BECOMING A GLOBAL CITIZEN IN TODAY’S TRUMP MATRIX
Photo: “On The Road” series, Detroit, Michigan, Izien Ovbiagele (2018)
Autoethnography is a powerful form of qualitative research in which the author uses self-reflection and writing to explore universal and personal experience to create an autobiographical story that ties personal merit with intercultural understanding. In writing my first autoethnography, I hope to find solace in interactions with different cultures other than my own. The first step is looking at my life in retrospect — reviewing the ways I have isolated, welcomed or passively gone through various environments that have challenged or advanced my sociological understanding.
The crux of being able to create qualitative research is trying to separate our own biases based on our values and experiences which can greatly impact our course of study. In this piece, I share an intimate, written discourse on the three themes defined in the Third Edition of Intercultural Communication: 1. Identity, 2. Othering, and 3. Representation through an autobiographical lens. Under each theme, I will address the intercultural communication concepts studied in class as it relates to my life experience, changes in my perception and others as someone who has often experienced ‘Otherness’, and what I must reflect on in order to seek change in the future.
Identity is the way we choose to represent ourselves. Sometimes our cultural identity dictates how we show up; but depending on our environment or social group, our identity becomes fluid. In 1998, my mother, brother and I moved to Houston, Texas to join my father. I went from being in a nice neighbourhood in Mississauga, (attending a predominantly white elementary school) to attending an inner-city public school with a majority of low-income, African American families who were considered by the county as “troubled”, and Mexican and Indian immigrants. Coming from a Nigerian father and Filipino mother, being Canadian-born, having big frizzy hair, darker skin (but not particularly ‘black features’), small eyes, speaking proper English and not being an American citizen made me a target for bullying. In the prose-poem below, I wrote a realistic-fiction piece on being proud of my identity, despite having been told that who I was was not good enough. This illustrates how identity has the power to dictate how we are received by others but can choose not to be led by the cultural norm. Consider this example:
HERE
She was 14 when she left Lagos, to join her father in Houston, Texas. High hopes of one day attending a prestigious institution in the New England region, her education was at the forefront of her imagination. After all, isn’t this a part of how the American Dream is sold? Do well in school, work mad hard, then end up at the throne of riches. But you see…they don’t tell you that there are levels to all of this. That immigrants from Africa, and their descendants in America, don’t have the same start as the people who the Declaration of Independence—truly embodies…and so, she becomes this zombie.
This zombie that trades her gele for a fedora.
This zombie that perms her kinks to hair that’s bone-straight.
This zombie who is named a glorious name, by the Yoruba name: Omoyemi,
But in class…she prefers to be called: “Olivia”
When the Nigerian substitute teacher looks down on the attendance sheet and tells his students to say loudly “HERE” when their name is called…he reached her name—but no one answered. At this point, he required everyone to pull out their school I.D., and to his surprise, there was one girl without it—Omoyemi.
Mister Babayemi: Why did you not speak up when your name was called?
Omoyemi: Sir, they’ve been making fun of me since I got to this part of the world. I stopped wearing my head-wraps. They don’t like my hair; I’ve been called ‘nappy roots.’ Now my hair is straight. They say my name is from the jungle, so they’ve created a name for me.
Mister Babayemi: Did your father not tell you the rich history of our culture!?
Omoyemi: My mother is always working. By the time I come home she’s asleep, and by the time I awake—she’s gone.
Mister Babayemi: Omo, you don’t need people to acknowledge you in order for you to acknowledge yourself. Your teachers have said that you are one of their brightest students. Life is so transient. Some of us are here today; some of us will be gone tomorrow. Please learn to be at home with yourself. I say this because I’ve spent many years trying to manipulate who I was for the sake of acceptance. It is a turbulent spiral. I beg, Omo, please learn to be at home with yourself.
She now sat with the wisdom Mister Babayemi gave her. The chains that locked her brain began to break as her mind expanded.
On the last day of school, Omoyemi’s original teacher returned. As he went down the roster—when her forename was called, she immediately got out of her chair and proudly declared:
“I
AM
HERE.”
Similar to Ribeyro’s short essay in the textbook that told the story about a Peruvian, mulatto soccer player who wanted to drown his heritage in order to assimilate with the “American Way” after moving to Philadelphia, I too, had a similar experience growing up as a biracial, Canadian immigrant in Houston, Texas. The prose-poem that I wrote in the excerpt above, exemplifies according to the Third Edition of Intercultural Communication, “who we feel ourselves to be is thus, influenced by where and when we live our lives.” Omoyemi (a character I related to) tried very hard to downplay her African name by giving herself an American one and went as far as straightening her hair to fit a hegemonic identity that mirrored the national culture: American. I remember being in High School with so many Nigerians who discredited where they were from to fit in with the other American-born students—it was unfortunate.
It took nearly a decade to become comfortable with my own cultural identity, including others; and that is in thanks to much reading, attending global conferences, travel and communicating with people from different parts of the world. Unlike Canada (where people take pride in embracing their cultural differences), America is a cultural melting pot as opposed to a cultural mosaic, where instead, cultures are concealed to fuel the power of the supposed national culture. I believe if you are living in the Western world, there is less of an excuse to be xenophobic. “In today’s conditions of postmodern and postcolonial globality, heightened movement (actual or virtual) across borders is increasingly interrupting the power of national culture to remain a ‘hegemonic identity’ category” (Holliday et al. 99). This is due in part to the advancements made in technology and the higher institutions that allow for global and intercultural discussion.
Now that I have examined the concept of Identity, this leads to the second theme: Othering. Othering is the act we perform when our perceptions construct and reduce people to be less than what they are. When our biases create a narrative that challenges who we are, we tend to see the Other as a supposed threat; and in turn, we other people to obtain power over them.
Consider this from my experience: In October of this year, I visited an old high school classmate and close friend of mine in Winchester, Virginia. For any of us who has read up on U.S. History, Winchester was a key place for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. The Confederate flag (found in Southern parts of the United States) symbolized favour towards racism, segregation and white supremacy. This was a threat to any Black American at that time, and with this previous knowledge—travelling to the South, while “Black” in the Trump era, frightened me. I was hesitant to visit Winchester, due to my ideas of how white people from this small town would perceive outsiders or minorities (like myself); but to my surprise, most of my assumptions were wrong.
The people were very friendly and welcoming. If anything, the people I met at the cafes, restaurants and independently owned bookshops, wanted to know more about my life in Canada, and what my interests were, rather than distancing me because of my cultural background or colour of my skin. With what I had seen in the media, I feared that after the presidential election of Donald Trump, more white people from small towns or the country-side would be more transparent of their disliking’s with minority groups. What I failed to realize was that not everyone from a small town is small-minded, and not everyone living in that small town is from Winchester.
I found that by speaking with a lot of people of that area, a handful was from other states/districts such as California, New York, and the District of Columbia (many of whom had been exposed to different people from other parts of the world). These people who formerly lived in metropolitan areas began to move South because the cost of living was cheaper, and it was affordable to raise a family. The textbook, as I described in an earlier excerpt stated, “the heightened movement across borders is increasingly interrupting the power of national culture.” This direction is exactly what is necessary for those of the national culture to be open to understanding people who are not just ‘white’ or American.
Despite having explained this, I othered the white people of Winchester due to the stereotypes I heard of small-town inhabitants. “Stereotypes are often infected by prejudice, which in turn leads to Othering” an act that is so easily performed, but hard to undo (Holliday et al. 26). In unit A2.1 in the textbook, “communication is about not presuming” and it is in this case where I found myself addressing the Other in a reductive manner. Something I need to reflect on in the future is not to assume that I know about the people of an area before actually going there to see for myself.
The third and final theme of this paper explores the concept of Representation. In an intercultural context for learning purposes, representation focuses on “a different aspect of how cultural misunderstanding comes about—through the following sources of misrepresentation influenced by either media or professional images” (Holliday et al. 41). Consider this example from my personal experience: In 2014, I had the honour of attending the Tedx Ryerson Conference held at the Royal Ontario Museum. That year’s theme was titled: Echos: to exemplify self-reflection and to resonate ideas. The speaker that moved me the most was Dr. Pamela Palmater, who gave a talk about the repercussions colonialism had among the indigenous communities in Canada. Palmater made a statement about how Indigenous people were referred to as “Aboriginals” which in fact, derives from the word: abnormal. She highlighted that calling the Indigenous ‘aboriginal’ misrepresented the entire First Nations people as something other than human. By deconstructing this in an intercultural framework, I realized that not only is the term dehumanizing, but it also changes the way we compartmentalize a group of people.
In another excerpt from the Third Edition of Intercultural Communication, it explains that “In the West, the representations in the media will very largely respond to public demand—and at the heart of demand is the desire to essentialize…” (Holliday et al. 43). What tends to happen in journalism are head broadcasters using imaginations of the ‘exotic’ to influence the media and professional images that go into the mainstream. Not only does this approach promote cultural divides, but it magnifies feelings of alienation, exclusion and disempowerment. When we want to exploit people, we isolate and other them while pushing them away so they can become vulnerable to various forms of oppression.
In this case, the misuse of words such as “aboriginal” to identify Indigenous people in textbooks, online articles, media and scholarly institutions discredits a community of people by wrongful representation. In order to reconstruct a healthier narrative of a culture and/or group of people, I believe that we must deconstruct the negative narrative we learned through misguided media and other forms of representation.
In taking on the introspective role in this autoethnography, I was able to reflect deeply on how I engaged with myself and others. As I addressed the themes of Identity, Othering, and Representation; I connected the intercultural communication concepts studied in class with personal experience, shared how my perception changed of myself and others over time, and what I could expect to change or reflect on in the future. By continuing to engage in surroundings that are diverse, question what I have been taught, and travel abroad—my hope is to become a global citizen in order to make our planet more inclusive, fair, and a happier place where we can learn and create together despite where we come from.
The late James Baldwin once said, “You write in order to change the world…if you alter, even by a millimetre, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” This is my ultimate goal.
WRITTEN BY: IZIEN OVBIAGELE