Why Not Cook Together?

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to the members of the League of Women Voters about my work on immigration. The demographics of their upper-middle-class northeastern suburb were changing. In the last 10 years, the foreign-born population had grown by nearly 15 percent. Their children now sit beside the children of these newcomers at school. They're on the same sports teams and play in the same school bands.

"We're trying so hard to help these people become part of our community," one woman said during the question and answer period. "We organize international dinners and international fairs every year and they're always a big success. But at the end of the evening, everyone goes home and nothing seems to come of it besides good feelings. How can we get beyond the once-a-year 'try-my-favorite dish?'"

I suspect this might be a common experience. With the best of intentions, people invite their new neighbors to break bread with them and then assume that their guests will automatically want to join the local Town Council or the PTA. When nothing else happens, they're disappointed, wondering how an event that seemed so successful at the time doesn't produce more long-lasting results.

But newcomers need more than a one-time invitation to dinner. We can't just stop there. We need to show them how to cook and be willing to try their recipes.

Many immigrants don't come from countries with the same culture of school involvement that prevails in the United States. They're not used to pitching in to organize school carnivals or to attending parent-teacher conferences twice a year. The school principal does not solicit their feedback nor does the classroom teacher ask for all kinds of volunteers. My friends who recently moved to Holland tell me they're lucky if they get to talk one-on-one with their child's teacher for more than 30 minutes each year. "Listen," her teacher told them, "I'm giving you so much time now because your child is new but don't expect this to happen regularly. We just don't do it that way here." They've had a hard time meeting other parents because there aren't the same community meetings and fund-raising events they'd become so accustomed to.

My point is not to judge the comparative advantages of the Dutch versus the American educational system. It's to say that we can't assume that everyone comes with the same expectations about how the school system works or that they know how to negotiate it. Newcomers need more than just an invitation to dinner. They need help understanding how things are done, someone to reach out and orient them on an on-going basis and, down the road, the chance to start changing things on their own

This doesn't just stop at schooling. In the last 15 years, I've spoken to immigrants from around the world about their views on politics. The overwhelming majority have a strikingly negative view. You shouldn't, many warned me, go near a politician with a 10-foot pole. Phrases like "useless," "inefficient," and "corrupt," consistently peppered their descriptions of the governments in the places they come from. It's a waste of time to participate politically because the institutions never work. While things seem better in America, the system often appears incredibly complex and hard to navigate. These newcomers desperately need to be invited to the political dinner and given a tour of the kitchen with an explicit recipe book. As with the school community, they need to socialized over time about their rights and responsibilities and given the chance to socialize us in return.

So, while eating together is a great beginning, it's not really a surprise when nothing much happens after that. It's only when people actually begin "cooking" together on a regular basis, sharing their ingredients and exchanging recipes, that something bigger happens. At this season of giving, it's a particularly good time to start.