The Cultural National Divide

[leahbobet]

Today I am writing my paper on why we should support Canadian Aboriginal languages. It is due Tuesday. This is why I'm not talking to anybody really today.

However, I did talk to a few people about said paper, and, because there's no faster way to get a Canadian to do something, one of my sideswipe supporting points is "if Canadians don't support that then they're not supporting multiculturalism and then we're *gasp!* acting like Americans with their Melting Pot."*

It is amazing how all the Canadians find this ruefully hilarious (and reminiscent of fifth grade history!) and all the Americans are getting pissed off. *g*


*Because no shit, this is how multiculturalism is taught in grade school to us. It is contrasted with the evil that is Americans. And if they're going to install a national-psychological button that's big and red and shiny, when I am writing persuasive papers meant to garner awareness and funding, I will use the hell out of it.**

**Yes, I am an evil propagandist.***

***I got to call people racists too.

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

No shit! The Melting Pot is *bad*?

But... but... we had a little song about it that used to be on TV when I was growing up!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...oh wow. To my upbringing, that song is like those horror movies with clowns.

Can't sleep...melting pot's gonna eat me...

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd call this an interesting blind spot in my education. My anthropological training is definitely keen on preservation of cultures--particularly indigenous ones, but largely, only in their native environment. My American sensibility says that the melting pot serves the function of *adding* to our society, not taking away from (de facto non-indigenous) cultural groups that immigrate. I suspect the general point of our national rhetoric is that coming to another country to build an insular, non-integrating community is hardly the point.

But seriously. Cultural blind-spot here. Still thinking about this one. I know that the Indian boarding schools of past centuries were probably part of the melting pot theory, and I find everything about them abhorrent, so, uh, yeah.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I suspect the general point of our national rhetoric is that coming to another country to build an insular, non-integrating community is hardly the point.

That is a good general point. Yes, you do not move house to ignore everyone else. I don't believe Toronto is particularly ghettoized that way: there are definitely areas where different ethnic communities congregate, but people go in and out and across them all the time. There's really nowhere to be where you can avoid hearing someone else's language or seeing someone that isn't like you.

Some neighbourhoods come close -- more in the suburbs -- which is why I will never, ever, ever live back in the neighbourhood where I grew up. Which is yes, (only quasi-)fondly referred to as The Ghetto.

I know that the Indian boarding schools of past centuries were probably part of the melting pot theory, and I find everything about them abhorrent, so, uh, yeah.

Well, maybe that theory taken to a serious extreme. I suspect it had more to do with earnestly trying to civilize the savage and bring to them the benefit of English, Jesus, and starched ties.

Not that I feel strongly about that. *cough*

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I know you're several years younger than me, but was Schoolhouse Rock already off TV when you were a kid? I remember watching it on Saturday mornings between cartoons. I even have a CD called "Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!", which has about a dozen of the songs performed by rock bands. Blind Melon's version of "Three Is A Magic Number" is a particular favourite of mine. "My Hero Zero" by the Lemonheads, Daniel Johnston's "Unpack Your Adjectives" and Deluxx Folk Implosion's "I'm Just A Bill" are good too. (I'm not as fond of Moby's version of "Verb: That's What's Happening," though.) Obviously several of them talked about American history and government, but the songs were catchy.

As for the paper you're writing - did you see tonight's Leaf game? The national anthem was sung by a 13-year-old girl - in Cree.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I don't remember seeing it. Wiki says it went off the air in 1986, so I would have just been doing the morning cartoon thing then (was 4). The ones I remember are more...well, Sesame Street, Care Bears, Smurfs, He-Man and/or She-Ra (which I still harbour insane love for), Rainbow Brite, and, well, Square One. *g* I learned a lot about both math and snarky humour watching Square One.

(And then I learned geography from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Educational TV, kids -- it works.)

I did not see the Leafs game tonight. And now I am doubly sad I didn't, because I have missed the last few pastings of supreme ownage games. And I would have liked to hear it in Cree.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I don't remember seeing it. Wiki says it went off the air in 1986, so I would have just been doing the morning cartoon thing then (was 4).

Meep. Okay, scratch that "several years" reference above and replace it with "several eons". ;)

The ones I remember are more...well, Sesame Street, Care Bears, Smurfs, He-Man and/or She-Ra (which I still harbour insane love for), Rainbow Brite, and, well, Square One. *g* I learned a lot about both math and snarky humour watching Square One.

I don't recall that last one - but when I was little, I watched Sesame Street and The Electric Company. I still have an EC cast album on vinyl here. :) Alas, no turntable on which to play it. Ahhhh... learning from the likes of Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel and Bill Cosby. It was amazing. (The show also featured a 12-year-old Irene Cara.)

I did not see the Leafs game tonight. And now I am doubly sad I didn't, because I have missed the last few pastings of supreme ownage games.

Well, tonight's game was closer than the other recent games have been - it went to a shootout. Five rounds. John Pohl scored the winner. Raycroft had another excellent game, though.

And I would have liked to hear it in Cree.

They didn't show the whole thing, unfortunately. They hadn't been able to broadcast the anthem live (I forget why, exactly), but they showed about half of her performance during the first intermission. She has quite a voice, whoever she is.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

What I find amusing is that so far as I can tell, Canada is as much a melting pot as the US in practice and the US is as multicultural as Canada in practice.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Well...depends on how you define the terms and it depends on where you go in each country, I think.

The paper is sort of telling Canadians to put their money where their rhetoric is, though. So I think that yes, there is a lot of similarity in practice we don't admit to or examine.

[shiroiko.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Americans and their "melting pot" take on other cultures does provoke knee-jerk responses by Canadians... but having lived in the US I'd say that it is the predominant take on how newcomers should be brought into American society.

This isn't to say that Canadians are completely innocent of this and should be self-righteous wankers towards all that is American (nor that all Americans believe this), but I can't pretend that the general want to have all new immigrants ditch their original culture and act just like every other American didn't bug me a hell of a lot when I was living in Florida.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Well, it is entirely trained into us. I'm not sure if I could even evaluate it objectively as a model of running your society: there were a lot of years of training there.

I know it would bug me were I living in a society that expected people to do it, or expected me to do it. When I move house, I take the whole of me, and I tend not to believe that anyone who moves to another country does it because they want to be juuuuuust like those people.

[allochthon.livejournal.com]

...want to have all new immigrants ditch their original culture and act just like every other American...

Is this how most people define melting pot?

I was a bit lost in the discussion last night because my definition is not quite so ... white. But then, I've often found the definitions my education gave me vary *greatly* from the rest of the world/continent/country.

[ringwoodcomics.livejournal.com]

Is this how most people define melting pot?

Not me, so I'm as surprised to read all this as you are. I always took it to mean -- come, join in our big smorgasborg, bring your culture but leave the hates of the Old World behind. Idealized, certainly, but we're talking about ideals here.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

The way it's presented to us is as...well, leaving more than the hates behind. That one conducts oneself in public, at least, as Just American: no headscarfs or saris or languages not English or hanging a flag of something other than the U.S. in your window.

But then, they were teaching us about an opposing system, so I expect that is somewhat generalized and prejudiced.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

It's very much painted here as an abandonment of one's culture in favour of being Capital-A American. I'm not sure how true that is, of course; I have no objectivity on this.

This tends to be what gets pointed to every time some asshat says that English is the language of God and America, and all those Mexicans ought to learn to speak it, though: that it's only one person expressing a private, widely-held expectation.