We drove from Iowa to Canada via Minnesota and North Dakota – with miles and miles of prairie that marries a vast pale blue sky to an infinite carpet of short grass. I've driven through South Dakota before – a day and a night. The summer nights around there are remarkable - especially when there is no clouds or haze. On such clear nights one could touch the Milky Way and hear the coyotes. (On one such drive-through South Dakota I considered sleeping in my car for a night - with the hope that I might get picked up by a kind trucker when if I ran out of gas, and the prairie before me ran out of gas stations.
But like so many places that are naturally unique – beautiful or not, these are places one can travel through, visit or spend a short time in (sometimes to say “I've been there” or “I've done that”)...but to live there? It takes a special kind of history, resilience, character or circumstances to go to these places by choice and stay there. Most people of the upper Midwest were born there, and might even be stuck there.
The Canadian prairies, from where the icey blistering northerlies come from, are no different.
Their long winters, the bitter cold of the winters, and the stripping winds of its cold create the rugged prairie self with a quiet live-let-live attitude. One generally ends up with a reserved nature and a brooding mind. In these places you are likely to get the poet, the novelist, the story-teller (some with a special penchant for ware wolves and ghosts), the folk singer, the painter, the sculptor, the serious family man, the loner, the proud working class worker and the crazies. As someone said, “Around here you get the ultra good human being who is likely to be misunderstood, or the ultra crazy lunatic who is also likely to be misunderstood. There is no in-between!”
The Lakotas, the proud first people of Minnesota, the Dakotas (that takes its name from these Natives), parts of Sasketchawan and Manitoba (of Canada) were mostly killed, and the few who were left behind were pushed into the “badlands” - now called reservations. Their language was used to name streets, towns and cities while their clothes, art work and heritage were used to fill museums. Such is the sad story of those who were brutalized, colonized, killed or converted by the White man. And nobody did it better than the early Anglo Americans.
Canada took a slightly different path! Anglo Canadians have fought for their First People, so they are not thrown into reservations and dumped with junk food and alcohol to slowly wither away - as they did in the United States of America.
The unique history and topography of the upper Midwest has birthed some strong libertarians who believe in living free, independently and by letting others do the same. Politically some of these libertarians can be bold, brave or intelligently independent ; culturally and socially some are odd, crazy, insane and outright nuts. Canada preferred to go the Socialist route, and there is a difference in the way Winnipegers in Canada view government versus Fargoans of North Dakota, only three hours south of Winnipeg.
Weather in the prairies, like the temperamental woman or man, can change rapidly. From a perfect sunny morning to a hazy cloudy afternoon, from a long colorful twilight to a pitch black star studded night, and from a short bright early dawn to a severe thunder storm that flash intense lightnings and cause flash floods...all in one day.
Mark, my partner, drove happily through these prairies. He is a car man, and long flat surfaces with long flat roads offer a great opportunity for men like him to turn on (the engine) and tune off the mind. He drove to my first Canadian destination: Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba.
Winnipeg reminded me of the dark despondent documentary “My Winnipeg” (2007). It was about a working class Catholic gay man struggling with his religious upbringing, his working class family and a cramped or cramping city. Though I watched this documentary several years ago in a more-than-sunny Florida, I remember there were many slutty Catholic girls in the film (according to the documentarian - who appeared a bit too judgmental) while the eternal prairie snow blew, blew and blew. The film was dark, foreboding and depressing. It was about a struggling man trapped in a religious family in a non-spiritual soulless city.
When we landed in Winnipeg it looked like an old "working class” city...with miles and miles of fast food joints and strip malls, interjected by Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants advertising their culinary delight in cheap neon lights. It did not look pretentious like certain suburbs of Los Angeles, or sleazy like some boroughs of New York city. It looked exactly like what the author had noted: soulless!
Winnipeg is a big city - fourth largest in Canada. The running joke is that it is trying to pass off as the Vancouver of Central Canada, or the Toronto of the West. Obviously it is not working. We had a hard time finding its downtown, so we ended up staying at a nice hotel in the mall-and-junk-food area. While we enjoyed the dim-sum brunch at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, and a visit to their well maintained museum (whose Ojibwa and Cree nation biographies were very good), we spent our time doing what most residents do: trying to get out. Winnipeg is what urban planners humorously caricature as Western development utopia gone awry: soulless landscape that passes for a city!
I must add that the people of Winnipeg, like their province license plate states, are friendly. They deserve to keep their license plate: Friendly Manitoba
I made a spontaneous decision to take the train from Winnipeg to Vancouver, Churchill or Toronto. The railway agent sold me Toronto. I'd spend two nights on a Canadian train – which is not too long, enjoy a panoramic view of Manitoba and Ontario - which would be nice ; eat decent food with wine in a comfortable dining car - which would be elegant ; and meet tourists from all over the world traversing Canada like me - which would be delightful. All for less than $550. Could anyone ask for more? I took it. Mark dropped me off at the Winnipeg downtown railway station (which was impressive) at the unseemly hour of 11:00 pm, and we parted like old lovers who were going to see each other “same time, next year” (from the title of one of my favorite movies with Alan Alda).
Night trains, unlike planes, make me melancholic. Maybe this is the reason why Duke Ellington tried to make his “Night Train” (a.k.a Happy Go Lucky Local) so lively.
As I said goodbye to Winnipeg, knowing “I had been there and done that” and “not again for awhile”, I was reminded of other working class cities: Valencia in Spain, Detroit in the US, Jamshedpur in India and St. John in New Brunswick of Maritime Province, Canada. Miles of drab buildings and strip malls - with plenty of for-profit chain-corporations (that offer junk food, junk drinks and junk entertainment).
I have nothing against Western, Westernized or Western-made working class cities. I sometimes enjoy their ruggedness, grittiness and earthy realness – particularly the working class parts of Chicago and New York city. It is what industrial working class life has done to the minds of its people – its workers and their families, that I abhor. They work in mindless jobs or in mind-numbing tasks, and then go to bars to drink their sadness away or to their televisions to tune out their “worthless day and meaningless lives”. Some use humor, at least on television series they do (like Roseanne Barr), to deal with the hollowness of an existential non-existence...thinking of a thousand ways to leave a working class city and its life. Companies, corporations and industries love this "verminization of human life".
In these places it helps if one does not “think too much”. In such places it helps if one does not “aspire too much”. In these places there is only two ways to be political: you are mindlessly apolitical – doing your job, doing what you are told and doing whatever is necessary for your economic survival, or you are passionately anarchistic – hating everything including yourself! It is from these environments, constructed by mediocre or meaningless lives that Kafka developed his characters of a human “vermin”. One of his characters, a man turned into an insignificant coolie-worker cockroach, that people love to shoo away or squash, muses, “A life where there is eternal dread of night and dread of not-night”. This is what entrapment or soullessness must feel like.
People in these places deal with entrapment mostly in one way: with the psychology of “doing” - where you keep busy with work ; survive or manage by focusing on your livelihood ; and find reprieve through rituals (or traditions). The church (or the mosque, the synagogue and the temple) and its activities, like going to a bar or a gym, is one ritual that places like these offer to help with a crushing insignificant life that repeats itself like “Groundhog Day” (1993).
If cities like Winnipeg represent development I hope all the emerging economies will think again. They should come to these places and do a sociological and psychological study of what these kind of “concrete buildings that block the minds” does to people's body and soul. If this is America's contribution to Canada should not Canada say, “No thank you!”?
Or, is it something else? Is Winnipeg unique to Canada? After all Canada has some of the most attractive cities in North America. San Francisco, near where I lived in the Bay Area for years, was often referred to as “the most European or Canadian city in the United States” - hence the most beautiful.
While some cities eject people emotionally and socially, some cities, no matter how challenging it gets economically and physically, continues to attract people. Winnipeg may eject, Toronto attracts!
One city girl noted, “I have seen it all! But I always come back to this 20th floor apartment, to this high rise, to this crowded neighborhood...to this big throbbing city. Where am I going to go...when so much outside this city, or any city, continues to be provincial, insular, homogenous, backward or narrow?”
Toronto is far from provincial, insular, homogenous, backward or narrow! It is a quintessential 20th century city that has grown elegantly, and has now become a 21st century international city.
If cities can trap people, or turn them into people with small lives - who obsess about trivialities, cities can sometimes be the only sanctuary for many minorities and immigrants. While Toronto is home to almost half of Canada's minorities and immigrants, there are only three major cities in Canada where 80 percent of non-Anglo Canadians and non-Canadians live. Minorities and immigrant Canadians call it the TMV restriction – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
(Winnipeg is too far from the coast, too unattractive and too provincial for many professional immigrants and minorities to settle into. Like Iowa and Nebraskain the United States, Winnipeg has mostly Laotian, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees - who were settled in the prairies. Calgary and Edmonton in the province of Alberta are growing, and it is drawing more Canadians, but TMV zone is still where the action is).
Several Canadian cousins of mine admit that, even as doctors and engineers with great education and qualification, they'd be competing with hundred other well qualified or over-qualified candidates in the TMV zone. On the other hand just a hundred miles outside these cities they'd have hundred jobs waiting. While jobs are a number one priority for many new immigrants. and they are also likely to go anywhere for a green card and a citizenship, for the second generation and those with non-material priorities and dignity it is a different story. Minorities and immigrants who want life beyond a job, an income and affordable real estate ; have pride in their history and heritage ; and look for a community that is also emotionally and socially satisfying might prefer the city. As minorities and immigrants they might feel safer and better understood in the city - or even a particular neighborhood in a city. Outside that city: understanding, acceptance, inclusion and integration might be hard to find.
This cultural, social and economic division, or demarcation, between urban and rural environments of North America, one with much of the diversity and the other with almost none, creates some unique challenges for minorities and immigrants. While officially we have the choice to go anywhere and live in any place...emotionally and socially we may not find too many places attractive or socially safe. Pragmatic Americans, racist Americans, Anglo Americans and clueless Americans do not understand this dilemma. They do not understand how minorities, immigrants and people of color might feel emotionally unsafe and socially unwelcome in many places outside cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities of North America.
Some people will never understand what it is to walk around, as a woman of color, freely and safely on the busy streets of Toronto or NYC (New York city). Try doing this in Iowa and Nebraska – where seeing a person walking outside, in stead of bea ing in car, itself is a rarity. One can officially walk anywhere...but there is a difference in doing so with cultural acceptance, social nonchalance and emotional freedom versus not! Most of us would prefer the former. This is where cities remain socially attractive and emotionally safe for many immigrants, minorities, people of color and even some liberals and progressives.
In cities like Toronto there are many ways to be Canadian, American, Korean, Chinese, Indian, British, Irish, Danish, Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Liberal, Progressive, Colored, non-Colored, Socialist, Capitalist....there are many ways to be “you” and many ways to “become”.
In small town USA there are so few people of color you either have to fit into a box so the Anglo majority can better understand you or accept you, or you need to assimilate fast so you would not be treated with suspicion - possibly as a terrorist. Provincialism combined with the protocols of post-Sept 11 propaganda has made life in many suburbs and rural areas of America unbearable. While I admire the pragmatism and resilience of some immigrants and minorities in many non-city towns across America, I do fear they have compromised too much and live cloistered lives (that rarely connect beyond family, work, church or synagogue, some cultural and social activities...and a comfort zone that gets narrow and insular over time).
If only twenty percent of the land in Iowa is untouched by big agribusiness, only a small segment of Minnesota and North Dakota are free from mono-crops (for cattle) and cattle (for food). Even today in much of the northern upper Midwest it is hard to tell the difference between the short unnatural soy plants from the short natural grass weeds.
Lot of the prairie, no matter how boring, homogenous and lackluster at first, can be fascinating under the varying intensity of natural light. It can reflect many subtle shades of natural colors. Also, the infinite sky of the flat lands offers an amazing opportunity to gaze into its beautiful long summer twilight, and the bright Milky Way of its nights. The prairie landscape and the sky can be a painter's delight.
Whatever unease one might experience in such a vast desolate place quickly vanishes in a comfortable 13th floor hotel room - looking out into an orange-pink dusk that turns into a star studded sk, that later brings an intense storm. Life looks pretty – almost ethereal!
But like so many places that are naturally unique – beautiful or not, these are places one can travel through, visit or spend a short time in (sometimes to say “I've been there” or “I've done that”)...but to live there? It takes a special kind of history, resilience, character or circumstances to go to these places by choice and stay there. Most people of the upper Midwest were born there, and might even be stuck there.
The Canadian prairies, from where the icey blistering northerlies come from, are no different.
Their long winters, the bitter cold of the winters, and the stripping winds of its cold create the rugged prairie self with a quiet live-let-live attitude. One generally ends up with a reserved nature and a brooding mind. In these places you are likely to get the poet, the novelist, the story-teller (some with a special penchant for ware wolves and ghosts), the folk singer, the painter, the sculptor, the serious family man, the loner, the proud working class worker and the crazies. As someone said, “Around here you get the ultra good human being who is likely to be misunderstood, or the ultra crazy lunatic who is also likely to be misunderstood. There is no in-between!”
The Lakotas, the proud first people of Minnesota, the Dakotas (that takes its name from these Natives), parts of Sasketchawan and Manitoba (of Canada) were mostly killed, and the few who were left behind were pushed into the “badlands” - now called reservations. Their language was used to name streets, towns and cities while their clothes, art work and heritage were used to fill museums. Such is the sad story of those who were brutalized, colonized, killed or converted by the White man. And nobody did it better than the early Anglo Americans.
Canada took a slightly different path! Anglo Canadians have fought for their First People, so they are not thrown into reservations and dumped with junk food and alcohol to slowly wither away - as they did in the United States of America.
(But, one can see the positive dimension of the Anglo “fighting spirit” in the way liberal and caring Anglo Americans are refusing to let the conservatives and religious extremists who fight against anything non-Anglo win).
The unique history and topography of the upper Midwest has birthed some strong libertarians who believe in living free, independently and by letting others do the same. Politically some of these libertarians can be bold, brave or intelligently independent ; culturally and socially some are odd, crazy, insane and outright nuts. Canada preferred to go the Socialist route, and there is a difference in the way Winnipegers in Canada view government versus Fargoans of North Dakota, only three hours south of Winnipeg.
Weather in the prairies, like the temperamental woman or man, can change rapidly. From a perfect sunny morning to a hazy cloudy afternoon, from a long colorful twilight to a pitch black star studded night, and from a short bright early dawn to a severe thunder storm that flash intense lightnings and cause flash floods...all in one day.
Mark, my partner, drove happily through these prairies. He is a car man, and long flat surfaces with long flat roads offer a great opportunity for men like him to turn on (the engine) and tune off the mind. He drove to my first Canadian destination: Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba.
Winnipeg reminded me of the dark despondent documentary “My Winnipeg” (2007). It was about a working class Catholic gay man struggling with his religious upbringing, his working class family and a cramped or cramping city. Though I watched this documentary several years ago in a more-than-sunny Florida, I remember there were many slutty Catholic girls in the film (according to the documentarian - who appeared a bit too judgmental) while the eternal prairie snow blew, blew and blew. The film was dark, foreboding and depressing. It was about a struggling man trapped in a religious family in a non-spiritual soulless city.
When we landed in Winnipeg it looked like an old "working class” city...with miles and miles of fast food joints and strip malls, interjected by Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants advertising their culinary delight in cheap neon lights. It did not look pretentious like certain suburbs of Los Angeles, or sleazy like some boroughs of New York city. It looked exactly like what the author had noted: soulless!
Winnipeg is a big city - fourth largest in Canada. The running joke is that it is trying to pass off as the Vancouver of Central Canada, or the Toronto of the West. Obviously it is not working. We had a hard time finding its downtown, so we ended up staying at a nice hotel in the mall-and-junk-food area. While we enjoyed the dim-sum brunch at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, and a visit to their well maintained museum (whose Ojibwa and Cree nation biographies were very good), we spent our time doing what most residents do: trying to get out. Winnipeg is what urban planners humorously caricature as Western development utopia gone awry: soulless landscape that passes for a city!
I must add that the people of Winnipeg, like their province license plate states, are friendly. They deserve to keep their license plate: Friendly Manitoba
I made a spontaneous decision to take the train from Winnipeg to Vancouver, Churchill or Toronto. The railway agent sold me Toronto. I'd spend two nights on a Canadian train – which is not too long, enjoy a panoramic view of Manitoba and Ontario - which would be nice ; eat decent food with wine in a comfortable dining car - which would be elegant ; and meet tourists from all over the world traversing Canada like me - which would be delightful. All for less than $550. Could anyone ask for more? I took it. Mark dropped me off at the Winnipeg downtown railway station (which was impressive) at the unseemly hour of 11:00 pm, and we parted like old lovers who were going to see each other “same time, next year” (from the title of one of my favorite movies with Alan Alda).
Night trains, unlike planes, make me melancholic. Maybe this is the reason why Duke Ellington tried to make his “Night Train” (a.k.a Happy Go Lucky Local) so lively.
As I said goodbye to Winnipeg, knowing “I had been there and done that” and “not again for awhile”, I was reminded of other working class cities: Valencia in Spain, Detroit in the US, Jamshedpur in India and St. John in New Brunswick of Maritime Province, Canada. Miles of drab buildings and strip malls - with plenty of for-profit chain-corporations (that offer junk food, junk drinks and junk entertainment).
I have nothing against Western, Westernized or Western-made working class cities. I sometimes enjoy their ruggedness, grittiness and earthy realness – particularly the working class parts of Chicago and New York city. It is what industrial working class life has done to the minds of its people – its workers and their families, that I abhor. They work in mindless jobs or in mind-numbing tasks, and then go to bars to drink their sadness away or to their televisions to tune out their “worthless day and meaningless lives”. Some use humor, at least on television series they do (like Roseanne Barr), to deal with the hollowness of an existential non-existence...thinking of a thousand ways to leave a working class city and its life. Companies, corporations and industries love this "verminization of human life".
In these places it helps if one does not “think too much”. In such places it helps if one does not “aspire too much”. In these places there is only two ways to be political: you are mindlessly apolitical – doing your job, doing what you are told and doing whatever is necessary for your economic survival, or you are passionately anarchistic – hating everything including yourself! It is from these environments, constructed by mediocre or meaningless lives that Kafka developed his characters of a human “vermin”. One of his characters, a man turned into an insignificant coolie-worker cockroach, that people love to shoo away or squash, muses, “A life where there is eternal dread of night and dread of not-night”. This is what entrapment or soullessness must feel like.
People in these places deal with entrapment mostly in one way: with the psychology of “doing” - where you keep busy with work ; survive or manage by focusing on your livelihood ; and find reprieve through rituals (or traditions). The church (or the mosque, the synagogue and the temple) and its activities, like going to a bar or a gym, is one ritual that places like these offer to help with a crushing insignificant life that repeats itself like “Groundhog Day” (1993).
If cities like Winnipeg represent development I hope all the emerging economies will think again. They should come to these places and do a sociological and psychological study of what these kind of “concrete buildings that block the minds” does to people's body and soul. If this is America's contribution to Canada should not Canada say, “No thank you!”?
Or, is it something else? Is Winnipeg unique to Canada? After all Canada has some of the most attractive cities in North America. San Francisco, near where I lived in the Bay Area for years, was often referred to as “the most European or Canadian city in the United States” - hence the most beautiful.
While some cities eject people emotionally and socially, some cities, no matter how challenging it gets economically and physically, continues to attract people. Winnipeg may eject, Toronto attracts!
One city girl noted, “I have seen it all! But I always come back to this 20th floor apartment, to this high rise, to this crowded neighborhood...to this big throbbing city. Where am I going to go...when so much outside this city, or any city, continues to be provincial, insular, homogenous, backward or narrow?”
Toronto is far from provincial, insular, homogenous, backward or narrow! It is a quintessential 20th century city that has grown elegantly, and has now become a 21st century international city.
If cities can trap people, or turn them into people with small lives - who obsess about trivialities, cities can sometimes be the only sanctuary for many minorities and immigrants. While Toronto is home to almost half of Canada's minorities and immigrants, there are only three major cities in Canada where 80 percent of non-Anglo Canadians and non-Canadians live. Minorities and immigrant Canadians call it the TMV restriction – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
(Winnipeg is too far from the coast, too unattractive and too provincial for many professional immigrants and minorities to settle into. Like Iowa and Nebraskain the United States, Winnipeg has mostly Laotian, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees - who were settled in the prairies. Calgary and Edmonton in the province of Alberta are growing, and it is drawing more Canadians, but TMV zone is still where the action is).
Several Canadian cousins of mine admit that, even as doctors and engineers with great education and qualification, they'd be competing with hundred other well qualified or over-qualified candidates in the TMV zone. On the other hand just a hundred miles outside these cities they'd have hundred jobs waiting. While jobs are a number one priority for many new immigrants. and they are also likely to go anywhere for a green card and a citizenship, for the second generation and those with non-material priorities and dignity it is a different story. Minorities and immigrants who want life beyond a job, an income and affordable real estate ; have pride in their history and heritage ; and look for a community that is also emotionally and socially satisfying might prefer the city. As minorities and immigrants they might feel safer and better understood in the city - or even a particular neighborhood in a city. Outside that city: understanding, acceptance, inclusion and integration might be hard to find.
This cultural, social and economic division, or demarcation, between urban and rural environments of North America, one with much of the diversity and the other with almost none, creates some unique challenges for minorities and immigrants. While officially we have the choice to go anywhere and live in any place...emotionally and socially we may not find too many places attractive or socially safe. Pragmatic Americans, racist Americans, Anglo Americans and clueless Americans do not understand this dilemma. They do not understand how minorities, immigrants and people of color might feel emotionally unsafe and socially unwelcome in many places outside cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities of North America.
Some people will never understand what it is to walk around, as a woman of color, freely and safely on the busy streets of Toronto or NYC (New York city). Try doing this in Iowa and Nebraska – where seeing a person walking outside, in stead of bea ing in car, itself is a rarity. One can officially walk anywhere...but there is a difference in doing so with cultural acceptance, social nonchalance and emotional freedom versus not! Most of us would prefer the former. This is where cities remain socially attractive and emotionally safe for many immigrants, minorities, people of color and even some liberals and progressives.
In cities like Toronto there are many ways to be Canadian, American, Korean, Chinese, Indian, British, Irish, Danish, Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Liberal, Progressive, Colored, non-Colored, Socialist, Capitalist....there are many ways to be “you” and many ways to “become”.
In small town USA there are so few people of color you either have to fit into a box so the Anglo majority can better understand you or accept you, or you need to assimilate fast so you would not be treated with suspicion - possibly as a terrorist. Provincialism combined with the protocols of post-Sept 11 propaganda has made life in many suburbs and rural areas of America unbearable. While I admire the pragmatism and resilience of some immigrants and minorities in many non-city towns across America, I do fear they have compromised too much and live cloistered lives (that rarely connect beyond family, work, church or synagogue, some cultural and social activities...and a comfort zone that gets narrow and insular over time).
Canada, unlike the United States, did not expect assimilation (into an Anglo culture) from its immigrants and minorities, and it had an official policy that encouraged multiculturalism rather than a singular national identity. It shows in the quiet confidence of Canadians of all ethnicity and races. They proudly, without the cockiness Americans continuously put out, say, “I am Korean and I am Canadian”, “I am Australian and I am Canadian”, “I am Sri Lankan and I am Canadian”, “I am Jamaican, but not Canadian but love living here!”
This diversity in identity and acceptance of multiple-selves makes Canadian cities attractive, comfortable and appealing. I was not surprised to hear so many minorities and immigrants in Toronto, friendly and nice, stating, “I love living here. It might get hard economically sometimes, but madam I will not live anywhere else!” I envied that so much! I have been to over forty-five States in the US, except for may be two I don't think I wanted to live in any of them. I, unlike so many, did live in places that many Anglo Americans themselves avoid, but it was never emotionally attractive...it was not even emotionally safe. I said to a total stranger on a bus to Toronto Pearson airport, when he asked me how I liked living in the Midwest, “I am sorry but I do not feel emotionally safe there and socially comfortable there! Do you understand?” In one nod he conveyed understanding and acceptance. I do not get that kind of nod with all the blabbing I do in Iowa and Florida.
And for some reason White people in these neighborhoods, and their body language, makes me nervous and scared. I am always, after my awful Florida experience where I was nearly shot (while suffering from a second degree burn), fear many White men, and some White women, and walk with care around them. I feel if I am not friendly, or stretch my smile, they are going to kill me and dump my body somewhere. To feel that way - in 21st century America after 22 years in America - tells you a lot about America!
My husband struggles to make things better for me, but like many California liberal he is sometimes as confused, conflicted, afraid and angry about many things outside his State as I am. One guy jokingly noted, “You've been around too many nice good accepting caring people for too long. Being around red necks and ignoramuses might help you get tough!” If this is the way to get tough I suggest some red necks get human. I do not want to be around such people or be constantly hurt and humiliated by them. It consumes too much energy and talent. It also wastes talents like mine.
I once wrote a song to America and it goes like this, “America...you could have been a lot nicer and kinder to me. You could have been a lot kinder and nicer to your Black and Brown children. You could have been a bit more understanding to me. You could have shared and cared more. You could have shown more sensitivity and support. I did not leave you physically, but you made me leave emotionally. I could not take your battering...constant, continuous and cruel! She sang 'Don't cry for me Argentina!' I cry, 'Do cry for me world...I am a smart strong brown woman in a country called America!' Thanks goodness there are 192 other countries in the United States. Hopefully not all are trying to imitate, mimic and become this America! America...you could have been a lot kinder and nicer to me!” It is supposed to be sung as Blues.
Toronto made me energized and hopeful in ways that I had not felt in many years. The open Meera, the smiling Meera, the funny Meera, the fun Meera, the trusting Meera, the confidently chatty Meera (not the nervous kind that I became in Florida and Iowa)...came out! It has been a long time since I felt reluctant to leave a place. I wanted to postpone my departure by another week. I did not want to get on the plane to the US – deal with the rude, incompetent, mean, careless, callous people on the other side of the border. And with guns everywhere you cannot even tell an American jerk that he is a jerk anymore. There is something sad and unfortunate when in the 21st century world choices of likeable and attractive places to live, where educated professional women of color like me feel emotionally safe, socially understood and culturally accepted, still remain limited. Sad indeed!
When battered women talked about their feelings and experiences in a shelter, during a research interview many years ago, I did not always understand the nuances about what they were saying – especially the feelings of entrapment, suffocation and overwhelming fear. But I felt it, quite intensely, living and traveling in many parts of the South and the Midwest – among provincial, insular, ignorant and prejudiced people, many of whom were not afraid to spew out their hateful opinions, get aggressive and antagonistic and pull out their guns to intimidate if they could. America can be both physically and emotionally dangerous for people like me.
Somebody once said to me, “There is something shameful to the fact that women like you are struggling to survive, let alone succeed in the US”. If you speak this truth, mainstream America hates you for being so critical, blunt and open. I said to someone, “I cannot put on my happy face all the time and entertain you! I am not here to do that for your comfort, convenience and to protect your illusions. Wake up immigrants and minorities - see the truth about the country to which you have sworn your allegiance. Grow up America – accept the dirty truth about your own past, present and a possible future if you don't change!”
This is what I disliked about my family's visit a year ago. I was angry at them for not understanding what I was seeing and sharing, supporting me for what I encountered and backing me up. They seemed to have lost the sensitivity and the kindness that I had once received from them as “a single woman, an immigrant, a person of color and a struggling academic”. I am lucky that I was not born in this country, and my parents were generally protective and good towards me. If I had been born in the US and grew up alone among the red necks of America I would have become just another poor single colored mother in a project, a depressed menial manual worker or a selfish narcissistic second generation Asian princess! White people do that to you!
This may explain why, even as life gets economically, physically and socially hard in many cities, it continues to attract people...and keep those who are already there - in spite of their whining, exhaustion, challenges and complaints. Of course some cities are far better than others. Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles...to name a few, are cities people are happy to get out of, and do so when better opportunities open up. Cities like Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, etc. are hard to leave – and everybody wants to be there!
But cities have their attractions. When you want to be free, have an adventure, be yourself, hang out with friends, with strangers or just hang out...it is to a city you go to. When you want nice food, nice ambiance, nice music, nice theater, nice drink, good bookstores, good conversation...one generally goes to a downtown in a city. One does not go to Cedar Rapids, Iowa or Winnipeg, Manitoba...no matter how long relaxing and green the in-between to these places look like.
Why?
Because much of living – not just livelihood – was created by “civilizations”...not White men with a penchant for buying, selling, marketing and inserting themselves into the middle to “make a profit” out of everything....everything!
This is why Western societies created opportunities for the economically desperate, disenfranchised, needy, greedy and the economically minded...it does not provide for people “happiness, inner security or spiritual opportunity”. That is either left to your individual self – which is bizarre, as, like economic welfare, spiritual welfare also requires a conducive social and political system. Or, in these places everything else besides the economics of life is considered unworthy.
Countries like America destroys people like me...who are not in this country for money, freedom or prosperity. I came to the US from a comfortable middle class family from a democratic society that happened to be a poor country – struggling to get ahead. I came with a spirit of openness, curiosity and love. I came with a lot of naivete, youthful vigor and a dare too...to “be my own woman” - away from a patriarchal society that I deemed to be stifling and restrictive.
Yet, what I found in America was far more stifling, restrictive and hurtful. There were limits, I learned, to how far one can go as a woman, a person of color...particularly as a woman of color. If one shares this openly one is deemed “wrong, ungrateful and not-using-one's-opportunities-enough”.
They still talk – converse as they would say in the civilized parts of the world – and share in Canadian trains. That to me is the fun part of any train travel anywhere: scenery in slower (than car) motion and fast conversations with strangers. I have to hand it to the Canadians, Australians and the French – they are not afraid to talk about the three things Americans consider a taboo: religion, politics and personal opinions. (Latter is no longer personal in the US, it is just opinions spewing out propaganda). Yet the United States, ironically, is the most religious, politically polarized and opinionated country in the world.
The older generation of Canadians have all the good and the not-so-good aspect of Canada: they are less aggressive or demanding than Americans and they are more polite and courteous than their younger generation. But, they are more racist and ethnocentric than they'd like to admit. They all claim they love Obama, but you know they would never vote for a Haitian or Jamaican Canadian if one ran in their communities. Many Canadians who criticize Conservatives did vote for the same racial and ethnocentric reasons as those Americans who would vote for Huckabee or Sarah Palin. Canadians continue to be, in hypocritical ways, a bit “too” critical of America (with that old European condescension that begins with “Why do you Americans....?” - which annoys me greatly.
The younger generation of Canadians are surprisingly more Americanized than what I knew of them, While some of them are more universal than most in their country or in America, most of them have a body language and demeanor that is shockingly distinctly American. If globalization is Americanization one can see it acutely in Canada. Even the Canadian accent that used to differentiate Canadians from Americans has pretty much disappeared, And most bi-lingual Canadians have disappeared. There are more red neck Canadians who actually spew out their passionate dislike of the Arcadian French whom they consider as betraying the old “empire of Canada” or “loyalists of England”. In many parts of Canada, including Vancouver (that I visited few years ago) and Toronto (that I am visiting now), I have to pinch myself to remember that I am actually in Canada.
Extension of this cultural Americanization of Canada is the growing conservatization of Canadian politics. More and more towns and cities of Canada vote “conservative” today than ever before: because of aging Whites, growing political power of the business elites and immigrants from conservatives societies of the world. This story has not been fully told to the global community. There is a myth that Canadians are the gentler, softer, and more humanistic younger brother, or better version, of America. That never was, and this is becoming more apparent. Even the few Canadians who were liberal, humanistic and more muted in their politics are now...conservative. The Nation had an article about the the growing Israeli influence in Canadian foreign policies, as the tide in the US changes with regard to “wars, the Middle East and excessive one sided commitment to one or two issues in the region and the world”.
Somebody asked, “What would Canadians be and believe in if they did not have America to constantly compare themselves with, criticize or kick around socially and culturally?
I don't believe people have to be rigid, strict or narrow in their beliefs to have “an identity”...but I do believe a perpetually reactive identity does not build a truly independent critical identity. Like Ireland (was with England) Canada is far more colonized (by America) than it wishes to admit, and it is more so culturally and socially than Ireland ever was. The Irish had their “language, their music, their folklore and their paganism”. Canadians killed or segregated their Indians, natives, and put their culture in “museums and galleries” with pride. It is amazing how many Whites, who are conservative, will show up to correct my use of the word “Indian or Native or Nation” (terms used often in the US), while their attitudes or actions towards immigrants, people of color and Aborigines themselves is appalling. Unfortunately people who are taken in by words and presentations, more so than actions and policies, fall for this Canadian “demeanor”.
As a blogger noted, “If Americans can put their own kinds behind prison without proper legal process or acquit the guilty because of 'racism or jury bias', why would they not do this to 'immigrants and outsiders' in a more daring manner?”
This may also explain why immigrants have become more conservative. A Dutch immigrant colleague once said, “Meera, I watch, as a social worker, what happens to many Americans when they drop out of school, get pregnant as teenagers and try drugs even as an experiment. If it gets this bad for people who are Americans and are part of the 'system'...imagine what would happen to my daughter as an immigrant or a child of an immigrant? She'd be in the gutter before I can say the word. This is why I push her to lead a strict life...more so than what I would demand in my former country of Netherlands”.
Interesting way to see “immigrants, or rather fear of failing that consumes many immigrants in a highly judgmental exploitative oppressive mainstream society, and conservatism”. Was not Western societies supposed to “free, liberate and democratize”? In stead they are going down, reversing and narrowing in their ways.
As my aunt noted, “If you are from Sudan, where there is no running water or flushing toilet, America must seem like paradise. If you are from Saudi Arabia where you, as a woman, cannot vote or drive a car America must seem like heaven. If you are from small village in Vietnam or Mexico where social stratification and economic oppression forces you to migrate America must seem like heaven”.
As a comedian replied, “Unfortunately that is what elites and some conservative Whites love. That perpetual gratitude, conformity, compliance and subservience from those who are awed by America!”
It is like what a Jewish liberal Berkeley faculty once noted. He said, “My parents and grandparents expected complete devotion to everything American from me - especially its military, the Pentagon and the CIA, for what it achieved in World War II, in saving Jewish lives. I am expected to remain devoted to every American foreign policy that comes out of Washington that serves Jewish interests and American conservative interests. Anything less is seen as betrayal – non-American, unpatriotic or anti-Semitic”.
Canada is a beautiful country: geographically, topographically and geologically. Yet this beauty might be affected by a growing interest and investments by the oil industry that is penetrating more and more into pristine and remote parts of Canada to establish its American-Canadian energy independence and ever increasing consumption.
These oil guys are everywhere and are fairly an enterprising bunch, and they are sent by their company bosses to go “forth and promote” - much like the old Christian evangelical command to “go forth and procreate or propagate”.
The new “in” State, or Province as Canadians call them, is “Alberta”. I don't know why everybody is going there, and why everybody is visiting it. It could be a coincidence, or it is, as some newspapers claim, drawing more business, more conservative Canadians, old retirees (with money or pensions) and those who are sick and tired of the tri-cities of TMV – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Like the US it is the Anglo who move to the suburbs, to the country sides and to all the places in-between TMV. One can see the big difference between Winnipeg, which is still a working class city with chunks of neighborhoods that are foreboding, religious, soulless and struggling to define itself, with some of the most friendly people...hence the words on their license plate “Friendly Manitoba”.
As one arrives at the Union Station of Toronto one is struck by how diverse parts of Canada are and how brown Canada has become. But like the US Canada's diversity and dynamism remains in its cities. And unlike the US Canada has one hundredth the cities of America. As a Canadian doctor cousin stated, “What do you have – other than TMV. Outside these three cities Canada is empty or full of aging White people or just 'White people' with a few Natives thrown in! For every job in Toronto that attracts hundreds of overqualified applicants, there are hundreds of jobs in these in-between places that remain unfilled.”
What does this say about immigrants and Anglo Canadians? One is reluctant, hesitant or afraid to move out of their comfort zones and/or assimilate, and the other is ambivalent, hesitant or outright reluctant to accept and integrate others. That is not a credit to Canada. “So Canada, stop being so snobbish or critical towards the United States! Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?”
Immigration to Canada, which is harder and harsher than the US, has two faces. One is the face of a proud immigrant or a Brown/Black Canadian who knows the difference between national pride, ethnic pride and individual pride, and converges or combines them in ways that are admirable (for us sociologists and psychologists). Then there are those who go from feudal patriarchy or hierarchy, in the name of culture, to a new colonial servitude, excessive immigrant accommodation or reactive conservatism.
I would love to meet minorities or immigrants like myself. I rarely meet them on my journeys. Maybe because they are busy working to survive or succeed...or they keep to themselves and their small peers and friends. I rarely see an immigrant or a person of color with the kind of “dare, defiance, independence, thoughtful pride and critical thinking” that shows “a decolonized mind”. In stead I see excessively Anglicized immigrants and minorities (including a lot of ex-peasant Punjabis with names like Bobby and Peter), or excessively provincial feudal immigrants and minorities whose perspectives on culture is defined by 15th century feudalism and patriarchy. There is not much of a “balance or balanced change” in this kind of rigid-identity or no-identity”. And it is years away from a “real individuality and independence” from a colonial mindset and past influences.
One lesbian woman in California said to me years ago, “There are too many among immigrants and minorities whose sexuality itself is defined by the world they live in or try to assimilate into - rather than an innate sense of self or knowing that directs most Anglos. They become like the world around them to 'please, placate and belong'. They are heterosexuals because they are surrounded by them, or they become homosexuals because they are surrounded by them. They are Americanized in one way because they are surrounded by them, or they are Canadian conservatives because they are surrounded by them. They do not seem to have their own identity or their own self.”
Yes, my Brown and Black friends...that is what slavery, indentured servitude, racism and colonialism does! It takes away not just your sense-of-self, but “self” itself...and does so for centuries. So few see the subtle ways in which colonialism and imperialism operate.
This is why I like those who are not awed by places like Canada or the US, and remain firm in their convictions (an I have certainly in mine - though many keep trying to set me up, or attack me, in cunning ways). Lot of the world, overwhelmed by feudalism and colonialism, has drunk the American Kool-Aid. And nobody has done it better than “Canada”.
As somebody said, “If after twenty-two years you have to explain to your neighbors over and over again who you are and how you got to be there - so they will not suspect you of something heinous...or, you have to start your sentences with people in your own country of residence with, 'No, I am an American though I do not look like you, have a name like you or sound like you'...or, you have to start at the bottom every time you leave a city or a State...one would probably come to the conclusion that there is not much diversity, inclusion, integration or even care for integration outside a fifty mile radius”.
Canada is no different...so lets not kid ourselves that it is very different than the US as Michael Moore likes to assume. He might want to do a film on how Canada is becoming more Conservative...and why? And it is not always the immigrant fault – as some Canadians assume. Many immigrants cannot vote and many who can do not...or they have been well conditioned by Conservative propaganda. Some of the older Canadians are far more insidiously red neck than Americans, and there is a segment of younger generation who are more Anglocentric than Americans. Some Canadians go from London to Toronto to Sydney and falsely consider themselves “international”. Some of them go to New York city and think they know America. Some of them spew out the same “anti American opinion they spewed out thirty years ago”. Some of them love, secretively, Virginia, South Carolina and Alabama.
While Americans are more than happy, like Limbaugh and O'Reiley, to spew out their biases, prejudices and even hatred of liberals, other cultures and countries, Canadians remain muted and hard to read...which is even more worrisome sometimes. They can be “politely and courteously racist and prejudiced”. And such racism and prejudice jolts you by surprise when you bump into polite people with bizarre beliefs, or racist beliefs, on trains and in places like Toronto. The reprieve were the few faculty I met on the train - who were opinionated but in an intelligent way, and immigrants who are not afraid to talk. And why do I keep feeling that I am being followed around? Is it fear of the truth about all countries coming out, or fear of the new assertive Brown woman who is not congenial enough, or kowtowing enough, for their comfort?
Speak up Canada! How do I know who you really are...if you merely keep quiet, are pretentiously polite or follow America around like a beaten dog while you spew out your muted anti-Americanism?
What is that, eh? I can see you Canada, but I still cannot feel or hear you!
MS
Traveling from Winnipeg to Toronto via Minnesota and North Dakota: A slice of America and Canada in 2011
We drove from Iowa to Canada via Minnesota and North Dakota – with miles and miles of prairie that marries a vast pale blue sky to an infinite carpet of short grass. I've driven through South Dakota before – a day and a night. The summer nights around there are remarkable - especially when there is no clouds or haze. On such clear nights one could touch the Milky Way and hear the coyotes. (On one such drive-through South Dakota I considered sleeping in my car for a night - with the hope that I might get picked up by a kind trucker when if I ran out of gas, and the prairie before me ran out of gas stations.
If only twenty percent of the land in Iowa is untouched by big agribusiness, only a small segment of Minnesota and North Dakota are free from mono-crops (for cattle) and cattle (for food). Even today in much of the northern upper Midwest it is hard to tell the difference between the short unnatural soy plants from the short natural grass weeds.
Lot of the prairie, no matter how boring, homogenous and lackluster at first, can be fascinating under the varying intensity of natural light that can reflect many subtle shades of natural colors. And the infinite sky of the flat lands offers an amazing opportunity to gaze into beautiful long summer twilight or the bright Milky Way in ways that are not possible elsewhere. The prairie landscape and the sky can be a painter's delight. Whatever unease on might experience in such a vast desolate place vanishes when one is in a 13th floor (I am not superstitious about the number 13) comfortable hotel room looking out into an orange-pink dusk, up into a star studded sky or at an oncoming storm. Life looks pretty – almost ethereal!
But like so many places that are naturally unique – beautiful or not, these are places one can travel through, visit or spend a short time in (sometimes to say “I've been there” or “I've done that”)...but to live there? It takes a special kind of history, resilience, character or circumstances to go to these places by choice and stay there. Most people of the upper Midwest were born there, and might even be stuck there.
The long winters, the bitter cold of its winters and the stripping winds of its cold contribute to a quiet live-let-live attitude, a rugged self, a reserved nature and a brooding mind in the upper Midwest. You will get the poet, the novelist, the story-teller (some with a special penchant for ware wolves and ghosts), the folk singer, the painter, the sculptor, the serious family man, the loner, the proud working class worker and the crazies. As someone said, “Around here you get the ultra good human being who is likely to be misunderstood, or the ultra crazy lunatic who is also likely to be misunderstood. There is no in-between!”
The Lakotas, the proud first people of Minnesota and the Dakotas (that takes its name from these Natives), were mostly killed, and the few who were left behind were pushed into the “badlands” - now called reservations. Their language was used to name streets, towns and cities, and their clothes, art work and heritage were used to fill museums. Such is the sad story of those who were brutalized, colonized, killed or converted by the White man. And nobody did it better than the Anglo American.
Yet, when the White man turns on his own kind “to fight for others' rights or demand justice” he also does it better than most. One sees this in the way Anglo Canadians have fought for their first people...so they are not thrown into reservations and dumped with junk food and alcohol to slowly wither away - as they did in the United States of America.
One can also see the positive dimension of the Anglo “fighting spirit” in the way liberal and caring Anglo Americans are refusing to let the conservatives and religious nuts in their country win. And that fight, my friend, is getting harder and nastier.
The unique history and topography of the upper Midwest has birthed some strong libertarians who believe in living free, independently and by letting others do the same. Politically some of these libertarians can be bold, brave or intelligently independent...culturally and socially some are odd, crazy, insane and outright nuts.
Weather, like the temperamental woman or man, in the prairie can change rapidly. From a perfect sunny morning to a hazy cloudy afternoon, from a long colorful twilight to a pitch black star studded night, and from a short bright early dawn to a severe thunder storm that flash intense lightnings and cause flash floods...all in one day.
Mark, my partner, drove happily through these prairies. He is a car man, and long flat surfaces with long flat roads offer a great opportunity for men like him to turn on (the engine) and tune off the mind.
We drove: talking, pointing things out, arguing, laughing, fantasizing, crying, criticizing, in bad silence, in good silence, singing, sleeping, listening to Pink Floyd, getting high on classic rock, getting mellow to smooth jazz, getting satisfaction with Handel and Bach and sashaying to Keisha (or is it Kiesha) singing Tik-Tok, stop the clock, don't make the party stop...all the way to Winnipeg! Yes the one in Manitoba, Canada.
Winnipeg reminded me of the dark despondent documentary “My Winnipeg”. It was about a working class Catholic gay man struggling with his religious upbringing, his working class family and a cramped or cramping city. Though I watched this documentary several years ago in more-than-sunny Florida I remember there were many slutty Catholic girls in the film (according to the gay documentarian- who appeared a bit too judgmental) while the eternal prairie snow blew, blew and blew. The film was dark, foreboding and depressing. It was about a struggling man trapped in a religious family in a non-spiritual soulless city.
When we landed in Winnipeg it looked “working class” alright...with miles and miles of fast food joints and strip malls, interjected by Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants advertising their culinary delight in cheap neon lights. It did not look pretentious like certain suburbs of Los Angeles, or sleazy like some boroughs of New York city. It looked exactly like what the author had noted: soulless!
This is what used to be the urban landscape of American development: soulless! It is Canadian working class urban landscape too. At least in Fargo (North Dakota) there was a downtown fair with food, music and art. There were kids smoking and reciting poetry. There was crappy cuisine that passed for experimental. There was kitsch paintings and sculptors that were not half bad. In fact I liked some of the garden art made from oxidized metals, painted glass bulbs and colored stones that I almost bought one...until Mark reminded me that we'd have little space for our luggage in the car if we got one. There was some attractive jewelry made from marble and other polished stones.
Winnipeg, on the other hand, was a big city - fourth largest in Canada. The running joke was that it was trying to pass off as the Vancouver of Central Canada or the Toronto of the West. Obviously it is not working. We had a hard time finding its downtown that we ended up staying at a nice clean Holiday Inn in the mall area. While we enjoyed the dim-sum brunch at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, and a visit to their well maintained museum (whose Ojibwa and Cree nation biographies were very good), we spent our time doing what most residents try doing: trying to get out. While the museum people's niceness and helpfulness was sweet and admirable, Winnipeg needed to come up with a unique theme of its own to “re-develop itself or de-construct its old self”.
So I made a spontaneous decision to take the train to Vancouver, Churchill or Toronto. Mark decided to return as he had job interviews lined up...and Eastern Iowa looked a lot more beautiful, attractive and fun compared to Winnipeg.
The railway agent sold me Toronto. I'd spend two nights on a Canadian train – which is not too long, enjoy a panoramic view of Manitoba and Ontario, eat decent food with wine in a nice dining car...and meet tourists from all over the world traversing Canada - like me. All for less than $550. Could anyone ask for more? I took it. Mark dropped me off at the Winnipeg downtown railway station (which was impressive) at the unseemly hour of 11:00 pm, and we parted like old lovers who were going to see each other only “same time, next year” (from the title of one of my favorite movies with Alan Alda).
Night trains, unlike planes, make me melancholic. Maybe this is the reason why Duke Ellington tried to make his “Night Train” (a.k.a Happy Go Lucky Local) so lively.
As I said goodbye to Winnipeg, knowing “I had been there and done that” and “not again for awhile”, I was reminded of other working class cities: Valencia in Spain, Detroit in the US, Jamshedpur in India and Saint John in New Brunswick of Maritime Provinces of Canada. Miles of drab buildings and strip malls - with plenty of for-profit chain-corporations (that offer junk food, junk drinks and junk entertainment) particularly in the US. I have nothing against Western, Westernized or Western-made working class cities. I sometimes enjoy their ruggedness, grittiness and earthy realness – particularly the working class parts of Chicago and New York city. It is what industrial working class life has done to the minds of its people – its workers and their families, that I abhor. People in these places end up with sad hollow eyes with a face that becomes “one of the masses”. They work in mindless jobs or mind-numbing tasks, and then go to bars to drink their sadness away or to their televisions to tune out their “worthless day and meaningless lives”.
In these places it helps if one does not “think too much” or “aspire too much”. In these places there is only two ways to be political: you are mindlessly apolitical – doing your job, doing what you are told and doing whatever is necessary for your economic survival, or you are passionately anarchistic – hating everything including yourself! It is from these environments, constructed by mediocre or meaningless lives that Kafka developed his characters of a human “vermin”. As one of his characters, a man turned into an insignificant coolie-worker cockroach that people quash and can squash, muses, “a life where there is eternal dread of night and dread of not-night”. This is what entrapment or soullessness must feel like.
People in these places deal with entrapment mostly in one way: with the psychology of “doing” - where you keep busy with work, survive or manage by focusing on your livelihood and find reprieve through rituals (or traditions). The church (or the mosque, the synagogue and the temple) and its activities, like going to a bar or a gym, is one ritual that places like these offer to help with a crushing insignificant life that repeats itself like “Groundhog's Day”.
As one macho man, with a puny body, in Iowa, noted sarcastically when I asked whether his wife was in town, “Where she gonna go?” I wanted to retort, “Where did you go? What did you become?” It helps in countries like the US to have copious number of congenial grateful immigrants with a “chirpy attitude” and a “hopeful dream” so the system can continue, and the good ole boys can continue with their power, privilege and wealth.
If cities like Winnipeg represent development I hope all the emerging economies will think again. They should come to these places and do a sociological and psychological study of what this kind of “concrete buildings with blocking of the minds” does to people's body and soul. If this is America's contribution to Canada should not Canada say, “No thank you!”?
Or, is it something else? After all Canada has some of the most attractive cities in North America. San Francisco, near where I lived in the Bay Area for years, was often referred to as “the most European or Canadian city in the United States” - hence the most beautiful. While some cities eject people emotionally and socially, some cities, no matter how challenging it gets economically and physically, continues to attract people.
As one city girl noted, “I have seen it all! But I always come back to this 20th floor apartment, to this high rise, to this crowded neighborhood...to this big throbbing city. Where am I going to go...when so much outside this city, or any city, continues to be provincial, insular, homogenous, backward or narrow?”
If cities can trap people, or turn them into people with a small life – one of the masses, it can also be the only sanctuary for many minorities and immigrants. Canadian immigrants, minorities and people of color in that regard are worse off than the US. There are only three cities in Canada, that is not only a home to fifty percent of Canadians, where 80 percent of non-Anglo Canadians and non-Canadians live. Minority and immigrant Canadians call it the TMV restriction – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
(Winnipeg is too far from the coast, too unattractive and too provincial for many professional immigrants and minorities to settle into. Like the Iowa and Nebraska of the United States, Winnipeg has mostly Laotian, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees who were settled in the prairies. Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta is growing, and it is drawing more Canadians I hear – including immigrants and minorities. They are likely to be added to the TMV zone soon).
Several Canadian cousins of mine admit that, even as doctors and engineers with a great education and qualification, they'd be competing with hundred other well qualified or over-qualified candidates in the TMV zone, while hundred miles outside these cities they'd have hundred jobs waiting. While jobs are a number one priority for many new immigrants and they are likely to go anywhere for one, or for a green card and a citizenship, for the second generation and those with non-material priorities and dignity it is a different story.
This cultural, social and economic division, or demarcation, between urban and rural environments of the North America creates some unique challenges for minorities and immigrants. While officially they have the choice to go anywhere and be anywhere...emotionally and socially they do not. Pragmatic Americans, racist Americans, Anglo Americans and clueless Americans do not understand this dilemma. They do not understand how women like me might feel emotionally unsafe and socially unwelcome in many places outside cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities of North America.
These are people who will not understand what it is to walk around, as a woman of color - just another person in a crowd, freely and safely on the busy streets of Toronto or NYC (New York city), versus doing so in some rural town of Nebraska or Iowa – where seeing a person walking outside, in stead of being in car, is a rarity.
In the cities there are many ways to be Canadian, American, Korean, Chinese, Indian, British, Irish, Danish, Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Liberal, Progressive, Colored, non-Colored, Socialist, Capitalist....there are many ways to be “you” and many ways to “become”.
In Iowa there are so few people of color you either have to fit into a box so the Anglo majority can better understand you or accept you, or you need to assimilate fast so you would not be treated with suspicion - possibly as a terrorist. Provincialism combined with the protocols of post-Sept 11 propaganda has made life in many suburbs and rural areas of America unbearable. While I admire the pragmatism and resilience of some immigrants and minorities in many non-city towns across America, I do fear they have compromised too much and live cloistered lives (that rarely connect beyond family, work, church or synagogue, few cultural and social activities...and a comfort zone that gets narrow and insular over time).
Canada, unlike the United States, did not expect assimilation (into an Anglo culture) from its immigrants and minorities, and it had an official policy that encouraged multiculturalism rather than a singular national identity. It shows in the quiet confidence of Canadians of all ethnicity and races. They proudly, without the cockiness Americans continuously put out, say, “I am Korean and I am Canadian”, “I am Australian and I am Canadian”, “I am Sri Lankan and I am Canadian”, “I am Jamaican, but not Canadian but love living here!”
This diversity in identity and acceptance of multiple-selves makes Canadian cities attractive, comfortable and appealing. I was not surprised to hear so many minorities and immigrants in Toronto, friendly and nice, stating, “I love living here. It might get hard economically sometimes, but madam I will not live anywhere else!” I envied that so much! I have been to over forty-five States in the US, except for may be two I don't think I wanted to live in any of them. I, unlike so many, did live in places that many Anglo Americans themselves avoid, but it was never emotionally attractive...it was not even emotionally safe. I said to a total stranger on a bus to Toronto Pearson airport, when he asked me how I liked living in the Midwest, “I am sorry but I do not feel emotionally safe there and socially comfortable there! Do you understand?” In one nod he conveyed understanding and acceptance. I do not get that kind of nod with all the blabbing I do in Iowa and Florida.
And for some reason White people in these neighborhoods, and their body language, makes me nervous and scared. I am always, after my awful Florida experience where I was nearly shot (while suffering from a second degree burn), fear many White men, and some White women, and walk with care around them. I feel if I am not friendly, or stretch my smile, they are going to kill me and dump my body somewhere. To feel that way - in 21st century America after 22 years in America - tells you a lot about America!
My husband struggles to make things better for me, but like many California liberal he is sometimes as confused, conflicted, afraid and angry about many things outside his State as I am. One guy jokingly noted, “You've been around too many nice good accepting caring people for too long. Being around red necks and ignoramuses might help you get tough!” If this is the way to get tough I suggest some red necks get human. I do not want to be around such people or be constantly hurt and humiliated by them. It consumes too much energy and talent. It also wastes talents like mine.
I once wrote a song to America and it goes like this, “America...you could have been a lot nicer and kinder to me. You could have been a lot kinder and nicer to your Black and Brown children. You could have been a bit more understanding to me. You could have shared and cared more. You could have shown more sensitivity and support. I did not leave you physically, but you made me leave emotionally. I could not take your battering...constant, continuous and cruel! She sang 'Don't cry for me Argentina!' I cry, 'Do cry for me world...I am a smart strong brown woman in a country called America!' Thanks goodness there are 192 other countries in the United States. Hopefully not all are trying to imitate, mimic and become this America! America...you could have been a lot kinder and nicer to me!” It is supposed to be sung as Blues.
Toronto made me energized and hopeful in ways that I had not felt in many years. The open Meera, the smiling Meera, the funny Meera, the fun Meera, the trusting Meera, the confidently chatty Meera (not the nervous kind that I became in Florida and Iowa)...came out! It has been a long time since I felt reluctant to leave a place. I wanted to postpone my departure by another week. I did not want to get on the plane to the US – deal with the rude, incompetent, mean, careless, callous people on the other side of the border. And with guns everywhere you cannot even tell an American jerk that he is a jerk anymore. There is something sad and unfortunate when in the 21st century world choices of likeable and attractive places to live, where educated professional women of color like me feel emotionally safe, socially understood and culturally accepted, still remain limited. Sad indeed!
When battered women talked about their feelings and experiences in a shelter, during a research interview many years ago, I did not always understand the nuances about what they were saying – especially the feelings of entrapment, suffocation and overwhelming fear. But I felt it, quite intensely, living and traveling in many parts of the South and the Midwest – among provincial, insular, ignorant and prejudiced people, many of whom were not afraid to spew out their hateful opinions, get aggressive and antagonistic and pull out their guns to intimidate if they could. America can be both physically and emotionally dangerous for people like me.
Somebody once said to me, “There is something shameful to the fact that women like you are struggling to survive, let alone succeed in the US”. If you speak this truth, mainstream America hates you for being so critical, blunt and open. I said to someone, “I cannot put on my happy face all the time and entertain you! I am not here to do that for your comfort, convenience and to protect your illusions. Wake up immigrants and minorities - see the truth about the country to which you have sworn your allegiance. Grow up America – accept the dirty truth about your own past, present and a possible future if you don't change!”
This is what I disliked about my family's visit a year ago. I was angry at them for not understanding what I was seeing and sharing, supporting me for what I encountered and backing me up. They seemed to have lost the sensitivity and the kindness that I had once received from them as “a single woman, an immigrant, a person of color and a struggling academic”. I am lucky that I was not born in this country, and my parents were generally protective and good towards me. If I had been born in the US and grew up alone among the red necks of America I would have become just another poor single colored mother in a project, a depressed menial manual worker or a selfish narcissistic second generation Asian princess! White people do that to you!
This may explain why, even as life gets economically, physically and socially hard in many cities, it continues to attract people...and keep those who are already there - in spite of their whining, exhaustion, challenges and complaints. Of course some cities are far better than others. Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles...to name a few, are cities people are happy to get out of, and do so when better opportunities open up. Cities like Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, etc. are hard to leave – and everybody wants to be there!
But cities have their attractions. When you want to be free, have an adventure, be yourself, hang out with friends, with strangers or just hang out...it is to a city you go to. When you want nice food, nice ambiance, nice music, nice theater, nice drink, good bookstores, good conversation...one generally goes to a downtown in a city. One does not go to Cedar Rapids, Iowa or Winnipeg, Manitoba...no matter how long relaxing and green the in-between to these places look like.
Why?
Because much of living – not just livelihood – was created by “civilizations”...not White men with a penchant for buying, selling, marketing and inserting themselves into the middle to “make a profit” out of everything....everything!
This is why Western societies created opportunities for the economically desperate, disenfranchised, needy, greedy and the economically minded...it does not provide for people “happiness, inner security or spiritual opportunity”. That is either left to your individual self – which is bizarre, as, like economic welfare, spiritual welfare also requires a conducive social and political system. Or, in these places everything else besides the economics of life is considered unworthy.
Countries like America destroys people like me...who are not in this country for money, freedom or prosperity. I came to the US from a comfortable middle class family from a democratic society that happened to be a poor country – struggling to get ahead. I came with a spirit of openness, curiosity and love. I came with a lot of naivete, youthful vigor and a dare too...to “be my own woman” - away from a patriarchal society that I deemed to be stifling and restrictive.
Yet, what I found in America was far more stifling, restrictive and hurtful. There were limits, I learned, to how far one can go as a woman, a person of color...particularly as a woman of color. If one shares this openly one is deemed “wrong, ungrateful and not-using-one's-opportunities-enough”.
They still talk – converse as they would say in the civilized parts of the world – and share in Canadian trains. That to me is the fun part of any train travel anywhere: scenery in slower (than car) motion and fast conversations with strangers. I have to hand it to the Canadians, Australians and the French – they are not afraid to talk about the three things Americans consider a taboo: religion, politics and personal opinions. (Latter is no longer personal in the US, it is just opinions spewing out propaganda). Yet the United States, ironically, is the most religious, politically polarized and opinionated country in the world.
The older generation of Canadians have all the good and the not-so-good aspect of Canada: they are less aggressive or demanding than Americans and they are more polite and courteous than their younger generation. But, they are more racist and ethnocentric than they'd like to admit. They all claim they love Obama, but you know they would never vote for a Haitian or Jamaican Canadian if one ran in their communities. Many Canadians who criticize Conservatives did vote for the same racial and ethnocentric reasons as those Americans who would vote for Huckabee or Sarah Palin. Canadians continue to be, in hypocritical ways, a bit “too” critical of America (with that old European condescension that begins with “Why do you Americans....?” - which annoys me greatly.
The younger generation of Canadians are surprisingly more Americanized than what I knew of them, While some of them are more universal than most in their country or in America, most of them have a body language and demeanor that is shockingly distinctly American. If globalization is Americanization one can see it acutely in Canada. Even the Canadian accent that used to differentiate Canadians from Americans has pretty much disappeared, And most bi-lingual Canadians have disappeared. There are more red neck Canadians who actually spew out their passionate dislike of the Arcadian French whom they consider as betraying the old “empire of Canada” or “loyalists of England”. In many parts of Canada, including Vancouver (that I visited few years ago) and Toronto (that I am visiting now), I have to pinch myself to remember that I am actually in Canada.
Extension of this cultural Americanization of Canada is the growing conservatization of Canadian politics. More and more towns and cities of Canada vote “conservative” today than ever before: because of aging Whites, growing political power of the business elites and immigrants from conservatives societies of the world. This story has not been fully told to the global community. There is a myth that Canadians are the gentler, softer, and more humanistic younger brother, or better version, of America. That never was, and this is becoming more apparent. Even the few Canadians who were liberal, humanistic and more muted in their politics are now...conservative. The Nation had an article about the the growing Israeli influence in Canadian foreign policies, as the tide in the US changes with regard to “wars, the Middle East and excessive one sided commitment to one or two issues in the region and the world”.
Somebody asked, “What would Canadians be and believe in if they did not have America to constantly compare themselves with, criticize or kick around socially and culturally?
I don't believe people have to be rigid, strict or narrow in their beliefs to have “an identity”...but I do believe a perpetually reactive identity does not build a truly independent critical identity. Like Ireland (was with England) Canada is far more colonized (by America) than it wishes to admit, and it is more so culturally and socially than Ireland ever was. The Irish had their “language, their music, their folklore and their paganism”. Canadians killed or segregated their Indians, natives, and put their culture in “museums and galleries” with pride. It is amazing how many Whites, who are conservative, will show up to correct my use of the word “Indian or Native or Nation” (terms used often in the US), while their attitudes or actions towards immigrants, people of color and Aborigines themselves is appalling. Unfortunately people who are taken in by words and presentations, more so than actions and policies, fall for this Canadian “demeanor”.
As a blogger noted, “If Americans can put their own kinds behind prison without proper legal process or acquit the guilty because of 'racism or jury bias', why would they not do this to 'immigrants and outsiders' in a more daring manner?”
This may also explain why immigrants have become more conservative. A Dutch immigrant colleague once said, “Meera, I watch, as a social worker, what happens to many Americans when they drop out of school, get pregnant as teenagers and try drugs even as an experiment. If it gets this bad for people who are Americans and are part of the 'system'...imagine what would happen to my daughter as an immigrant or a child of an immigrant? She'd be in the gutter before I can say the word. This is why I push her to lead a strict life...more so than what I would demand in my former country of Netherlands”.
Interesting way to see “immigrants, or rather fear of failing that consumes many immigrants in a highly judgmental exploitative oppressive mainstream society, and conservatism”. Was not Western societies supposed to “free, liberate and democratize”? In stead they are going down, reversing and narrowing in their ways.
As my aunt noted, “If you are from Sudan, where there is no running water or flushing toilet, America must seem like paradise. If you are from Saudi Arabia where you, as a woman, cannot vote or drive a car America must seem like heaven. If you are from small village in Vietnam or Mexico where social stratification and economic oppression forces you to migrate America must seem like heaven”.
As a comedian replied, “Unfortunately that is what elites and some conservative Whites love. That perpetual gratitude, conformity, compliance and subservience from those who are awed by America!”
It is like what a Jewish liberal Berkeley faculty once noted. He said, “My parents and grandparents expected complete devotion to everything American from me - especially its military, the Pentagon and the CIA, for what it achieved in World War II, in saving Jewish lives. I am expected to remain devoted to every American foreign policy that comes out of Washington that serves Jewish interests and American conservative interests. Anything less is seen as betrayal – non-American, unpatriotic or anti-Semitic”.
Canada is a beautiful country: geographically, topographically and geologically. Yet this beauty might be affected by a growing interest and investments by the oil industry that is penetrating more and more into pristine and remote parts of Canada to establish its American-Canadian energy independence and ever increasing consumption.
These oil guys are everywhere and are fairly an enterprising bunch, and they are sent by their company bosses to go “forth and promote” - much like the old Christian evangelical command to “go forth and procreate or propagate”.
The new “in” State, or Province as Canadians call them, is “Alberta”. I don't know why everybody is going there, and why everybody is visiting it. It could be a coincidence, or it is, as some newspapers claim, drawing more business, more conservative Canadians, old retirees (with money or pensions) and those who are sick and tired of the tri-cities of TMV – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Like the US it is the Anglo who move to the suburbs, to the country sides and to all the places in-between TMV. One can see the big difference between Winnipeg, which is still a working class city with chunks of neighborhoods that are foreboding, religious, soulless and struggling to define itself, with some of the most friendly people...hence the words on their license plate “Friendly Manitoba”.
As one arrives at the Union Station of Toronto one is struck by how diverse parts of Canada are and how brown Canada has become. But like the US Canada's diversity and dynamism remains in its cities. And unlike the US Canada has one hundredth the cities of America. As a Canadian doctor cousin stated, “What do you have – other than TMV. Outside these three cities Canada is empty or full of aging White people or just 'White people' with a few Natives thrown in! For every job in Toronto that attracts hundreds of overqualified applicants, there are hundreds of jobs in these in-between places that remain unfilled.”
What does this say about immigrants and Anglo Canadians? One is reluctant, hesitant or afraid to move out of their comfort zones and/or assimilate, and the other is ambivalent, hesitant or outright reluctant to accept and integrate others. That is not a credit to Canada. “So Canada, stop being so snobbish or critical towards the United States! Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?”
Immigration to Canada, which is harder and harsher than the US, has two faces. One is the face of a proud immigrant or a Brown/Black Canadian who knows the difference between national pride, ethnic pride and individual pride, and converges or combines them in ways that are admirable (for us sociologists and psychologists). Then there are those who go from feudal patriarchy or hierarchy, in the name of culture, to a new colonial servitude, excessive immigrant accommodation or reactive conservatism.
I would love to meet minorities or immigrants like myself. I rarely meet them on my journeys. Maybe because they are busy working to survive or succeed...or they keep to themselves and their small peers and friends. I rarely see an immigrant or a person of color with the kind of “dare, defiance, independence, thoughtful pride and critical thinking” that shows “a decolonized mind”. In stead I see excessively Anglicized immigrants and minorities (including a lot of ex-peasant Punjabis with names like Bobby and Peter), or excessively provincial feudal immigrants and minorities whose perspectives on culture is defined by 15th century feudalism and patriarchy. There is not much of a “balance or balanced change” in this kind of rigid-identity or no-identity”. And it is years away from a “real individuality and independence” from a colonial mindset and past influences.
One lesbian woman in California said to me years ago, “There are too many among immigrants and minorities whose sexuality itself is defined by the world they live in or try to assimilate into - rather than an innate sense of self or knowing that directs most Anglos. They become like the world around them to 'please, placate and belong'. They are heterosexuals because they are surrounded by them, or they become homosexuals because they are surrounded by them. They are Americanized in one way because they are surrounded by them, or they are Canadian conservatives because they are surrounded by them. They do not seem to have their own identity or their own self.”
Yes, my Brown and Black friends...that is what slavery, indentured servitude, racism and colonialism does! It takes away not just your sense-of-self, but “self” itself...and does so for centuries. So few see the subtle ways in which colonialism and imperialism operate.
This is why I like those who are not awed by places like Canada or the US, and remain firm in their convictions (an I have certainly in mine - though many keep trying to set me up, or attack me, in cunning ways). Lot of the world, overwhelmed by feudalism and colonialism, has drunk the American Kool-Aid. And nobody has done it better than “Canada”.
As somebody said, “If after twenty-two years you have to explain to your neighbors over and over again who you are and how you got to be there - so they will not suspect you of something heinous...or, you have to start your sentences with people in your own country of residence with, 'No, I am an American though I do not look like you, have a name like you or sound like you'...or, you have to start at the bottom every time you leave a city or a State...one would probably come to the conclusion that there is not much diversity, inclusion, integration or even care for integration outside a fifty mile radius”.
Canada is no different...so lets not kid ourselves that it is very different than the US as Michael Moore likes to assume. He might want to do a film on how Canada is becoming more Conservative...and why? And it is not always the immigrant fault – as some Canadians assume. Many immigrants cannot vote and many who can do not...or they have been well conditioned by Conservative propaganda. Some of the older Canadians are far more insidiously red neck than Americans, and there is a segment of younger generation who are more Anglocentric than Americans. Some Canadians go from London to Toronto to Sydney and falsely consider themselves “international”. Some of them go to New York city and think they know America. Some of them spew out the same “anti American opinion they spewed out thirty years ago”. Some of them love, secretively, Virginia, South Carolina and Alabama.
While Americans are more than happy, like Limbaugh and O'Reiley, to spew out their biases, prejudices and even hatred of liberals, other cultures and countries, Canadians remain muted and hard to read...which is even more worrisome sometimes. They can be “politely and courteously racist and prejudiced”. And such racism and prejudice jolts you by surprise when you bump into polite people with bizarre beliefs, or racist beliefs, on trains and in places like Toronto. The reprieve were the few faculty I met on the train - who were opinionated but in an intelligent way, and immigrants who are not afraid to talk. And why do I keep feeling that I am being followed around? Is it fear of the truth about all countries coming out, or fear of the new assertive Brown woman who is not congenial enough, or kowtowing enough, for their comfort?
Speak up Canada! How do I know who you really are...if you merely keep quiet, are pretentiously polite or follow America around like a beaten dog while you spew out your muted anti-Americanism?
What is that, eh? I can see you Canada, but I still cannot feel or hear you!
MS
