The culture must change
Writing by treason on Thursday, 29 of June , 2006 at 12:51 pm
My state prides itself on its unique culture. No matter what happens here, whether good or bad, it can be attributed to our culture. Drunk driving, litter, poverty, substandard education, crime, arson - whatever it is, we chalk it up to culture.
When did it become politically incorrect to criticize a culture? When did we decide that cultures are good and sacred, and we must cradle them in our hands - embrace them and hold them dear - as if they were half full canteens in the Sahara?
Look at our American culture. It’s changing all the time, for better or worse. What makes ours unique is that people can criticize it and demand that it change. Try that with someone else’s culture and you’re asking for trouble.
Fine. Bring it on. I look at the culture of the Italian immigrants who came here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My grandparents came here and I’m not sure my grandmother ever actually saw her new country. She did see a lot of the bedroom and kitchen from what I can gather. She died young, in the early part of the Great Depression, when my mother was just eight years old. My mother had nine siblings - actually there had been more, but they died in childhood. Brother Guido, the family surmised, probably had that Mediterranean blood disease. My grandmother was pregnant most of her life and suffered numerous miscarriages. And she cooked.
Today Italians are concerned because Italian women in Italy are just not breeding. The fear is that if Italian women continue to shun motherhood, the Italians will become extinct. Extinction dramatically changes a culture.
A few years ago a friend invited me to a tamale party. It’s a cultural thing. Tamales are extremely important in the Hispanic culture and friends and family members gather and make bushels of the things at holiday time. T was kind enough to print out a recipe that he pulled off the Internet, and I stopped at the store on my way to my friend’s grandmother’s house for ingredients. I met all the friends, cousins, and everyone else who squeezed into the house for this event.
I was the lone non-Hispanic. My fellow tamale makers were dubious: how can you make a tamale with onions, tomatoes, garlic, and shrimp? To make a long story shorter, I produced the finest tamales of the day and they were gobbled up by the one male significant other in the group. “These are definitely the best ones here,” he announced.
He was the only one eating tamales. The women who were making them did not stop their work to sample the product. My friend explained that when meals are served - by the women, of course - to the men, the men eat first and if there’s something left when the men have finished and moved on, then the women are allowed to eat. I stared at my friend who is young, college-educated, and owns her own home, and I was just about to say something when I remembered that my mother had mentioned that she never saw her mother eat. “She would cook all day, then serve my father and us kids, but she never sat down and ate with us.”
And speaking of food, one of the Filipino women in my class approached me about my dog. “I have a dog, too,” she said. “People in my country eat dogs.” I told her I knew that and I always thought it odd that a Filipino family could have a pet dog, yet keep another dog caged in the kitchen, force feed it rice until it was ready to burst, then serve it for dinner. “But I guess there are people on farms who have special attachments to animals that are considered livestock, and they still eat the animals they raise. Maybe it’s a similar thing.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not the same. Dogs are different. I love my dog.”
I smiled at her and said: “It’s because he’s a family member.”
“Yes, he is family. You don’t eat family.”
But that’s another one of those cultural things. I saw another cultural thing on my drive home today after my final exam. I won’t miss this commute every day because I see so many dead things on the road. One day a beautiful white pit bull who looked like my old Am Staff George; a raccoon (looked like my raccoon, but I must admit all raccoons look like my raccoon); a skunk; a cat; several birds; a few things so splattered I couldn’t identify them; and a porcupine.
The porcupine was there yesterday, too, nestled against the median on a busy boulevard. Today I was behind a vehicle in the far left lane that swerved deliberately to hit that dead porcupine. I always drive with my car windows down and today I regretted that. The porcupine exploded and quills flew everywhere; the smell was appalling.
I was incensed. It was another example of human behavior on display that made no sense to me. I complained to T, who said: “Oh, yeah. They do that. Don’t you remember Peter? Whenever I was in a car with him he’d swerve to hit something dead in the road.”
Whoa - did I miss the day we covered roadkill etiquette in class? I didn’t remember the swerve and flatten maneuver, thank goodness, probably because the only thing I do remember about being in a car with Peter was that he drove with the steering wheel in one hand, and a glass of bourbon on the rocks in the other. And that was the first and last time I got into a car with him.
Another cultural thing I suspect. And before anyone jumps to conclusions and says I’m attacking the Hispanics in our state, allow me to explain that Peter is the biggest WASP I’ve ever met. Well, WASC, actually. (Peter was raised Catholic.) I was talking, if you recall, about our state’s culture.
It’s one I’d like to see change. If it doesn’t, our state motto - the bane of our existence — will continue to be:
“Thank God for Louisiana and Mississippi!”
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