What Traveling Taught Me About My Own Culture

Once upon a time I was standing in front of thirty ninth graders in a classroom in Samoa. Their teacher had just said, "You can ask Sister Webb anything you want about herself." Most of them asked me about my favorite foods, if I played any sports, if I was married...easy questions like that. Then, one of the girls asked me...

"What ethnicity are you?"

I stumbled over every word of my answer.

"Um, I don't know, white? I'm just..American."

She looked confused/disappointed.

Later I realized I had told her my race and my nationality, but not my ethnicity. If I had been more on the ball, I would've said, "Scandinavian." But how often do I think about being Scandinavian? Almost never.

Because my race and ethnicity do not negatively effect my life choices and opportunities, because I am part of the racial majority in my country, I rarely had to think about it. My ethnicity had become invisible to me. But once I experienced being in the ethnic minority, I started thinking about the color of my skin a lot more. Because I stood out a little.

The same thing is true of my American culture. I have heard people say things like, "I wish I had a culture!" when they see someone performing some sort of ethnic dance or something. You have a culture. When you leave the United States if will be easier for you to recognize it.

My whiteness is showing...

For example, if you are American, chances are...

You value your personal space and expect privacy.

You have inhibitions about singing and dancing in public places that are not specifically designated for singing and dancing.

Most of the time, you use the word "family" literally. Your brothers and cousins are actually your brothers and cousins.

 You don't want other people to tell your children what to do. And you would freak out if someone else tried to discipline your kid, even if they were related to you.

You believe in personal ownership. If you paid for something, it belongs to you, not to your family or your community.

You've been taught not to "make a scene."

Within reason, you show physical affection to your significant other in public. Once you are past puberty, your parents know whether or not you are in a relationship.

You think it's okay for children to ask a lot of questions, including questions about why you're asking them to do something. You want your children to be able to make their own decisions and choose their own path.

You are obsessed with personal cleanliness and showering.

You hide your emotions. You usually don't tell people when they're annoying you or have hurt your feelings.

You believe fiercely in independence of thought and personal choice. Messages like "be yourself," "think for yourself," etc., are just part of your psyche.

Death makes you uncomfortable. You keep your distance from it, i.e. you would consider it inappropriate to take a picture of a dead relative at their funeral and your relatives are buried in a cemetery, not your front yard.

Your life is organized by routines and schedules, and you expect things to start on time and to go as planned.

When naming a child, you'd be more likely to try to come up with a unique name that not many other children have, rather than giving your child a name that is carried by other family members. This reflects your hope that your child will be his or her "own" individual person.

You expect your cultural needs to be accommodated. This is a sensitive one for me, because I would like to think I'm not like this. But the first time we went shopping in Samoa and they didn't have Bisquik? Me on the inside? "What the......? Aren't there other Americans on this island?"

You're an individualist. Individual needs are more important than group needs.

Every time I tell someone who is a both a boy and a Mormon that I've been to Samoa, they tell me that they had a Samoan mission companion. And usually they assume that all Samoans are just like that one companion. The conversation goes something like this.

"Oh you've been to Samoa? You probably ate a lot of mayonnaise there."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, well I had a Samoan companion, and he put mayonnaise on everything."

I don't think I ever SAW a jar of mayonnaise in Samoa. There is danger in overgeneralizing, in thinking that the traits of one person represent an entire race, culture, or nation. I say this because I don't want to do the same thing when talking about American culture. America, like Samoa, is a complex place made up of many different cultures. There are cultural variations among the different Samoan islands, and there are cultural variations between Utah and New York City, between southern California and Georgia. Not every single American fits into the list I just made, but traveling did open my eyes to the parts of me that have been formed by the culture I grew up in, things that seem to be "American." That's the list above. But I also learned what was assumed about me because I was American. I learned more about how others interpret my culture. 

To lots of people, being an American meant that I probably had an unlimited amount of money and resources, that I'd seen shootings and gun fights, that it wasn't safe for people in my country to be outside at night, that my parents were easy on me, and that I knew how to square dance.This brings me back to my mayonnaise point. It's uncomfortable to feel like people are assuming they know things about you because of your skin color. Many of the white people who visit Samoa spend their whole time at resorts and beach fales that cost $500-$600 a night, and they probably don't see a lot of actual Samoan life. It was uncomfortable to be automatically grouped in with that set of people, and to feel like it was assumed that my whole country lived that way. I didn't know what to think every time a small child asked me for money. They weren't asking everyone who walked by, and the implications of that are hard to swallow.

In Samoa, I had more than one boy say to me, "I've never talked to a girl like you before. You're the first white girl I've ever talked to." And I would say, "There's nothing special about being white." And they would just stare at me like, "Yeah right." That was uncomfortable too.

American influences in Samoa

Even though Samoa is now an independent nation, the effects of imperialism are still there. Less than 1% of the population of Samoa is white, but white people seem to take up a lot of space there. It's hard to explain, but maybe this example will help.

One our last Saturday in Samoa, we rented a car and had some friends drive us around the island to see parts of the south side we hadn't been to yet. We were looking for a good beach to swim at, and I mentioned a resort we'd been to before called Sinalei. As we pulled in and drove through the golf course, my friend kept saying, "Um, I don't think we can be here..." I kept telling him, "I PROMISE it's free to use their beach, we've been here before!" He finally parked and I started walking confidently through the fancy lobby out towards the beach. I turned around and realized that my friends hadn't followed me. They were standing at the lobby entrance looking so uncomfortable and even a little scared.

I had spent quite a bit of time with this boy, and I had watched him drive and walk around the island like he owned the place, yell across the street to practically everyone he saw because he knew everyone in town. I had never seen him look nervous about anything, and now he was terrified to walk through this fancy hotel lobby. I walked back to him and his sister and said, "Come on, I PROMISE it's fine," and pretty much had to drag them out to the beach.

Sinalei

Once they saw the beach and the dock they ooed and awed over it. I remember them saying things like, "Oh my gosh, overseas people are SO lucky!" We spent the next few hours swimming, but I could tell being at a place like this was not normal for them. (I remember my friend watching these two white guys kayaking and laughing at them because, according to him, they didn't know anything about rowing. He kept saying, "What the hell are they trying to do?")

The only other people on the beach with us were from Australia and New Zealand. The more I thought about it, the more angry it made me. Here we were in the middle in Samoa. And yet these people I cared about, who had lived in Samoa all their lives, felt like they weren't supposed to be on some of the most beautiful beaches in their own country. Not because of any written rules, but because they felt it wasn't their social space.

 We spent a lot of time with senior missionary couples in Samoa. They were VERY good to us and I learned a lot from them, but sometimes I disagreed with some of them about cultural differences. I can remember driving around the island one day and one of the missionaries saying, "Samoa is so different from Hawaii because in Hawaii all the beaches are public. It's illegal for people to charge you to go on a beach. But here? Everything belongs to the villages, so you think you've found this perfect beach, and then you walk onto it and some little kid will run out and ask you for five bucks. It's so ridiculous." The way she said it drove me crazy. The beaches are literally their backyards. Americans go to the islands and wonder why the people are not more capitalistic, why the country isn't developing tourism more quickly, and you're mad because they're trying to make money off of their land?

There are a lot of other instances of cultural clashes from my trip that I could write about. Moments that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. But I guess my point is....traveling should be about people. I have always had an intense desire to see the world, but I think my travel longings have changed a bit. I used to want to see landscapes and important buildings. I still do, but more than that, I want to meet people and find out how they think about the world.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I can teach my children and my students about culture. About their culture, and about respecting the cultures of others. But really, they will just have to travel for themselves! 

Please be a traveler, not a tourist.