Integration or Assimilation

Today's post grew very long, after many days of rumination. Somehow this topic has been tickling my consciousness for a while now, but has only recently come up in clearer terms. I hope it's not too cumbersome, but having rolled around in my head now for so long, I felt it was time to write it down.

Several days ago in class we had a very enlightening conversation. Grit brought up a comment that the Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan recently made about Turkish-Germans. He said flat-out that "assimilation is a crime against humanity. I repeat... assimilation is a crime against humanity." That's right, he said it twice just to make sure you heard him correctly. Grit asked the students how they felt about this comment. Most of the students seemed to find it a little extreme, but emphasized once and again how they could never forget where they came from, their traditions, their culture. They seemed to buy into the idea that accepting the German culture and lifestyle meant that you must forfeit the identity passed on to you by your ancestors. There seemed to be a general consensus that in order to emigrate successfully to another country one must learn to tolerate and live amongst the original inhabitants. In other words, it is necessary to integrate to a certain extent into the host culture. They drew the line however at taking on any of the host culture's other traits. For them to do so would be to betray their traditional culture. With a few exceptions all of these students were born and raised in Germany.

In order to better understand what the argument surrounding assimilation and integration was about, we decided to look up several dictionary definitions of the terms. We put up several definitions we found. For example:

assimilation
noun
1.	the state of being assimilated; people of different backgrounds come to see themselves as part of a larger national family
2.	the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another
3.	the process of absorbing nutrients into the body after digestion
4.	a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound
5.	the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure [syn: acculturation]
6.	in the theories of Jean Piaget: the application of a general schema to a particular instance

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

in·te·gra·tion (ĭn'tĭ-grā'shən) n.

1. 1. The act or process of integrating.
   2. The state of becoming integrated.
2. The bringing of people of different racial or ethnic groups into unrestricted and equal association, as in society or an organization; desegregation.
3. Psychology The organization of the psychological or social traits and tendencies of a personality into a harmonious whole.
4. Mathematics The process of computing an integral; the inverse of differentiation.
5. Electronics The process of placing more than one integrated circuit on a single chip.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Several distinctions strike me immediately. Both words can refer to the union of people from different cultures. Both imply the formation of a harmonious whole. However, integration suggests a sort of separateness, several different circuits that exist in the same place, but which have distinct and separate paths. What is most important about the term assimilation is its implication of understanding, of comprehension. A person assimilates new information when they truly understand it. I also appreciate its implication that people of different backgrounds can share a common identity. Integration is based principally on tolerance, whereas assimilation is based on mutual understanding. Thus for me assimilation is a much more powerful and harmonious concept. Tolerance presupposes a sort of disapproval, which must be overlooked in order to be able to endure someone. This is why I do not see tolerance as the ultimate goal when dealing with diversity.

After hearing my students affirm their loyalty to their ancestral traditions, I told them that for me living according to the traditions of my ancestors is simply not a possibility. Americans in general have many parts which make up their ancestral background. My identity is not dominated by the places my family immigrated from. Rather, it is something much more fluid than my students had ever imagined possible. I explained for example, that when I lived in Mexico, I assimilated to Mexican culture. I had to learn to think and behave according to their cultural norms if I wanted to be part of society there. Mexican culture allowed them to make room for me, and they accepted me both as an American and as a member of their community. I don't want to downplay the challenges of assimilation, but if the host culture and new resident are both willing, it is attainable, and in my opinion desirable.

My students were agape when I told them that after living in Mexico, my identity expanded to include my Mexican cultural assimilation. And yet, at the same time I never felt like I had sacrificed or betrayed my American identity. In fact, after my experience I don't believe it would be possible for me to do so. No one has ever told these kids that they can be more than just one thing, that their national identity can have multiple facets. As I told them of my Mexican experience, I also realized something about my German experience. I will never assimilate here. German culture does not allow foreigners to assimilate. To a certain extent, integration is possible, but without German blood, one has no right to claim German identity. In fact, by mere virtue of the fact that part of my ancestry is German, from their perspective I am less foreign than the students in my class who were born here in Berlin. Those students are condemned to be forever foreigners, born in a country which withholds from them its national identity, many never having set foot in their faraway"homelands".

US Election Mania in Germany

I wrote this little anecdote up for Daniela at the US Embassy. We had coffee the other day along with the other two Fulbright kids who helped with the Building Bridges conference. We started talking about the election and I mentioned how surprised I was to find a lot of interest in the election among my students. She said that that kind of information is really good for them to know, so that they can convince people in Washington to send good speakers to Germany. So I wrote this up for her:

In the course of working as a Fulbright Teaching Assitant in Berlin, I was recently asked by one of the teachers to give one of his classes a brief overview of the election process and and introduction to the candidates. I was concerned that our complicated system might be difficult for them to understand in English, and that the topic would be utterly uninteresting to them in general. The U.S. Election is all over the news here in Germany, its coverage even eclipsing a lot of domestic political issues. However, I never imagined that this interest might have penetrated the consciousness of a class of 11 graders. I was totally shocked by how knowledgeable and interested the students in the class were. The normally somewhat rowdy and talkative class listened attentively as I tried to explain the basics of the electoral system. When I asked them what they knew about the candidates, several students piped up at once naming the top contenders. When I pressed them for more information, some of the students were able to give me very up-to-date details on who the candidates were, what they were saying, and how they were being perceived. Not surprisingly, while their knowledge of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama left me agape, they knew almost nothing about the slew of candidates on the other side of the party line. In Germany, interest even among the youth, in this election is astonishing. You would be hard pressed to find students in an American school that were more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the election. And my school is by no means elite. On the contrary it is one of the schools in Berlin with an undeserved bad reputation. It is a school in which every one of German's ethnic and religious minorities are well represented. The interest these students have in the direction of American Politics can well be said to represent the feelings of the broadest spectrum of the German population.

My Fancy New Title

I am back in Berlin after a lovely Christmas time spent at home in Wisconsin. The whole family was there and I saw some of my closest friends, and also of course Alex! I was sad to leave, but happy to be coming back to this city I love. I'm really feeling at home here in Berlin. I haven't necessarily fallen head-over-heels for Germany as a whole, although it is a very nice place to live. However, I think I love Berlin despite some of the stodgy parts of Germany. It's a city where an artist actually has a chance. You can find around every corner little galleries, which appear and disappear just as fast. You can find clothing designers who display clothing in the front, which was sewn a few meters away, on a single sewing machine in the back of the store. People can afford to be creative in this town, because space is cheap. Unfortunately, while their prices are very reasonable, being something of an artist myself I can't afford any of it. But it makes me happy to know it exists, to see people creating and surviving from what they make.

So, as many of you may know, I have a new job. It's supposed to be part time, which is good as I already have a job. I am officially the newest Bricka Bracka girl, or as I sign my emails Ausbildungsdirektorin (Educational Director Germany). Last November I got a message out of the blue from Alison Gilbert, my roommate senior year at Vassar. She said she was coming to Berlin as a representative of a Software company at a conference here. She also offered to hook me up with a job at the conference, as they needed another promo girl. I talked to my boss at school, got cleared and accepted, although I didn't really know what I was supposed to do at this conference. The conference ended up being a lot of fun. We wo'manned the booth, talking to people about the company. We were the young, smiling faces of this small, hip CA company. The CEO, Brian (pictured above) was there and his friend and photographer/Educational Director Japan, Jesse was also there. We worked really hard, and I had a good time showing them around town at night.

So that's how I got this job. What it entails is marketing and setting up a Flash programming "Bootcamp" here in Berlin, to teach people some of the newest and most powerful Flash applications. Of course I have recently learned that the "Bootcamp" name will have to go, as the word bootcamp has been at the center of a controversy in German news. A German politician has proposed setting up U.S. style bootcamps to punish juvenile delinquents. Needless to say, many people are not pleased. So this is unfortunately the only context in which Germans know the word "Bootcamp." That and the straight-up military context, which is may even be less popular than the juvenile delinquent punishment camp idea. Suffice it to say we will be looking for another name. I'm kind of partial to something along the lines of MasterFlashClasses, or the Grand Masters of Flash Workshop. I will be taking suggestions here on my blog. Just submit your winning idea in the "Kommentare" (which means comments, sound it out) section. Prizes for winning answers!

Christmas in Germany

Christmas in Germany is a celebration of proportions unparalleled in my experience. I've been wanting to write about it since celebrations started in full at the beginning of December, but somehow have only managed to get around to it now that I am back stateside for Christmas with my family. In Germany there is no Halloween or Thanksgiving to hold back the flood of Christmas products in stores. These items started popping up right after I arrived in Germany in September. I tried to keep my eyes down and ignore them, determined not to be sick of Christmas before December rolled around. In grocery stores there appeared whole islands, 50 square meters large at least, dedicated to Christmas candies, cookies, and cakes. There was every imaginable kind of advent calender, by everyone from Kinder to Europe's poshest chocolatiers.

I needn't have worried about Christmas cheer being spoiled by premature product pushing though, because Germany's Christmas markets produce enough genuine cheer to overcome it all. The celebration begins on the First Advent, the first Sunday in December. Cozy little huts with food, mulled wine (Glühwein), and handmade gifts pop up on every Platz and free space in the city. Marion (the woman who gave me a place to stay in my first weeks in Berlin, and who has become a dear friend) took me to the best markets around. I contemplated bringing my camera, but saw that the battery was nearly dead, and decided it wasn't worth it. A bad decision, which I did not repeat on subsequent market trips. The first market we went to was quite beautiful and not nearly as kitschy as some in touristy parts of Berlin. It was at a farm here in town. It was pretty amazing to see a farm surrounded by the city, but of course it was quite necessary before the fall of the wall, since West Berlin had difficult access to fresh food as the surrounding agricultural countryside was off limits to them.

The second place we went to was a dirt cheap second-had market. There I found a few really fantastic things, which were particularly special because of their uncertain origins. I was feeling a little more clear headed as we went to the third market, which was clearly in a very nice area (as was the first). Large villas surrounded the church. The market was populated with cheerful, well dressed people, the booths filled with expensive artisan wares and charity organizations promoting their causes. I started watching the people and saw so many fascinating things going on all around. There was a beautiful young woman with doe eyes, working a booth for a group to prevent violence against foreign women. She was selling little lottery tickets for the items on the table. She held up her little basket, with red tickets up to an older man, looking up at him with bright enticing eyes. Beautiful. I started seeing things like this everywhere and hated that I did not have my camera.

Finally at the last place we went, a shiny black case caught my eye. In it was a pristine Super 8 movie camera, complete with all the accessories and papers, even the receipt, which showed that it was purchased at an Airport in Nakaku, Yokohama, Japan by one Martha Damröse of Berlin on the 12th of April, 1970. It was perfect and I walked away with it for 5 euros. My mind is busy working on ideas far more concrete than any I've had in a long time. My mind is quite occupied by new ways to tell a story with different sorts of images. Now I just need to search out the story I want to tell.

Brücken bauen - Building Bridges

It's a bit hard to know where to start with the happenings of the last week and a half. It seems like too much has happened for me to even keep it all in my head. Especially since I'm still reeling from it all. I suppose I will start with yesterday, or maybe the day before yesterday. I was enjoying a few minutes of free time between the end of my work day at school, and the welcome event at the Hard Rock Cafe for the US Embassy's "Brücken bauen - Building Bridges" conference. Several weeks ago I was contacted by a woman from the Embassy to see if I and two other Fulbright TA's would be willing to moderate a discussion group for a youth conference that they were planning. We met and talked a bit about the conference. There were to be three sections, one on National Identity, one on Media and Public Perception, and finally one on Community Service. After a welcome statement from the US Ambassador to Germany, and a funny warm up presentation on Stereotypes, there would be a panel discussion, in which three experts would talk about the topics on the agenda. After the panel discussion we would break into groups, one lead by each of the TA's to discuss to give the kids (German and American) a chance to discuss the topic on their terms. We decided I would take the National Identity section. My expert was a PhD who had done research on hip-hop and urban/global youth identities.
It was likely to be the most popular section for obvious reasons.

So the day before yesterday I'm taking a moment to relax before heading out to the conference opening. I get a call from the Embassy. My expert won't be able to make it, could I give fill in for the expert on the panel as well? Huh!? Seriously? Me fill in for the rockin' Hip-Hop PhD? It seemed absurd. I asked her to call me back in an hour so that I could have a chance to think and see if I could put something together. I reluctantly accepted, a bit panicked. I wrote something up off the top of my head, and went to the kick-off. At the kick-off there were tons of people from the Embassy. It was almost impossible to hear who was American and who was German because their "American" was so good, only the names sometimes gave it away. I mentioned that I was interesting in filmmaking and photography, and pretty soon people were asking me for more information, and saying they know someone that they could talk to for me. No promises, but they would ask this producer they know, or this guy working for the Berliner Filmfest, or whatever. It's pretty incredible how connections like that work. I mean, the only reason I was at the Embassy thing was that I had done a presentation for some teachers a while back, and one of them had a wife who worked for the Embassy. He was impressed and recommended Sam and me. Connections. So know I'm actually going to have to email these people and remind them of their offers to help. You never know.

It was near impossible to get anyone to talk to me about the position I was supposed to fill on the "Expert" panel. The only people I could get to actually look at the thing I had prepared were two interns. They gave me positive feedback, and I went home to sleep on it. Yesterday was the actual conference. It's all kind of a blur now, but I sort of felt like I rock star when I finally got up, sat at the panel and did my thing. All the organizers knew that I was a stand-in, and didn't have terribly high expectations (which is part of the reason I agreed to do it). I gave my intro confidently, (I was the first one to go!) and felt that I was pretty well in the flow. I got a couple of tough questions, something to the effect of "Who should be responsible for creating a more inclusive national identity? The governments?"(to which I replied that the governments need to leave space for changing identities, validate this change, and encourage organic formation of identity, but mostly they should stay out of it and give families support to find and help their children find their place in their nation.) And "With all this diversity and loose definition of National Identity, how can a nation foster unity and patriotism." I have to admit this one took me off guard a little, as I consider patriotism in the sense that the government uses it to be dangerous and harmful. I stumbled a bit, but basically said that when you make people feel accepted by their society, they will fill a sort of unity no matter where they come from. At the end of the panel discussion two more questions came back to the issue of National Identity. Essentially the kids said that they had a hard time finding their identity because it is constantly being imposed on them from the outside. Essentially, they were constantly battling against the perceptions of Germany as a Nazi state. I told them that I as an American could relate to this, often being written off by people before I even opened my mouth as an imperialist, warmongering, rabid consumer. I told them that they have the power to change all that. That such perceptions cannot stand in the face of personal contact. That every time they meet someone outside of Germany, they can and will destroy these ideas. They can show by dealing with the past, that they have considered and dealt with the Nazi past better than anyone. They can show themselves for the ultimate anti-fascist people that they have become. It may not be a world-wide solution, but just by going abroad and meeting and talking to people, they can open the minds of countless people. They loved this. Spontaneous applause several times. I felt great having the chance to make these kids feel empowered. To show them their power.

The break-out session was incredible. They were talkative, critical, and totally engaged. I asked who would represent the group, and this boy, Franklin (half Kenyan-half German), who I had noticed in the panel discussion already as an incredibly positive and powerful kid, volunteered. By the end of a really energized discussion, I asked them if they might want to put down their thoughts in Rhyme form, since we'd spent most of the time talking about music and global youth identity. I said that they could show Washington why these things matter, why it's worth spending money to bring them together, to show DC what they were capable of. They were up for it. They broke into groups and wrote Rhymes, which ended up being amazing. All in less than an hour! They were so upset when we had to end. They wanted to keep working. I'm going to try to scan all their rhymes, so that maybe they can keep working, so that they can show Washington. Franklin came up to me at the end and with such admiration thanked me for being such a great teacher. I was speechless because he was the one who was impressive from my point of view.

I'm still in a bit of a daze from it all.

An Argument for Optimism

I realized yesterday, that I haven't yet written about my neighbors, one of whom is my closest friend here in Berlin. This occurred to me yesterday evening as I was perched irresponsibly on the book carrying rack on the back of Patricia's bike cruising (if you could call our wobbly, stilted progress that) down the street towards Karl-Marx Allee. The cold, damp, sunless onset of winter, combined with the wear and tear of living in a foreign country had been grating on our nerves a bit. We discussed this as we sat drinking tea in her perpetually smoky kitchen talking about what we could do to take the edge off the winter/being foreign blues. I admitted that at the drug store the other day I bought a sock knitting kit on impulse. I had stared at the thing in my hand, and decided that I really had little chance of actually finishing a functioning pair of socks like those promised by the picture, despite the pledge on the front that the instructions included were "easy" and "for beginners." Fully conscious of this, I decided to buy it anyway. At the very least the rush I got from throwing down six euros impulsively for a project that I will probably never bring to fruition would make the purchase worth it. Ah the cheap thrills of retail therapy...

Patricia then suggesting taking up painting. It helped me last time I was living abroad, so I told her I was game. She then looked at me sideways, kind of giggled, and said, "hey, I've got this crazy idea. But, if you're not game just say so. It's kind of stupid, but I've always kind of wanted to do it." I was intrigued. "You wanna go for a bike ride?" The two of us? On your bike? I asked. "Yeah, my bike's got this basket-rack thing on the back." I think back to all the times I've seen kids on the verge of inflicting serious harm on themselves due to such antics. I watch them coolly, but at the same time envying a little bit their stupid fun. So there I was, riding side saddle on her thin wire book rack, hopping off every few minutes when I would hear the wheel starting to singe my coat. It was fabulous. A feeling I don't often get anymore, and appreciate all the more because of its rarity. Stupid fun.

We both felt a lot better by the time we stumbled laughing back up to her apartment. I stayed for dinner at her place, where her Italian roommate's friend Elisa was cooking up pasta. I asked Patricia what she had planned for Thanksgiving. She shrugged. Thanksgiving for Patrica has never been the traditional turkey-centric holiday of my family. Her parents moved from Brazil to the US, where Patrica was born, and consequently prefers traditional Brazilian food for their Thanksgiving celebrations. Her roommates were interested and insisted that we should make dinner. They asked what Thanksgiving was all about. I explained that it was similar to their harvest fest in fall, but more historically unique and significant. I explained that it celebrated the feast the pilgrims and Native Americans shared after the pilgrims had their first successful harvest with the help of the Wampanoags. And then they piped up "You mean, before they killed them all?" Hmm... somehow I don't think they got the idea. (I'd also like to point out here that while the settlers were quite good at the killing, their Native American contemporaries did not just lie around waiting to be killed. They were very able warriors themselves, not the naive innocents that such a comment implies. Particularly our Wampanoag friends.)

Their glib comment made me want to go find out more about the actual historical background of Thanksgiving. According to journal entries made by the pilgrims at the Plymouth settlement in Massachusetts, the first Thanksgiving actually did happen. It was a three day celebration in 1621 to which the Pilgrim's invited the Wampanoag people, who had helped them to survive their first winter and plant their first successful harvest. The pilgrims provided most of the food, and the Wampanoags contributed 5 deer. It was actually a very hopeful moment in American history, one that should remind us to strive always for peace. We should not forget the injustices of the past, but if we neglect to celebrate the beautiful and hopeful moments, how can we strive for a better present and future. If the past is reduced to a series of massacres, then how can we have any hope of making a better present for ourselves? How can you hold on to the drive to make things better without the belief that something better exists?

Growing up means realizing that adults are not inherently better people, that their wisdom and benevolence does not always increase proportionally to their years. When growing up our understanding of self and surrounding develop so quickly and steadily that it seems like time will inevitably continue to elucidate the world. At some point though time ceases to increase understanding as before, and experience begins to chip away at hope. I'm beginning to realize that intelligent optimism is very hard to hold on to, that it is much easier to become cynical, hardened, and hopeless. I want to continue to celebrate the things in life that feed hope. It is not easy though. Bad things in life are notoriously good at subjugating the value of the good. If we let it, one hurtful word will carry more significance than 100 loving gestures. Today in an effort to salvage this optimism, and give the good in life its proper place, I chose to find out the true story Thanksgiving.

And now I am going to knit myself a pair of socks.

Back and Boxing

So, I'm back at my blog, which of course means that Alex has crossed the pond and I'm back to my solo life in Berlin. Not bad, but not nearly as fun! We rambled all over the city, ate at lots of great restaurants, and just had a really good time all around. But, now I'm back to my regular life. I've been quite busy preparing a presentation "Globalization: American Perspectives" for a meeting of the English department heads of my school district. Luckily, another Fulbright TA is doing it with me. Man, globalization seems to be all they talk about in school. To me it seems a bit shocking that something so political and inherently moral is required curriculum. I guess it's not the only political and moral topic discussed in school, but somehow I always end up feeling guilty as an American at the end of class. As though, as the resident Ami (sorta like Gringo for the Germans), I were responsible for the McDonaldization of the world. This is all in my head of course. It's starting to get to me, hearing every day about American companies trampling over the cultures of the world and enslaving the little children of the third world. So yes, now I'm doing a presentation on this beloved topic of the Germans.

In addition to my regular school day and preparation for tomorrow's presentation, I went to boxing today. This was my second go around at the University boxing gym where I will be training this year. The class was quite full, and this time there was even another woman there, who was new to boxing, but very experienced in Karate. She's quite tough, and not at all arrogant. I like her. The guy who stepped in for the main trainer was quite the opposite, and managed to tick me off in good order. He was clearly just another student who had done some box, but he was quite interested in criticizing me on some almost insulting points. He talked to me like I was an idiot. He might have mistaken my blank look for a lack of intelligence. My blank look was rather born of my absolute disinterest in his opinion. I felt a little guilty for being so cool, so I explained to him that I was from the US and had yet to learn box jargon auf deutsch. He responded with a very heavy accent "Next time we can speak English then." This sealed the deal for me.

After a bit of observation, I think perhaps the disproportionate criticism I'm receiving may be due to the Germans having a different box style. I'm not sure about this yet, but it would explain why this guy only criticized things that I know I learned right, and not the things I'm actually interesting in improving. I must say, the gym is certainly a different style than I'm accustomed to. I've never boxed in a fancy, or particularly modern gym, rather the equipment is usually sparse and well worn, but relatively up to date. This gym makes me think of my great grandfather George's boxing gloves that are hanging in our basement at home: Old and puffy, but still in good shape. I half expect this guy to walk through the door at any moment:
The workouts are quite intense, and long. It is hard to box for 90 minutes. I'm used to 45 minute sessions, and even then at the end I'm totally kaput. At least we didn't have to jump for 15 minutes straight this time. The backs of my legs were covered by stripy welts by the time that little warm-up was done. I've decided that I'm a bit clumsy when it comes to jump-roping. Little did I imagine in elementary school while I jumped rope during recess, that I would be doing it 15 years later as a boxer. I suppose if someone had told me then, I wouldn't have been all that surprised. I might have just tried to get a little better at it so that years later I wouldn't have so many welts burnt into the backs of my legs.