Indeed, when I was in charge of exhibits and events at Chicago’s airports we hosted an annual Children’s International Dance Fest, and it was most often first-generation children enrolled in cultural schools who performed, from cultural traditions representing Cambodia, Mexico, Ireland, the Philippines and more.  I always found it interesting from an ‘urban anthropology’ perspective, looking at culture as something that is culled to its physical manifestations and taught in a school (as opposed to something that is somehow inalienably tied to you).  How does that change one’s sense of cultural identity?

But this one today was particularly interesting as relates to cultural identity and the idea of language at the core of identity:  I met a woman who “could not pronounce her name correctly.”  I had trouble understanding her name when she said it.  I asked her to spell it, to help me pronounce and remember it better, and she admitted “actually, I don’t say it right either.  It’s a Hindi word.  My parents say it differently than me, and when I meet people born in India they are always correcting me.”

Can you correct someone’s pronunciation of their own name when they are the one telling you it?  Which pronunciation is ’right’?  Is it the same as when you go to another country and people pronounce your name differently, or is there something more deeply connected to our ‘hyphenated’ identities, as customs and language change over time in a new setting?

We ‘stuck to plan,’ getting something to eat before heading back to Chicago. As we sat back to enjoy our food it gave an opportunity to observe our surroundings and compare it to my preconceived ideas about this ‘cultural’ group.  I realized I knew nothing deeper than stereotypes from movies.  And this didn’t connect with what we saw: groups of men and women pleasantly socializing, typical festival vendors (Miller, Pepsi, etc.) plus some unexpected ones:  upscale restaurants, the local German Cultural Organization, and an insurance company. 

The experience had me pondering my definition of culture last week and also researching demographics of Harley Riders, realizing how assumptions can get in the way of marketing by clouding our sense of what products a particular group might buy. 

My week’s lesson was affirmed yesterday when I led a Communications Workshop for Local Coordinators at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Midwest Region office.  Local coordinators are key players in FAA management who oversee operations and air traffic control for smaller regional airports.  One of the coordinators, Dan, it turns out, owns 4 Harley’s.  I took this discovery a ‘learning moment.’  Being a “Harley Rider” (or insert any cultural distinction here) was an integral part of Dan’s identity, but was not a label that defined (or limited) who he was. 

If you want to be sure to ‘walk the talk,’ make opportunities in your everyday life to test and expand your own ‘intercultural appreciation quotient’-your way of embracing and empathizing the many perspectives on life.  Here are some ways to get started:

• 1. Value every single interaction as an opportunity to communicate across lines of difference-people vary in not only in culture and ethnicity but in political views, life experience, etc.

• 2. Ask questions and LISTEN…don’t assume you know what someone thinks or likes because of his/her appearance.

• 3. Go to the grocery store or grab coffee in another neighborhood and observe everything around you. While you may not recognize all of the items in the Asian market, see what people are buying, or watch the family interaction-it’s amazing how many things are universal to human nature, that cross cultural boundaries.

How does this relate to intercultural marketing?  It opens your eyes and changes the paradigm, giving you more tools to look at culture.  And having as many tools as possible at hand is one way to ensure you’ll always have the right tool for the job.  Explore and grow!

Kai has lived in the US for the last 11 years, 10 of them working in corporate America.  He left the corporate side to fully pursue his dream of being a filmmaker a year or so ago, to devote his attention to finishing the feature-length documentary he co-directed with Avishe Mohsenin.  Their website describes the film, which debuted at the Asian American Showcase at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago last April, as:

Part musical documentary, part personal meditation, Someplace Else is the engaging portrait of a soul-blues-funk musician (Vance Kelly and his Backstreet Blues Band) from the South Side of Chicago through the director’s personal film journal.

Weaving the narrative, photographic and lyrical content of the music in an unconventional and rhythmic way, this feature debut transforms the visual experience of a documentary into a fresh captivating journey of many facets.

Kai’s mom managed to escape from Cambodia’s Killing Fields to France with Kai, then 1, and his siblings, then 3 and 4.  Kai’s father escaped his torturers twice, thanks to his mom taking Kai with her to see the torturers and asking them to spare his life.  He died after crossing the Cambodese-Vietnamese border from exhaustion and disease that ensued from the long journey out of Cambodia.  (Many of his uncles, aunts, and cousins weren’t that fortunate and died quickly after the invasion in April 1975.)  “Someday I will tell the story of my mom when I can afford a full fledged production because I feel her story like many others is part of our human heritage.”   

Here are Kai’s thoughts on interculturalism and cultural identity:

Intercultural themes are definitely part of what I’m interested in, as you may have noticed “Someplace Else” includes a wide array of ethnicities, from the filmmakers being Asians (I was born in Cambodia of Chinese descent, lived in France before emigrating to the US. My co-director is Iranian born in France, lived in Iran before coming to the US around the same time as myself) to the lead and his band being African-American, the club owners quite a few of Italian descent, and all the fans/interviewees spanning the wide interracial spectrum of various genders and ages.

As an Asian, I’ve faced many difficulties often overlooked, as the media often portray things as white vs. black and tend to trivialize it that way… things are changing with the word brown coming in the spotlight in recent years… and also Muslims and yellow also taking some kind of acknowledgement these days in political speeches for instance, those of our dear Illinois junior senator.

One of the things that I’m interested in these days is that there are more and more people of multi-ethnic or multiple-country backgrounds that transcend this white vs. black vs. brown vs. yellow classification or just the simple notion of Diaspora and immigration from one country and the sense of being just say American, or just French for instance. What also is interesting is that there are also many hurdles for these populations to overcome as a result of this… a search for identity and roots that isn’t as easily defined as in the past.
And even in Europe, I was dating this wonderful person who was of multiple country-backgrounds within Europe being Czech-French-Swiss born in Austria, and she told me it was hard for her to define really where she came from and say for instance that she was from this country or another, or had this culture more than the other. Ditto for me, I can’t really say I’m Chinese since I never lived there, nor did I fully embrace its traditions having lived in France ever since I was 1-year old and absorbed the model of integration most known over there for its desire to remove any cultural heritage other than that of being French as in being white French, nor can I say I’m Cambodese because my only attachment to Cambodia was that it’s the country I was born in and had to escape because of Pol Pot. People in Paris then would call me Americanized, whilst here in America, people would have a hard time understanding that I’m French… They would say “But you’re Chinese!”… Deep down inside, I don’t know… I know I value some traits of my Chinese heritage (not all), some from my French upbringing, and some from my American adulthood experiences… not a single one is better than the other in globality, or inherently.  Some say I should fully embrace my Chinese look, but I don’t always value the cultural standards in traditional Chinese families, and I’m more westernized for that matter.

The next screening of the Someplace Else is at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, August 5-10, 2008.  

But when it comes to people, a label can never do justice to revealing what’s inside. 

My husband, who’s Brazilian (and now a U.S. Citizen) says “white” is the most appropriate when filling out forms that require it, since “Hispanic” doesn’t apply to Brazil.  Yet when our child enrolls in school, he’s considered Hispanic by the public school system.

A colleague, who is Hindu, also has trouble with the current system.  “When I have to categorize myself I will usually fill out the other bubble.  As a South Asian American I am not categorized in the Asian/Pacific Islander category, and have been told that I am in fact a sub category of the Caucasian category.  Considering myself as a person of color I do not feel comfortable categorizing myself as Caucasian, which is what most white Americans categorize themselves as.  So although India is in the Asian sub continent, and Indians are listed in a subcategory (Caucasoid) of Caucasian, neither of those categories defines me, resulting in my selection of other.”

Lately I’ve felt most accurately labeled as a “peachy United Statian,” peach being the color crayon that most looked like my skin color in elementary school and United Statian as opposed to “American.”  If you’ve ever traveled throughout the Americas, everyone from Canada to Argentina is American.  I am from the United States. 

But really, that last statement is an attempt to self-identify as something other than “white,” when I don’t want to.  I’m white.  If I’m Jewish you might not like me, so I’ll just be white. The truth of the matter is that it makes me nervous to forgo my privilege of having a label that doesn’t really tell you anything about me.   

Which is exactly why I know I need to do it.  I look forward to the day when we have a new paradigm that moves beyond labels and distinctions to a more equitable and empathetic way of relating to one another, but we’re not there yet.  In the meantime, my search for a label is an acknowledgment of the disparity in the current system of labels and an opportunity to explore who I am so that I can contribute to the dialogue on race and culture from a point of agency.  Knowing and loving me for who I am is the best platform from which to reach out and embrace others.