Dear Friend and Reader,
There’s something that I’ve had on my mind since the Presidential Campaigns began that’s hard for me to talk about. I’m not sure why I’m afraid to mention these things, but I do suspect that it has to do with being judged in a negative way.
So in the Planet Waves tradition of being as genuine as possible, I’ve decided to come clean to you all right here: I have noticed that there is an African American man running for President and also a woman running for Vice President.
It’s a rare time in America: two minorities are vying for power over our country. It seems to be bringing up a lot of emotion about rights and wrongs, yet I don’t hear anyone talking about it. It makes me wonder if there’s not some kind of fear involved in everyone else’s decisions to keep quiet.
I have sat at many a dinner table and not one person, save one with a negative opinion, has mentioned this fact. I think there is a tradition of silence among us. I have some experiences that I’d like to share with you to further illustrate this fact.
When I was in college I had the privilege of volunteering as an English tutor for a Korean student. As part of the curriculum, I was expected to contribute to an online bulletin board comprised of other English tutors.
The purpose of the bulletin board, I imagine, was to develop team skills, networking skills and the benefit of talking to other people who were doing the same thing that I was. The conversations that took place within that board never got too animated until one day I asked a question. Years have gone by and I am paraphrasing what I asked, but it was something along the lines of: “what were some expectations everyone had about their exchange students? What did you discover was right on and what did you learn was false? Do you think you participated in any stereotyping?”
The answers that returned were a sleety mix of denial and anger that I would ever suggest such a thing. Such a thing? From my side of the aisle, I was simply asking if these fellow tutors engaged in a process I thought of as perception: perceiving and anticipating the differences between our culture and their culture.
But the line between observation and stereotyping was much more blurry for those other folks. Instead, they denied any thoughts that they had of whether or not these exchange students, who were mostly from Korea, could be different in any way from us white folks going to school in Upstate New York.