Point of View

Ignoring the Globe: Inexistent Cultural Awareness

            Nada, 無, Rien, Nichts, Nothing: this is what our nation is doing in attempts to abolish the Ignorant American stereotype found across the globe. In the United States, we are less exposed to other cultures than, for example, European regions. The benefits of cultural enrichment and bilingual knowledge are vital in today's society, but do we really understand their importance? I became prominently aware of the lack of foreign activism and education within my nation when I migrated to Navarre, Spain, for a chance to submerge myself in one of the many astounding cultures of the world. Once settled, I became a part of an equally-diverse community of which I had never given much thought- “the foreigners.” We ranged from the four corners of the world: Finland, Canada, Poland, USA, Czech Republic, Singapore, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Holland, etc. We were all so different, yet very much akin. Like cells that compose the human body, all unique and vital for certain purposes, we separately worked together to keep our communal body alive and pumping through our varieties of knowledge and experience. This singular unity of working together is the basis of life because we as humans are very much akin, yet we cannot collaborate if communication, understanding, and appreciation are deemed irrelevant and ungrounded. With the disinteresting factors of distance, lack of influence, apathetic expectations, and overall empty acceptance, the American heart-land cannot contribute to the world’s living body. Through my travels, I have searched and pin-pointed the opinions and contributors that are fueling the ignorant stereotype that defines this nation.

      Scampering along the coastal alleyways of Barcelona with the smell of abandoned beer filling the late-night streets, I stumbled upon an uncanny man who, after an perplexing conversation, changed my course of thinking and ultimately lead me to my ideals of what I wanted out of myself, my life, and my country. Through the cigarette-filled atmosphere and loud, high-pitched Catalan conversations, this unhinged, beard-less Dutch man brought forth his explanation of why Americans do not recognize the need to learn multiple languages: our enclosing inner-distance. Consider this fact: the time it takes us to move from North Carolina to Maryland, with no change in language a very little in culture, is close to the equivalent of traveling through three or more European countries. This reduces the American fervor to learn multiple languages and truly recognize extreme cultural differences. We rambled on until dawn about why Americans are unaware of basic cultural wisdom. Some would reply: “Why learn another language when all I need is English around these parts? What’s the point of exploring world cultures when I’ve yet to make my way to the west coast?” After picking the San Miguel-filled brain of my new companion, I can now vouch that these typical ideas are taking away the opportunities and credentials of my fellow citizens. Though seemingly a great advantage, our nation’s state-wide, gapping distance has eliminated the need for bilingual enlightenment and has trapped generations in an English-speaking, all-American cage. 

           As the brisk German wind howled through the tattered window panes, I sat curled up in my loft flipping through television channels and attempting to regain the feeling of my toes. Shock overcame me as the English voices boomed out of the speakers during session two House re-runs. I thought to myself: “Are the after-effects of my previous Portuguese trip causing me to hear these heavy English accents during my seclusion in Hamburg?” With my North Carolinian background, this bilingual, subtitled show would seem very unpopular or even nonexistent among the citizens of Germany because the need to understand or even hear other languages seems a bit far-fetched in American standards: nearly everyone, regardless of nationality, is expected to speak at least fragments of English in our country. However, many shows were like these House re-runs, and my native-German travel partner confirmed that the most popular shows and movies were broadcasted in English with German subtitles lingering at the bottom. This powerful influence explained the numerous oddities that set Americans aside from other Europeans, including one at large, the prominent outcome of influence: acceptance. Anything and most everything that may need translating in the United States is readily available with no hint of translation barriers, or worse; it is re-created and Americanized such as the originally-Swedish book and movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Why is re-creation necessary for Americans? I believe it has to do with lacking acceptance and expectation. We expect to linguistically understand everything thrown our way. If not, some blood tends to boil. How many times has one felt the heating annoyance that fills the gas station of the local Seven-Eleven as the clerk and costumer attempt to both decipher and painfully exchange unrecognizable phrases? Tension rises, giving a definite example of our cultural impatience. I laugh at the confusion and gratify the effort: language barriers at their finest.  We embrace and define our stereotype without recognition, and if we should eventually see past the foreign barricades of our minds this undermining blight would be demolished.

              Positive international influence is hard to come by now in America, but I can recall an influential television show that spanned the length of my adolescence and contributed to the few small ideals of my childhood. Madeline, a French cartoon series taking place in Paris, aired throughout the 1990's. Without my knowing, I began to call my grandmother “Ma-mear” before I was even able to recall my memories: according to my mother it was the second slightly-comprehensible word I chanted. As the years lagged on, I had always figured that my quirky mind had created this strange word during infancy, which was not uncommon, yet my grandmother enthusiastically surprised me with one of her usual “facts of the year.” Unlike the others, this fact rattled my brain for years and caused me to consult to an expert. The word “Ma-Mear” comes from the 1990’s French-slang word “Mémere” meaning “grandmother.” Unbelievable, I thought. How can you speak part of a language without even knowing? Shocked and shaken, my French-speaking friend from Quebec confirmed this statement. Shocked as I was, I found peace of mind when I realized how strong such small influences can actually be in a child’s life. Across the globe, from Germany to Hong Kong, foreign avails prove to create qualities for which all men aspire: open-mindedness, understanding, critical knowledge, and overall acceptance.  The mentality of unimportance suppresses these qualities and encompasses Americans into the vulnerable, ignorant void.

             “Well, if they decide to come to this country, they should have the decency to know our damn language.” I cannot begin to count the times I’ve heard my conservative, mustache-twirling Grandfather recite these words. Most all American immigrants have a decent sense of English due to the harsh expectations exemplified by my Grandfather. Society’s norm is: “That’s the way it should be.” Where has this norm come from, and why has it grown so strong? As I reentered the United States after my world-wide voyage, I trod my tired, home-sick feet into the threshold of the Dallas-Fortworth International Airport where we were subject to customs, questions, and strange coincidences. Accompanied by a monolingual, elderly Venezuelan women with whom I had bared a ten-hour elbow-to-elbow flight, I heaved up my bags and set my place in custom’s US Citizen Line. The apathetic announcement of the intercom’s “requesting [of] a Spanish translator in line seventeen” rang through my ears consistently for the following hour. At that point, an itch I’d been trying to scratch for months became quite obvious and easy to reach. Taking into account that I had recently been scouring Europe where seventy-five percent of train station, airport, and bus workers were no less than trilingual, this shocking, newly-discovered itch quickly turned into disappointing and irksome nail-to-skin scrapings. I was not so much frustrated by the fact that many of the clerks did not possess these basic communication skills as to how unwilling they were to obtain them. The world is expanding and so is the need to communicate and translate for others not native to this country. If customs officials, even ones working in such a large international airport, are this blind and uncaring to the problem of miscommunication and overall disinterest, then what hope do we have for future generations? The exercise of apathy is weakening our nation at a steady rate. We are in direct interaction to this problem, yet cultural and linguistic drive is still not present and the need unrecognized in American society. We continue to bury ourselves deeper into a hope-less pit: job opportunities in international fields are steadily growing, and unable Americans stagger at and complain of unemployment. To cease falling slaves to our apathy, we must adapt to the time period of expansion and contribute to the global requirements of language and cultural acceptance.

                       Without constructive knowledge, our united land will internally crumble: America cannot thrive in our world-wide community if we continue to ignore society's pleas for cooperation. The multilingual influence, foreign knowledge, and unquestioned global acceptance of our fellow countries bring forth numerous ideals which provide a potential domino-effect formula for the solution Americans face: positive influence embraces interaction which in turn creates acceptance, interest, knowledge, and even linguistics. We can dispose of the “that’s the way it should be” theory and begin pumping power into our nation by providing support to those with whom we share the oceans. When the importance of global interaction is left on the back-burner, we will never find liberation from the destructive American standard that will potentially turn the heart of our multi-continental organism mute and life-less.