Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Effects of Homogeneity


When I think of sheltered individuals lacking racial/cultural awareness or an understanding of what it’s like to be different, I inevitably imagine a group of wealthy, white individuals of Anglo-Saxon descent. It’s always been the wealthy wasps who are insensitive to other races, religions or cultures, right? Well, about a month ago I found myself ignorant with this assumption. I found myself realizing that it obviously isn’t the white privilege that creates this effect, but the homogeneity of a country, city, or even a town or school. If everyone is surrounded by people just like them, they forget that there are others out in the world, with different thoughts, beliefs, histories, interests and ideas.

Colombia is by no means homogeneous – quite far from it, actually. Just like in the US, Colombia has a population made up of various races – mainly Mestizo (a mix of white and indigenous background), black and white – so racially and culturally, Colombia is quite diverse. Religiously it is less so (one of my colleagues said to me the other day: “Colombia is ONLY 70% Catholic!” Only, eh?) Despite the diversity that does exist in Colombia, each city within the country seems to be fairly homogenous. Manizales, for example, is mainly white and Mestizo and has a relatively educated population because there are so many universities here. More specifically, the student population at my school is 100% Catholic and upper-class.

A few weeks ago at school we had an opening ceremony for the interclass competitions – a fun event to kick off the upcoming months of sports games and such. Each grade was assigned a country for their team, so one grade was the USA, one was South Africa, England, Aruba, Australia, Colombia, etc. For the opening ceremony parade (like a mini version of the Olympics), the girls dressed up to represent their countries in either their team’s uniform or in other ways to symbolize their countries. There were kangaroos for Australia, a cheetah for South Africa, Flamenco dancers and bulls for Spain, and my favorite was the queen, with a massive paper dress, for England. As the girls paraded with big smiles on their faces, I noticed the oh-so-familiar toothbrush moustache on one of the girls in 11th, whose country was, of course, Germany. My initial thought was, “That’s not cool to joke about,” but I tried to be positive and changed my thought to, “Ok, I guess it’s a little funny that there’s a 16-year-old Colombian girl dressed as Hitler.” The parade continued. Then, when the students marched onto the fĂștbol field, I noticed that the lovely Hitler was carrying a massive flag bearing the Swastika. The girls were all laughing, and one of them was dressed up a bit skankily and posing with Hitler and the flag. As I looked on with the other teachers, one of them turned to the principal to say, “Look! Hitler! How funny,” and the principal gave a laugh. The show carried on. I was completely stunned. You can hardly blame the girls – if the teachers think parading around with the Swastika to represent Germany is a funny little costume, then how are the students supposed to know any better? Shocked, offended and disconcerted with the insensitivity of the entire school community, I tried to keep a smile on my face, but a few minutes later the principal turned to me to ask what happened – apparently it showed that I was upset. I replied with an “oh, nothing” and returned to the English room for the rest of the festivities.

Over the next few days I wanted to talk to a fellow teacher about it – I wanted to see someone else’s view and try to understand how they could think dressing as Hitler and prancing around with a flag of the Swastika was OK, but then I thought… If it doesn’t naturally occur to them that that is both incredibly offensive and insensitive, how would I explain it to them? The event was published in the local newspaper because of the school’s progressive ideas in thinking of the world as a “Global Village” and stressing the importance of physical education in school (something less common in countries other than the United States). There was an excerpt in English that one of the teachers, an Argentine who has lived in multiple countries, wanted me to read over to check the grammar. I got to the part about the 11th graders dressing as Germany: “From Hitler to…” I turned to my colleague to say, “Maybe we don’t want to brag about the girls dressing as Hitler. It’s not really something to be proud of, you know?” The fellow teacher looked at me, perplexed. “Oh… um, okay, yeah. Poor Germany. Will you read this part?” And she continued, completely disregarding my comment.