in that I heard a Brazilian company was looking to buy Anheuser-Busch.  “It’s the same company that I think bought Stella-Artois,” I added. 

“That’s a European company,” my friend countered. 

“It’s in Belgium,” I said, “but the company in Brazil that makes Brahma and Antartica I think owns them now.” 

“No, it’s a big company,” my friend said, making it clear that it was impossible that a Brazilian company could be involved in something of this size, or that a Brazilian company could be big.

Unfortunately, I had to let it go at the time, because I didn’t have my facts in front of me, but I do know that Brahma is the most popular beer in Brazil, and if my beer were the most popular beer in the fifth most populous country in the world, (over 188 million people by 2006 statistics), I’d be pretty happy!

I shared this with my husband, who was immediately clear on the insult, (the underlying assumption being that Brazil is a Third World Country) and sent me this link about the St. Louis bid.    (InBev’s own story and very young CEO is also impressive to see).

My husband also noted that in taking over management of dozens of brands around the world, they maintain a 70% Brazilian Board, but have kept the European and Canadian brand identities.  ”I thought that some of us may have grown away from this absurd discrimination,” he said in reponse.  “I am glad that we Brazilians realized that and we are feeding egos by saying that it is a European beer so that we can still make money.” 

I believe that’s called laughing all the way to the bank!

I know, I know, many an ‘anti-racist’ will say that simply enjoying the foods and traditions of another culture as a ‘tourist’ does nothing to combat racism.  But, honestly, I disagree.  I’m raising a 7 year old, and for now I’m not going to go into in-depth history to explain why there is racism and then tell him not to be racist.  And while those lessons are important and are mixed in here and there, as the central topic it’s too abstract for a child his age, and exposure and interaction and a great experience in his own home town is also a good experience.

There’s also a way to approach it.  Looking at maps, talking about immigration and how people come to live in different Cities, researching cultural traditions on the internet in advance, talking about what you might see and hear and where you might have seen adaptations of that in your own everyday life…these are all ways to build conversation around the experience of going to an ethnic festival.  And, ASK Questions-if L wants to know what something is or understand the origin of a particular style of dance or costume, I encourage him to ask-it’s a chance to interact and engage in conversation with fellow festival goers and planners.  And I’ve unequivocally found that people generally like the opportunity to share something of their culture with someone who is interested in learning about it.

And it’s an opportunity to be ‘the other.’  I was 14 the first time I experienced being the only Caucasian at a Mexican wedding-and that was in Mexico, where I expected to be the minority.  It wasn’t until I was 30 that I had the experience of being the only white person in an African American neighborhood…in “my own city.”  It changed my life to really understand in a visceral way how different our perceptions and experience of our world are, based on where we live or our cultural or racial identity.  It has engendered a compassion that is at times unbearable seeing the tragedies around the world, but also has served as a call to action that cannot be ignored.

L, on the other hand, had this experience at age 6, last summer when we went to the African Festival of the Arts in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood.  As we circled the park looking for parking, L slowly noticed there was no-one else who looked like us.  I asked him why that mattered, we were all here to enjoy the festival.  “What if they make fun of us?” he asked. 

I could try to explain until I was blue in the face why prejudice is bad and unfounded.  But that moment was priceless-he grasped the essence of prejudice in that question and I am positive that is a building block to his growth and understanding of being an incredible and embracing human being.

p.s. A couple of websites…for Chicago, I just found the best list I’ve ever seen on Centerstage Chicago, of all of the neighborhood ethnic festivals in Chicago.  You may also want to try a fairly new site, ethnicevents.com where you can search festivals and events by City. 

 My husband and I were talking about the economy over breakfast this morning and he shared that he read in O Globo, Brazil’s major daily paper, that Americans saw a $1.7 trillion first quarter loss in net worth.  His commentary on that was that “the U.S. is losing its place as the unchallenged leader of the word economy,” and that “companies better acknowledge this and get over their fear of losing that position to come up with new strategies to fit in, or they’ll continue to lose money.”

Because it’s easier to talk abstractly about racism rather than engage in one on one conversation with real people, I will gladly jump on this analogy to the world economy.  The parallel is clear:  just as the U.S. is unprepared and has a fear of losing its position of leading the world’s economy, a group of people who have a history of privilege in a society also may fear what it means to even acknowledge, let alone concede, that position of superiority. 

But the world is changing no matter what, and judging from the growing ‘anti-U.S. sentiment abroad, the U.S. would benefit from developing a new paradigm of respect as a platform from which to interact with the rest of the world, as a true partner. 

You know it’s difficult to talk about intercultural and interracial issues when you avoid talking even to yourself, in private, for fear of being offensive.

Certainly I jest, but only sort of.  There’s a couple of things I’ve noticed over the past nearly two weeks, and I have a couple of solutions to start.

1.  There’s something to this thing of completely acknowledging and exposing the unconscious possibly racist/stereotpyed thoughts.  I carried around most for the past two years, with fear of being ‘outed’ as an awful bigot.  And now, after only 6 weeks of displaying them publicly, they’ve either stopped, are more sensitive, or have become embracing of all cultures themselves (as in equal opportunity thinking!).  I think this is a good thing, and will try recreate the evolution in writing in the coming weeks.

2.  There’s a need for a new language.  I’ve realized that the language that many are using derives from the existing construct of division.  Rather than trying to establish more strictly defined groups or categories of identity, I hope one day there will be a new paradigm that moves beyond the language of discrimination and strict categories to language that somehow captures the essence of the unversalities among all. 

3.  There’s a lot of anger out there (in the blogosphere, and therefore presumably the world) and there are very serious and harmful individual acts of hate and institutional discrimintion.

All of this has sent me into a paralysis.  The thoughts come so fast that as soon as a post comes in, I’ve already discovered something new that makes it seem naive.  The anger and real life tragedies make a positive approach seem ineffectual.  So where to start?  One is that I’ll be adding a page for ‘definitions’ that will help to create a new language.  Second, as I get caught up on feeling it’s not enough, I’ll be adding a call for ‘Guest Bloggers,’ that will feature stories of others that relay an experience or instance of intercultural interaction, including an “a ha” moment where the light went on for what was learned.

Finally, I will continue to look for the meaning and purpose.  For now, I suppose it’s the “power of one”…racism and prejudice may carry on, but not by me, and also to learn some lessons and skills and experiences that I can share with my child, so that hopefully his generation won’t have so much pain.  Here’s hoping that the ‘good guys,’ the people predisposed or living a lifestyle of anti-racism outnumber the naysayers.  It’s a start, and I accept that it starts with me.

There have been a rash of articles lately focusing on studies that show that whites are often anxious in their interactions with people of color for fear of coming across as racist, and may avoid interactions with people of other races as a result.  The author of one study, Project Implicit, suggested that becoming more aware of your unconscious biases is a way to help overcome this.  I have to tell you, I’ve been hoping this is true, because my brain has been working overtime picking up my subconscious thoughts, assumptions and biases related to cultural, racial and individual difference for several years now.  And, since I actually started acknowledging it and writing about it in the past month or so, the activity has gone into overdrive. 

It started with the epiphany I blogged about a few weeks ago that took place in the parking lot at the South Shore Cultural Center (where I was first able to separate media/learned/underlying stereotype from the empirical data in front of me) and since that day they’ve been coming like a flood.  I see them like an ongoing commentary, sort of a white noise that is a continuum in my brain.  Remember the movie “Stranger than Fiction” where Will Ferrell discovers he is a character in a novel, so every time he lifts a finger he hears the narrator’s commentary…it’s kind of like that.   

For example, I blogged last week about my friend Derrick who came to the door selling newspaper subscriptions to raise money for Lambs Farm.  One side of my brain is saying out loud ”Hello, how do you do?” and the underlying white noise in my mind is saying “this person is African-American.  What is a black person doing in our neighborhood and knocking at my door?   I can’t believe my child opened the door without saying “who is it?”  But if we didn’t open the door he’d think we didn’t open the door because he’s black but he doesn’t know that I never open the door for strangers.  Is that true?  I wonder if I’m more apt to open the door if someone’s white?  Why would a company send a black kid into a white neighborhood to collect donations?   Let me at least listen to what he has to say.  I bet some of my neighbors won’t open the door.  I hope no one is mean or racist to him at those other houses…

As the realizations have come more quickly I’ve had this fear that as I get older somehow the valve between brain and mouth will loosen or break and these unconscious thoughts would come out involuntarily.   But maybe the learning is in knowing when sharing might help open dialogue for greater interaction and understanding.  

In the meantime, most often I catch these thoughts, silently say “you’re such an a__hole,” and then smile, caught again making assumptions based on unconscious stereotypes peddled as truths, but now one step freer with the discovery toward a new prejudice-free paradigm.

 The other night a young man, probably in his late teens, came by our home while I was cooking dinner.  I went to the door with the remnant of a head of lettuce that would soon complete our salad still in my hand.  After introducing himself quickly and starting his spiel, he stopped short to ask what was in my hand.  How could a growing boy not know his vegetables, I thought.  “Lettuce-what vegetables do you eat?” the mother in me asked both playfully and scolding at the same time.  “Tomatoes and green beans” he answered confidently.  “I’m not a big lettuce eater,” he added.  

He was signing up newspaper subscriptions for a charity, but honestly, it was late in his shift and he was just plain hungry at this point.  I imagine the thought of the dinner cooking on the stove was too much for him, and he just flat out said “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but might you have a snack for me?  I have ½ hour still to go, but I’m starving.  I’m sorry to ask, but I’m so hungry…maybe just a little snack?”

He was an absolutely adorable teenager, pleasant, personable…and the universal “mother” in me wanted to help. “Sure,” I answered, “but I have to warn you, all I have is whole wheat pretzels,” I said, thinking of my mostly fat-free, high fiber pantry. “I’m kind of a ‘fat’ guy” he said, “you don’t have anything else?”  “I ate all the fat-stuff,” proudly explained my 7 year old, who was standing next to me in the doorway and who had indeed eaten the leftover cheetah/dorito/pretzel mix earlier that day.

I thought about what I had that I might offer him and then shyly said, “I have macaroons,” thinking of the stash from Passover that I shouldn’t be eating anyway.  He looked inquisitive, so I added, “they’re kind of a Jewish food, I guess, although they’re more mainstream nowadays.”  He’d never heard of macaroons, which of course made the ‘interculturalist’ in me want to share even more.  “Hold on a sec.  I’ll be right back.”  I went to the kitchen and came back with the canister of chocolate macaroons, leftover from our Seder from a couple of weeks ago.  I explained again that they were a Jewish food, that they were like coconut cookies but different because we couldn’t use regular flour or yeast during Passover.   He immediately tried one.  “Hey, these are really good,” he said, with surprise and delight.  “Thank you.”  And with that he thanked me profusely and was on his way.  It was a fun exchange.

So why did I wake up at 2 am wondering if we had set the alarm on the house?

 The first time my husband and I went grocery shopping together, over 20 years ago now, it looked like the scene from the movie Green Card.  Andie MacDowell was putting in fresh veggies and granola on one side of the cart, while Gerard Depardieu added sides of beef and lard on his side.  Over time my husband has stopped going shopping with me, not because of conflicting food choices, but mostly because I am a label reader, which can turn a quick errand into an hour-long expedition.  I relish the concepts of foods on a well-written label, and I welcome heartily the new labeling regulations, allowing me to know everything about a product before I make a commitment to purchasing it.

But when it comes to people, a label can never do justice to revealing what’s inside. 

My husband, who’s Brazilian (and now a U.S. Citizen) says “white” is the most appropriate when filling out forms that require it, since “Hispanic” doesn’t apply to Brazil.  Yet when our child enrolls in school, he’s considered Hispanic by the public school system.

A colleague, who is Hindu, also has trouble with the current system.  “When I have to categorize myself I will usually fill out the other bubble.  As a South Asian American I am not categorized in the Asian/Pacific Islander category, and have been told that I am in fact a sub category of the Caucasian category.  Considering myself as a person of color I do not feel comfortable categorizing myself as Caucasian, which is what most white Americans categorize themselves as.  So although India is in the Asian sub continent, and Indians are listed in a subcategory (Caucasoid) of Caucasian, neither of those categories defines me, resulting in my selection of other.”

Lately I’ve felt most accurately labeled as a “peachy United Statian,” peach being the color crayon that most looked like my skin color in elementary school and United Statian as opposed to “American.”  If you’ve ever traveled throughout the Americas, everyone from Canada to Argentina is American.  I am from the United States. 

But really, that last statement is an attempt to self-identify as something other than “white,” when I don’t want to.  I’m white.  If I’m Jewish you might not like me, so I’ll just be white. The truth of the matter is that it makes me nervous to forgo my privilege of having a label that doesn’t really tell you anything about me.   

Which is exactly why I know I need to do it.  I look forward to the day when we have a new paradigm that moves beyond labels and distinctions to a more equitable and empathetic way of relating to one another, but we’re not there yet.  In the meantime, my search for a label is an acknowledgment of the disparity in the current system of labels and an opportunity to explore who I am so that I can contribute to the dialogue on race and culture from a point of agency.  Knowing and loving me for who I am is the best platform from which to reach out and embrace others.