Category: America

despair

In the wake of the election, during protests and in discussions about the new political landscape, you often hear the notion that “we don’t have the luxury of despair”. This means that only those who aren’t affected by the new immigration laws, or lessened legal protection of diverse groups, can afford to despair. Despair becomes a sign of privilege. Those truly affected, on the other hand, know they will have to fight. No time to rest, no time to despair.

I experience despair.

You can argue that it’s because I am privileged. I am white, heterosexual, employed. I have a roof over my head, a car to drive, two passports. I can use gender neutral or gender designated bathrooms, no problem.

Or, I can tell you this:

I have two passports because I am a dual citizen. I am Swedish by birth, and American by choice. I became a US citizen in 2010. I received a certificate, a little flag, and a form letter signed by Barack Obama. For the past 6 and a half years I have felt increasingly American. I have become more and more comfortable thinking about myself as an American. I use “we” when I teach. I eat Peeps for Easter and I kind of like baseball.

I worked at a polling place on election day last year. The precinct where I worked voted around 70% democratic. The precinct where I live voted 80% democratic. But, we all know how it ended. Donald Trump was elected president.

And I find myself in a new situation. I don’t know where to turn. I see white friends in pictures from protests, defending “their” America. But I don’t identify with their America. Their America existed while I was still living in Sweden. Their high school memories live in a place I never knew. If we travel far enough back into their America we end up in a place where all I knew of America was negative: The Vietnam war, Nixon, and Harrisburg.

My America had a black president, and a black first lady. As a white immigrant I could fit into their definition of America, because their definition of America was an expanding, evolving, one. If I am to be defined by my skin color only I cannot be an American. I am lost.

the king and emperor

President-elect Donald Trump met with the Prime Minister of Japan in Trump Tower on Thursday Nov. 17. Commentators have focused on the fact that Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner were part of the meeting. Their presence would indicate a blurring of the line between Mr. Trump’s business interests and his job as the president of the United States.

Having seen the photos distributed by the Japanese guests (especially this one) something else bothers me. The picture of Ivanka, her father, and the Japanese group shows Ivanka sitting on one side of a coffee table, with the men lined up on the other side.

I think it’s pretty clear that the ideal Mr. Trump is trying to emulate is not that of president, but that of king. Writers have described his penthouse as “Versailles-like” and the whole thing is not a coincidence. The queen (Trump’s wife Melania) was absent from most of the election campaign, and she’s absent here. But Ivanka is there, blonde, pretty, and on display. The heiress, a princess.

Louis XIV was the French king who built the Versailles. Skip forward less than 100 years, and Louis XVI was killed during the French Revolution.

When I became an American citizen I learned that in the US no royal titles are given merit. They just don’t count. Having grown up in a modern monarchy (Sweden) I found this refreshing. The fact that the president-elect now tries to back-paddle a few hundred years is sickening. I hope no one is impressed by the gold and fancy fabrics. They don’t mean a thing.

the mystery of the mexican soda

I am a big fan of Jarritos, a Mexican soft drink. The bottles are pretty, the soda has real sugar instead of corn syrup, and, best of all, there is a pineapple flavored Jarritos.

My local Safeway carries Jarritos, but they rarely have any pineapple flavored ones. Safeway keeps the Jarritos on one of the bottom shelves in the non-white people food aisle, the aisle that has “Hispanic” food next to “Asian” food and the Kosher items.

The Target closest to my house also carry Jarritos. They too keep them among the Hispanic food.

Yesterday Dan and I were across town in the southeastern part of San Jose. We were in Target, and I remembered to look for the Jarritos. In the Hispanic aisle they were not. Instead, I found them among the soda, in the drinks aisle.

So, in neighborhoods where mostly white people live, Mexican soda is categorized as “Hispanic food”. In a neighborhood where more Mexicans shop, Mexican soda is a soft drink.

I can’t help thinking about what would happen if the Jarritos where to live next to the Pepsi in my uppity small town Safeway.

hello, 2015

Beginning the year with some social science research, this map summarizes data from the 2010 World Values Survey. At the bottom you have survival vs self expression values, and to the left traditional values vs secular-rational values. My country of origin, Sweden, appears extreme here, by itself up high in the right hand corner. What this means, is that when asked in the survey, Swedes score both secular-rational values and self-expression highly. When asked in the same survey, Americans score self-expression almost as highly, but at the same time their values are way more traditional than those of Swedes. When it comes to traditional values, the US is on par with Argentina, Poland, Turkey, Zambia, and Ireland. Uruguay, Vietnam, Croatia, Italy, and Spain are all less traditional than the US.  I think this is a good reminder, and something I tend to forget.

eh?

When I was still living in Sweden (in the 1990s, not that it matters), in the department where I worked there was an American grad student taking classes on some kind of visitor’s visa. She had a Swedish last name and Swedish ancestors. She felt at home in Sweden, and I think she’s still living there 20 years later.

As an American in Sweden she experienced cultural shock, of course.  There were things that irritated her, like the non-itemized phone bill. She couldn’t understand how you were supposed to pay a phone bill if you couldn’t check that the calls were actually made by you. (Never having seen an itemized phone bill I didn’t understand what made her so upset.) She struggled learning, and speaking, Swedish, and did pretty well. But as all immigrants know it was tiring for her to speak and hear a foreign language all day.

Out of desperation she had created a fantasy that has stayed with me. She said that she had moments when she felt it was all a game, and that if people only wanted they could just snap out of it, start speaking English, and be normal. She felt that the Swedish culture was like a veil covering the real world. A veil that could be lifted.

As a Swedish immigrant in the US I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that. Partly because in a way her fantasy was true, Swedish people do speak English for the most part. And American culture, not to mention pop culture, is an important part of Swedish culture. To some extent Swedes like to think of themselves as American. As an immigrant in the United States, on the other hand, I know I’m the one who has to learn, and adapt. Americans don’t speak Swedish and often don’t know the first thing about present day Scandinavian culture.

The north American reviews of Welcome To Sweden, currently on NBC in the United States, and broadcast earlier this year by TV4 in Sweden, have been mostly positive. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes of the series when I saw them this spring, mainly because Swedish Americans got to see what Americans look like to the Swedes, and what Swedes look like to Americans, at the same time. There were some funny bits, I thought.

Reviewers seem to agree that the premise of the show (a man leaves his life in New York to move to Stockholm to be with his girlfriend) is OK, the stars are OK, and the are jokes at least mildly funny.  Alessandra Stanley, in the New York Times, has this to say:

Scandinavians don’t complain. Not even about ethnic stereotyping. Apparently it’s not a slur to paint an entire people as tall, blond and briskly self-sufficient.