Proud to be an American?

My current grad class is about teaching refugee and immigrant students. For it I read the book Middle of Everywhere by Mary Pipher, a good book on the refugee experience of adjusting to life in America.

I want to start this post by saying that I love America. We have a great country; and though I have little travel experience, from what I've read this year, I feel lucky to have grown up here. That said, I am scared to death of my daughter growing up in American culture.

In my notes for this book, I collected a list of what refugees had to say about America. These people are all grateful for the opportunities provided for them here, but they did make several observations. Some of them:

• "Americans think it is a sin to do nothing." (74)
• "I have learned that when an American looks at his watch, it means I am taking too much of his time. I had better leave quickly." (74)
• "Americans invented stress. And with globalization, stress will soon be all over the world." (75)
• from the TV: America is obsessed with violence, sex, consumption, money, and power (86)
• a Vietnamese teen felt sorry for white teens: "They are really unlucky. They have no real culture. They go around trying to steal other people's groups - blacks, Asians, just so they can find some identity." (168-9)
• With acculturation, the well-being of refugee students actually decreases. The longer kids are in America, the less time they spend on homework and the more likely they are to be sexually active. (172)
• "The American educational system is designed to make students stop thinking."
• amazed at how disrespectful American students were - talking to their friends in class, mouthing off, sleeping, kissing in the halls, or shouting "F*** you."
• "American teens are always talking about sex and alcohol."
• "American kids brag about getting drunk. In my country, alcohol was no big deal. Here teens are desperate to drink."
• "Some American kids are nice." Response: "They are nice to their friends, but not to their parents."
• people are obsessed with "mine, mine, mine." Huge emphasis on property and individual rights; joked about how Americans worried over who paid what on a restaurant bill (213)
• A comment in response to American women and their dress: "Women are jewels, not toys. They should respect themselves."
• regarding America's high divorce rate: "In Iraq, marriage is a shirt you wear for the rest of your life. If you tear it, you mend it."

There are many glowing pictures of individual American generosity as well. But that is not what stands out about our culture. The book discusses how the biggest challenge for these families is all the cultural shifting they have to do - acting American at appropriate times while also maintaining their own cultural traditions as well. Basically, they try to take the good from each culture; ultimately, however, they've got to learn how to be functional in American society.

Biblically speaking, Christians are refugees in the world, charged with being in the world but not of the world. We must be effective and successful in the world without embracing the culture. This is difficult, and I saw great exmaples of what this looks like when reading about these refugee experiences.

I see my daughter soaking up everything around her now, and a lot of it doesn't come from me or my wife. She picks up so much from our babysitter and her son, from the YMCA classes she takes, and from the books she reads. Most of it is great; but it's become clear she is a sponge. I've found myself muting commercials on the TV when it's on in our house to keep some of those messages from sinking in. She already walks through stores with us saying, "We should buy this, and we should buy this, and we should buy this. . ." Parenting is about to get real difficult (I can hear my mother laughing at me right now).

In one of my favorite movies, Spanglish, a Mexican immigrant mother is talking with an American man about sending her daughter to an American prep school. She says she's afraid because her daughter will either be very different from all the other kids, or become the same as the others. Out of those two choices, the man and the woman decided that it would definitely be better to be different.

I pray that my daughter is different. And I pray that for myself as well.