The MultiCulti Blog

How Do Others View American Food?

2012-07-21T05:51:00.003-07:00

4^th of July went by and we saw a flock of flags appearing everywhere from TV adds to outdoor 4^th of July events, such as ‘the Works’-a 4^th of July fest in Raleigh which decorated their flyer-schedule-fan with a large US Flag and a replica of uncle Sam). Besides 4^th of July, at public administration and immigration venues, I do not encounter the US flag as often as one would think, given the fact that I live in the country with the flag of stars and stripes. Surprisingly enough, I came across the American flag a lot more often in German grocery stores when looking up ‘American foods’ in Germany.

On my recent trip to Germany, I went to the grocery store and noticed that the packaging of something called ‘American style cookies’ with the US flag garnishing the entire box. I wondered and sought out other ‘American’ products. I found the same flag embellishing the hotdog, burger and peanut butter packaging. My husband was less irritated by the flag than the title which had a comical meaning to him. He could not place the significance to put ‘American’ in front of the title of the cookies. His reaction then reminded me of a neighbor who had asked me about a restaurant in Raleigh and gave me a puzzled look when I said that the restaurant had just ‘American’ food. I suppose all food at home seems ‘regular’ until one leaves the country and encounters difficulties finding foods one is used to. I remember an American friend who was living in Germany and was glad to return home to America in order to drink a ‘regular’ milkshake again and not be bothered with the McDonalds one, which is actually very American with very American fast-food products!

Back to the grocery store: the point of placing the American flag on food packaging is to simplify our search for certain items, to categorize them in our brain and shorten the decision making process while at the grocery store with a limited amount of time to shop and infinite products to choose from. Nevertheless, living in America has showed me the vast variety of American foods but in Germany, however, or German food labeling and marketing firms, food considered American is clearly restricted to cookies, burgers and hot dog buns.

Here are some pictures of American products from a German grocery store:

Have you every encountered a similar experience when abroad or home? How was your experience with food in a foreign countries?

Mysterious Code of Silence

2012-05-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

The mysterious aura of celebrities is what makes us admire and follow them, until a reality show airs all their secret details and the mystery vanishes. Even though reality shows have a large audience that follows them, it still falls under a TV genre that is frowned upon or lesser valued. I wonder if revealing all our secrets or intimate details is the reason for revulsion towards reality TV? Apparently, everyone across different cultures has some sort of code of silence, motivation or even encourages to keep quiet about certain topics. I experienced that people do not like to talk about money in America. In America, people are willing to share personal details, i.e. address, telephone number or email with cashiers and retailers, whereas, a German would never give out their personal information because it’s considered invading one’s privacy unless they are about to seal a business deal. The Asian secrecy is on an entire different level. In Pakistan, people keep the meekest details of life to themselves out of fear to chip their perfect façade of reputation, honor or to get caught in a verboten act.

What do you think are the reasons to keep quiet? Is it a cultural thing or is it just old fashioned to keep things to yourself?

Stop Spreading the News

Keeping things to oneself has some benefits, I suppose. I found some ‘good’ reasons to keep quiet about, as Psychology Today* reports on why to stop spreading the news. It says, actually telling about an event can dampen emotions as we revisit an event, we alter the emotional experience by analyzing the event. Then we rewrite the past and the story about an event might be the story last told to someone about that event. When talking about a goal, researchers show that we tend to talk up our goal, which gives us the sense of premature achievement and reduces the drive to actually achieve the goal. It also depends who we are sharing information with because not everyone responds well to good news, i.e. if the listener is passive, unresponsive or negative, telling them is actually going to overshadow your good news due to their bad mood.

*Psychology Today March/April Issue

An Immigrant’s Soul

2012-05-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

Immigrant. It is a bad word. It sounds foreign even though it is an English word. When Americans hear it they think of the Mexican landscaper who is in their front yard every other week, the Indian man at the gas station register or the Asian woman who politely smiles when we pick up our Kung Pao take-out order. Some even think the immigrants are enjoying a privilege and, therefore, should be thankful to Americans and the American government for allowing them to be here. However, only a few actually recognize what hardship these immigrants might have fled or hardships they still endure. Here is a snippet of what an immigrant goes through:

The typical immigrant starts their immigration process as early as the childhood, either because their parents are migrating or because they feel alienated in their own society. The typical immigrant knows someone who ‘made it’ abroad, went to collage or married a foreigner and they themselves want to ‘make it’ too - abroad. Partially, out of need to go- leave everything behind, survive and provide a fresh start for their children and partially out of admiration for the ones who ‘made it’ abroad. The TV shows promised them a flourished country with clean streets and clean government which comes with a big price tag – the immigration fees of couple of thousand dollars and the emotional toll to leave your family, neighbors, childhood friends and colleagues behind. In return, the typical immigrant expects a prosperous life without fearing poverty, institutionalized injustice, corruption, governmental or mafia persecution, religious or racial discrimination.

After arriving to the flourished land, the fear of poverty, injustice, and discrimination is still a constant companion of conscious. They feel lucky to find a modest accommodation to live out of the one or two bags they entered the new country in with. As they overpay for virtually everything while not having any credit at all, lack of information makes things harder as well. The status in the new society is low. Even well-educated immigrants fall into the bottom half of the society rank. The language and custom is cryptic making the new immigrant isolated and alienated immediately. Some may never be able to acquire the new language as they are crushed under the daily grind to provide for their dependents. ‘Legal Alien’ reads their new status.

As the immigrant evolves from ‘Legal Alien,’ to ‘Permanent Resident,’ or even ‘Citizen’ something changes; not just the immigration status, but his/her psyche as well. During their evolution, the immigrant learned (half-condemning his/her own actions) to camouflage, disguising their former images to imitating the new façade. Their former cultural traditions, customs and behaviors are bleached down to just a few core entities, which are easy to align to the new society, such as food and religious practices. The immigrant has the real urge to fit in to ‘make it’. More than likely, the immigrant only associates with other immigrants from the same former region and possibly even form a sub-cultural entity in the new country because to the native people they are not more than the gas-station-Arab or the Korean-pedicure-lady. Then upon visiting their former homeland the immigrant feels another overwhelmingly emotion - alienated by their own former culture or society. As they gain in one country they lose some in the other. As they ‘made it’ in the new country, they catch themselves sitting between two stools where the quest for their real identity just begins.

Identity Crisis?

Passion for Languages

2012-04-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

As Easter rolls around, we will see an abundant array of documentaries, special features and films related to Jesus Christ’s life and resurrection. I just happened to stumble my thumb across the remote to find the movie “The Passion of the Christ” airing on screen. For the ones who haven’t watched the Mel Gibson directed film covering the final 12 hours of Jesus, it is completely subtitled in English as the protagonists dialogues are held in Aramaic and Latin. I remembered the hype about the movie when it first came out but never watched it due to lack of interest of a 16 year old. As I watched the movie, I had to read the subtitle but I mostly paid attention to the spoken language and frantically waited to hear familiar words. The more closely I listed the more familiar words I heard. Just to clarify, I never took Latin in school or had any Aramaic lessons in my life. Nevertheless, I spotted words from both spectrums of my language knowledge. I grew up speaking Urdu and Punjabi in Pakistan; and speaking German with my family and friends in Germany. In school I took French and Spanish. All of these languages fall into the Indo-European language family. German is derived from the Germanic stem of the Indo-European language family and most of its vocabulary is derived from Latin and Greek. Similarly, Urdu is derived from the Aryan stem of the Indo-European stem and the vocabulary is mostly derived from Arabic and Sanskrit.

Anyhow, I put a list together of words from the movie with their identical meaning in contemporary languages:

Latin/Greek	Tumultus	Kaisar
German	Tumult i.e. Trouble/Uprising	Kaiser i.e. King/Emperor

Aramaic	AeMuOT	Khatar	Malik/Malka	Abba	Karza
Urdu (meaning)	Mot i.e. Death	Danger	Malik i.e. Lord/Master	Abbu i.e. Father	Depth/fault (i.e. ‘penalty’ in movie)

Latin	Idiota	Quen	Mundous	Veritas	Quando	Diceme
Spanish	Idiota i.e. Idiot	Quien i.e. Who	Mundo i.e. World	Verdad i.e. Truth	Cuando i.e. When	Digame i.e. Tell me

As of now, I can confidently say that it was worth doing the drudgery work of reciting Spanish vocabulary and rehearse the tough grammar and spelling rules of German because now I am abound in linguistic knowledge which I can apply to even understand an ancient language! So do not pass on a chance to lean a foreign language. It’s worth it!

Multicultural Parenting and Dysfunctional Moms

2012-03-31T16:16:00.002-07:00

We have all read about the different cultural parenting clichés, such as the Panda Dad, the Chinese überstrict parent with high expectations or the Jewish overbearing mother. Well, last week I discovered another one: the ‘French mother’. Last week I read two articles regarding parenting, one was about French parenting, how French mothers are permissive by giving their kids a lot of autonomy at a young age, and the other one was about the ‘All-American helicopter mom’, who hovers over her children constantly, tangling herself into dysfunctional patterns (i.e. she would even cut the applesauce if the child asked her to). I never thought about my parenting style but those articles just made me realize one thing: I am not a helicopter mom and I give my one-year old as much autonomy as possible. This revelation also made me grasp that my husband and I had different parenting styles based on our cultural difference which leads us to many clashes about parenting. He is more of the ‘All-American-hoverer’ category parent, where a parent’s worry is tantamount to love and my European autonomous style parenting is afflicted with neglect. For example, when we go to the playground, I let her run around as she pleases and socialize with other kids. My husband on the other hand will only be five inches away and pull her away as soon as she approaches any other child. At home, it’s a strict taboo for our daughter to touch any pens because in my husband’s opinion she could displace her eye with it. I on the other hand, see nothing wrong with a pen because it trains her fine motor skills and she loves them.

The American author who wrote about French parenting seemed to have found a secret trick to parenting, but for me, the methods she described seemed just natural. The other article, to my defense, tallied numerous reasons why not to be a hover mom (e.g. not call the school because a child has stared at their child). Being a hover parent restrains the child’s development and spontaneousness, and feeds the parents with paranoia and depression. The longer I live in the US, and deal with other hoverers, the more it is rubbing off on me, forcing me to convert to hover-ism. In order to avoid rolling eyes and shaking heads from others when my child is trying to explore strange territory, I have to fit in to the social norm, which amongst others, entails hovering! I am trying to convince myself that the hover method has protective qualities I have never encountered before. I am starting to hover away my eyes and brain that it is just another disguise of paranoia!

Universal Chauvinism

2012-03-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

If you have watched or heard any news lately, you have probably noticed the buzz about whether contraception medication should be covered by health insurances. Now, Sandra Fluke, who spoke on behalf of contraception coverage in front of congress, finds herself in the political crossfire. A republican commentator called her derogative names and even associated her with prostitution by manipulating the subject into something where she wants to ‘get paid to have sex’. For some this may seem like political playhouse but the underlying subject is female authority and her sexuality- and both combined, quite frankly, intimidates some men! The same commentators who insulted Sandra also claim to live in the most progressive and greatest nation in the world. However, in my view they are not far from any other repressive, patriarchal, sexist nation.

Last week, after Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy won an Oscar for directing the documentary film Saving Face, she seized criticism for representing Pakistani men in a shamefully negative light. She exposed the torturous physical abuse women suffered when burned with acid by their husbands. Sharmeen and Sandra are both trying to promote female rights through their work. Likewise, the attacks at Sharmeeen and Sandra are very similar in nature –to silence them and the female voice in general. We still live in a world where verbal and physical attacks on women are tolerated, where women are sexualized and where the cultural perception is still alive that women are less worthy and come secondary - a mentality also known as double standard. Back to the subject of health insurance coverage, the beloved double standard has taken comical heights which can be summed up as following: Viagra that serves to enhance and maintain sexual pleasure for men is ok; contraception that averts unwanted pregnancies and other medical conditions (such as cysts on ovaries) for women not ok!?

This is the very reason why women still have to fight for their rights.

Sim Sim Hamara

2012-03-03T09:49:00.001-08:00

Sim Sim Hamara is the Pakistani version of The Sesame Street and was funded by the USAID with 20 billion dollars. The programs' goal is to promote early childhood education, with language, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills but also to "promote positive attitudes among young Pakistani audiences". To make it culturally relevant, the female puppets have dark braided ponytails and the puppets going to school wear uniform (which is very common in Pakistan).
Below is a link of its promo trailer.

How Hybridity Benefits Marketing

2012-02-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

Danzy Seena captured the notion of hybridity, as she calls it, the best in her book Half and Half (see last blog post). She predicted something that we see every day in commercials, movies and in the entertainment business. Marketing companies have realized the changing racial composition and present us ads with racially ambiguous faces. For example, Arabs, Indians, Hispanics and Whites are more than likely to identify with a tanned brunet ad presenter. If she appears to have hints of Black genes, African Americans and Africans are covered as well. The Kardashian sisters, Halle Berry, Christina Milian and Freida Pinto are the best examples for racially ambiguous faces. This strategy saves the (multinational) companies time and money because they only have to cast one product presenter, shoot one ad and simply dub it into all the different languages. From the companies’ standpoint, it makes everyone happy because no ethnicity was left out. However, this strategy does not promote understanding of the various groups to the vast majority which tends to group all the different ethnicities into one. Arabs and Indians have a distinct cultural and racial identity from each other; the same applies to African Americans and Africans.

Mixed is the New Normal!

2012-02-25T09:23:00.001-08:00

Last week the Associated Press released the news that interracial marriages are getting more and more common. According to the Pew Research Center Study, 1 in 12 US marriages are interracial marriages and the number is even higher in certain states, such as California and New Mexico, where 1 in 5 marriages are interracial or intercultural. The article also states that due to the increasing number of interracial marriages, multiracial Americans are a small but fast-growing demographic group, making up 9 million of the American population (read the full article by Hop Yen here).

The news was broadcasted as groundbreaking news but seemed overdue to me. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that Blacks, Hispanics and Asians will make up the majority of the U.S. population by 2050, years ago. However, to me the most compelling prediction was made by Danzy Seena in her book Half and Half that appeared in 1998. In one of the book’s chapter named The Mulatto Millennium, she writes: “according to the racial zodiac, 2000 is the official Year of the Mulatto. Pure breeds (…) are out; hybridity is in. America loves us in all of our half-caste glory”.

Europe is facing a similar trend. Roughly, 20% of the German population is of immigrant background. That means 1 in 5 Germans have at least one non-German parent. Today, most of the newborn babies are of mixed ethnicity or children to immigrant parents in Germany. That Same goes for countries like France and the Netherlands. It is safe to assume that the industrialized world is going to be made up of a heterogeneous demographic landscape, advantaging people of mixed heritage; from being mixed and being the odd one out to being the new norm!

Can you relate to me?

2012-02-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

Eddie Murphy and Cliff Curtis in A Thousand Words ( Image via fandango.com)

Personally, I have never been a big fan of movies starring Eddie Murphy. The last movie I remember seeing with him in it was Daddy Day Care years ago. However, I am pretty sure I will go watch A Thousand Words. Why? Because there is an Indian character in the movie! Cliff Curtis (who is Maori and not an Indian in real life) is playing ‘Dr. Sinja,’ the role of a spiritual guru who will have a Bodhi tree rise up in ‘Jack McCall’s’ back yard (Eddie Murphy). Same thing happened to me with Immortals and Planet of the Aps. I have no interest in Science Fiction or Greek Sagas but my husband was able to drag me to the movies for those films because, (yes you guessed it right) it starred the Indian actress Freida Pinto! That leads me back to the subject of what I call relate-ability, to be able to relate to or identify with someone in a personal way that you make an emotional connection. A lot of times, we do not make any friends or a connection with people who are different, especially culturally different from us because we have no relate-ability to them.

For instance, when my husband was stationed in Kuwait, he used to supervise Afghani and Pakistani cooks. After their work was done the cooks would cook their own meals. The curries they cooked reminded my husband of the Jamaican food and curries he grew up eating, especially the goat curry. My husband’s genuine interest in the Afghan and Pakistani cooks’ food made him more cordial and sympathetic in the cooks’ eyes and definitely improved their work relationship. Before he showed interest in their food he was just an American soldier supervising them with a superficial work relationship. Fast forward to a few years later, qua si the same thing happened again. My husband now working in America, only became friends with one of his colleagues after showing him my last name on an envelope. The colleague was very surprised to see a Pakistani/Indian last name there and even more so had overlooked the fact that his colleague (my husband) was married to someone from his region (btw I have a very common Pakistani/Indian name). And yes you guessed it right, the colleague is Indian.

So next time you are facing someone or something you think you have nothing in common or you cannot relate to - look closer and be open. You might just have something in common with them or something that will spark your or their interest. Or be the SPARK. And in the end you will come out with a deeper knowledge and insight about the other. It’s all about relate-ability! Even though, I resisted Science Fiction and Greek Sagas for a long time, Freida was my spark to go to the movies. Now, I at least know what the epic movies are about and I loved them both.

Can you relate to me?

Freida Pinto & James Franco in The Rise of the Planet of the Aps (Image via moviefanatic.com)

Freida Pinto in Immortals (Image via fashioncirqle.com)