From: mvij@novell.com (Manish Vij)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american,alt.culture.us.asian-indian
Subject: Back to 'Birds of a Feather' (was Re: White Guys Superior?)
Date: 13 Aug 92 22:31:17 GMT
Organization: Novell Inc., San Jose, California

In article <1992Aug13.185848.27835@midway.uchicago.edu> moh2@midway.uchicago.edu writes: (Amirthi, in other words, she of the T'ang Dynasty poem)

>In article <169r5bINNi7o@cs.utexas.edu> srin@cs.utexas.edu (Srinivas Nedunuri) writes:
>>In article <houch.713142957@cavern> houch@cavern.mitre.org writes:
>>>panwar@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Ramesh Panwar) writes:
>
>>The fact is its not at all easy to forge real friendships between 
>>culturally different groups. 
>
>I don't think anybody ever claimed it was easy - I do believe it's
>worth the effort.
>
>>The problem is that it isn't immediately clear to me why two 
>>groups of people (take any two arbitary groups) should neccessarily associate 
>>with one another.

The NRA and the Sierra Club shouldn't necessarily associate with each other
without pretext.  Nor should followers of Jerry Falwell and the Hare
Krishnas, or LaRouchites and Buchananites.  But individuals within each
group may do so freely.  Bill Clinton's campaign manager is the lover
of George Bush's strategist.  Sure, they fight about it, but being different
does not exclude being together.  In some cultures and modes of thinking,
difference is to be preferred over similarity; cosmopolitans and college
students tend to glorify diversity, and so do young people who feel
trapped in small towns.

Why is living in college dorms glorified so much?  If you answer, "It isn't,"
then you've been hanging around the kind of people who don't enjoy meeting
thousands of different people and getting to know many of them well.  If
you answer, "Because the dorms were fun," you're either a college student
or you've been watching the new series "Freshman Dorm" (I yank thy flusher
not).  The diversity of experience in a dorm, or at a school like UC
Berkeley, helps you meet people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and
to a certain extent we may learn from others' life experiences.

Arguing with a close friend of mine from a different culture forced me
to re-examine many of the cultural assumptions in my personality.  Doing
and believing on the basis of thought rather than dead habit can never
be a disadvantage.

It's the belief in a monolithic, "correct" culture (mine, or ours . . .)
which fuels all the ethnic strife and division we've seen throughout
history.  Pick up the newspaper and you'll see the atrocities being
committed in Bosnia-Herzegova in the name of "ethnic cleansing."  Cleansing
of what?  Of what and whom are not like you?  Or, listen to an argument
in my family ;-> and you'll see this cultural absolutism.

>>I don't see this problem going away. With the increasing diversity of 
>>immigration into the US, the workplace 20 years from now, just to give an 
>>example, could be a real Tower of Babel of languages, customs and attitudes. 
>>Some kind of attitude shift is going to be required to avert this. 
>
>I think it already is a Tower of Babel.  I doubt I could find *any*
>friends who fit into exactly the same categories I do.  I'm Sri
>Lankan.  So I could exclude everybody from my circle of friends who
>wasn't Sri Lankan.  I'm Tamil...so I exclude all Singhalese Sri
>Lankans.  I'm agnostic...so I exclude all religious Tamils.  I'm
>politically liberal...so I exclude all conservatives.  I read sf and
>fantasy...so I exclude everybody who doesn't.   I'd be left with my
>only friends being Sri Lankan Tamils who are agnostic, liberal, read
>sf and fantasy, are musicians, like Renaissance Faires, enjoy Middle
>Eastern food, etc and so on.
>
>Once you start excluding people - for whatever reason - you start
>shutting yourself into smaller and smaller boxes...until finally
>you're crammed into something about 5x5.  Doubt you'd have much room
>left for friends.

Or in my case, 5'9" x 1' ;').

All of my friends in high school (predominantly white and Asian) were
of different cultures and races.  Most of my _close_ friends in college
are Indian-American.  I definitely think I need to get out of my
coffin.

> - Amirthi
>
>--
>The autumn leaves are falling like rain.
>Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Yet another example of tribalism and narrow-mindedness :-)

>And you, you are a thousand miles away,
>There are always two cups at my table.		 - A T'ang Dynasty poem

The autumn weathervanes twist in the rain
Because my neighbors are all cagers,
And you, you are a few klicks away,
Momentous frames promise me shavers.

Oh . . . you don't get it?  Is it my fault you don't share the same
cultural assumptions that the poet does?  Perhaps a closer examination of 
these lush verses will yield new insight into an alternative frame of
thinking . . . and isn't that what poetry is all about?

8-P  8-O   8-()   8-)
                                          /-\o /-()  -- -  --   -
   Manish Vij    ::    '89 EX500          \_/ \\/ )  -- -    --
   mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu                       |/_\  -- -  --   - 
   mvij@novell.com                              \_/.  .  . . ........
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american