I wrote most of that first post a week ago and then just sat on it. But having posted it, I feel motivated to (finally) keep going. I seem to have a lot of (what I think are) my best ideas when I’m trying to fall asleep, and so it was last night.
I was idly thinking about how and why there is something in American culture that is so different from that of the countries most similar to the US – Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I considered how much effort I’ve made to learn and understand Japanese culture and society (a lot) and compared it with how much effort I’ve made to learn and understand US culture and society (…). Yeah, not much.
I think it’s relatively easy to learn some intercultural awareness about those who look and/or act quite differently from us. At the very least, it’s easy to notice that there is a difference, a gap that maybe we should think about. Of course, whether we actually develop any sensitivity about it is another matter. But we do know that the people in/from non-English-speaking countries where they speak a different language (and countries where the majority has traditionally not been white looked like us) do things differently.
(I made the changes in the paragraph above because I realized I was showing my instinctive tendency to think about things from a white, western point of view. These matters apply to everyone in the world. For example, the expectations Japanese tend to have of westerners of Japanese descent and of other East Asians tend to be very different from their expectations of white or black people. I'd like to hear about South Asians' experiences in Japan, too.)
But when it comes to countries that are similar, we don’t notice as much. We assume that because they are like us in so many ways, there must be no difference. This is especially true of the US in relation to Canada. American movies conquered the entertainment world a long time ago, but movies are still somewhat of a “special event”. Even before cable, Canadians who live within broadcasting range of US TV stations (that is to say, most Canadians) have been growing up watching American TV in their own homes for decades. And it wasn’t just network shows - when I was a kid in southern Ontario, we watched Buffalo’s Rocketship 7 every morning before school and Commander Tom in the afternoon. There was such familiarity, and the shows catered to the market on both sides of the border. The logo of PBS station WNED is half stars-&-stripes, half maple leaf and says “Buffalo / Toronto”. Their slogan is “Serving Western New York and Southern Ontario”. Apparently, more than half of their pledge money comes from the Canadian side of the border.
So you can see how we think of the US as “just like us”, or no more different than neighbours down the street or cousins in another city.
For the most part, that’s true. But aren’t there some things those neighbours or cousins do that make you go “huh? We don’t do it like that at my house.” When these differences jump out at us, we wonder why those people can’t just be more like us. We are so alike already - how hard would it be for them to change?
Very hard, I suspect. Because after all, as I said, their history is different.
(Which I keep planning to write more about, but I get distracted by all the background. I will get to it!)