2009年12月16日星期三
“ABC” and "banana"
A professor custom Jumping Castles of mine once told a story about when she went to the United States to study.A native Eritrean, she had received a scholarship to pursue a bachelor's degree at an American university. The university organized a trip to Disneyland for her and the other international students. Before the group of international students went to Los Angeles, the coordinators of the trip informed the students from Africa that they should wear their "traditional" costumes, not Western-style clothing.Why?The coordinators were afraid that the African students would be "mistaken" for African-Americans simply because their skin color was also dark.At that time, the 1960s, there was still much overt racial discrimination against African-Americans.Insgroupsto avoid trouble, the coordinators wanted to make sure that their African students did not look African-American.
She ended her story by asking us to think about what we thought she was before we had met her. Her last name is Italian; did we think she was Italian? When we first saw her, did we assume that she was a black American?How much can we really know about a person based upon hair color, skin color, facial structure or body shape?
Identity china Inflatable Pirate Ship is a difficult subject to discuss because it is so personal, and it is even more difficult to describe someone's identity clearly in a country like the USswheresjust about everyone's family came from somewhere else. My professor, until she left Eritrea, always considered herself Eritrean.When she got to America, however, people looked at her and saw a black woman, not an Eritrean woman. Similarly, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese people come to the US and are often just called "Asians".Appearance is used as the main condition for identity, although appearances can be quite deceiving.