A friend of mine wrote to me after my last blog. He was provoked by my assertion that cultures are neither superior or inferior. Assigning a hierarchy among civilizations is, after Nazism, what civilizations emphatically repudiate. I was addressing a claim to the contrary by two law professors who published a piece arguing that the traditional values they embodied were better and what they called out as inner city black culture worse. They were willing to venture into the profound hazard of the moral grading of populations. My friend, another academic, showed me a survey indicating that "the French" are the saddest people. He asked: what do I make of that?
I agree: the conclusion is interesting. The case of “French sadness” is useful. It allows us to discuss race (or ethnicity or whatever name is given to immutable heritage) with an example less fraught with everything race symbolizes. To some, misery may be ennobling. For any French who take offense, please note I am not the author of the report, and I am taking the side of the French who might object to it, emphatically. For the French who wish to take pride in their egalitarian melancholy, I defer, for that is your prerogative, as well.
I replied that I wondered if the researchers were referring to people ethnically French, culturally French, or who happen to be in France. I am curious and open minded. So suppose we set aside reservations about the appropriateness of this type of reasoning, ranking either lineages or literatures. (The methodology is suspect along many lines, such as how emotion is processed. For what it is worth, the poll seems to be based on the least strict classification of “French.”)
The overlap of the various categories was never absolute. The differences among them will continue increasing due to our global trends, migration only one among them. A simplistic picture of what it means to be French, like a simplistic picture of what it means to be American, reduces reality; it is vague, wrong, or both.
You can be French in this sense or that sense. Your French is not necessarily the same as the next person’s. The Quebecois who would secede from Canada, I am told, would not be welcomed as anything other than guests hailing from a distant arrondissement.
An accurate picture contains complexity. There are Francophone persons the world over thanks to colonialism of the past. The banh mi sandwich, celebrated as Vietnamese, is a liaison with French cuisine, representing Đông Dương thuộc Pháp or Indochine: impossible without a baguette, the standard version includes pâté. There also are people of French origin who have settled elsewhere or whose descendants have blended into another territory. Lafayette returned to Paris after our revolution, but many others, such as Huguenots, stayed after they arrived. Whether accepted or not, there are many individuals, for that matter whole communities, that are located in France, with varying degrees of acculturation to cafe society. You can, maybe must, celebrate Bastille Day even though your family was elsewhere in 1789.
Asian Americans display similar distinctions. They are not superficial. Asian Americans are on average physically bigger than Asian Asians. But Asian Americans also are more prone to archetypal American ailments compared with their overseas cousins. They are taller but heavier. They are at risk of heart disease. A leading study dubs it “fitting in but getting fat.” Asian Americans whose American-ness is threatened resort to American dishes to affirm their belonging.
These patterns appear in the aggregate. Rather than encouraging racial stereotyping, they are a caution against casual generalization. What happens to Asians when they become Americans confirms it is less nature than nurture that controls. Feed an Asian as you feed an American, and they become American. It would be surprising only if we expected “blood” to determine our fate. But even genetic dispositions, many of them, require activation by the environment — hence the importance of what is “epigenetic.”
Yet there is further subtlety. As biology is influenced by culture, perhaps culture in turn is influenced by residence. A project could be devised to see if Asian Americans who believe themselves to be more Asian than American, perchance measured by what food they prefer, despite that self-perception end up becoming American anyway. Although they might suppose their diet which includes rice at all meals will keep them healthy and fit, they might be exposed to enough factors to be headed toward the positive packaged with the negative of the domicile they have taken up. They may consume more fast food and junk than they are aware or would acknowledge.
Identity is plastic rather than permanent. Each of us evolves over time. Our behavior varies by place. We are more ethnic at home for the holidays, surrounded by kin such as grandparents who communicate in another language, than we are at work, conforming to corporate norms in order to succeed. The eating habits of Asian Americans demonstrate that conduct and status are not the same. Although we are what we eat, the behavior of Asian Americans (partaking of hamburgers and French fries) is not the equivalent of their character as Asian Americans (which consists of so much more).
The same type of studies suggest that Bhutanese are the happiest people in the world. The people of this Southeast Asian Buddhist monarchy tout their contentment. I would bet though that their attitude will change detrimentally with tourism attracted by that very satisfaction. I also would wager, if it were not dismal to do so, that taking a Bhutanese person out of Bhutan and putting them into America would not inure to her benefit. Their condition depends on their situation. It is not ordained.
Probabilities are not certainties notwithstanding our confusion. Averages are a singular data point. All of us make assumptions, simply walking down the street: who is friend, who foe. These impulses, however, are so fallible we ought to cultivate skepticism. If you want to put it simply, you cannot be sure. No doubt the finding that "French are saddest" is rife with exceptions. We can admit that there exist more than a few exuberant French and depressed English (even Bhutanese), as there are towering and stout Asians and those stricken by American diseases. We are distributed across spectrums. Approximation is the most accurate account.
America challenges the odds. Americans, or our ancestors, are those who gambled that there was much to be gained on this land. What has made America unique is our ability to define ourselves. That has extended for the nation as a whole to each of us as agents of our own destiny.
An addendum perhaps amusing. I was once informed by a group of Asians that Asian Americans had misshapen heads. During a Chinese banquet, I made conversation by inquiring whether they believed it possible to tell the difference between Asian Asians and Asian Americans. They were an amiable group who bore me no malice. They were quite serious though. After I expressed my bewilderment, one of them elaborated. Asians and Americans do not follow the same practices with sleeping infants. Because Americans put kids down in their cribs on their back out of concern over SIDS, they were sure my skull had been irrevocably flattened. There you have it.