Vancouver Journal: Local Culture
Someone asked me if I saw any differences between BC and VA, if I felt like I was in another country while we were there. Well yes, and no.
Of course our niche is so small and sparsely-peopled that we have culture shock just going to Roanoke, where there is one Thai and a couple of Chinese restaurants. That is haute cuisine and cultural immersion for us. And so, to be in a big city like Boston or Vancouver is remarkably different from our usual experience, and we are constantly making comparisons between that world and our familiar, bucolic and secluded habitat.
The history of the northwestern coast is vastly different from that of the Great Valley of western settlement that peopled our area with white folk. It was to places like Vancouver that our predecessors and their children's children were traveling as they passed along the Wilderness Road. Meanwhile, all of that lush, green and misty land now called British Columbia was inhabited by a rich diversity of tribes, each with their own crafts, arts and customs. We visited the Museum of Anthropology with its open storage display, maps and recent artwork from area natives. The map of tribal territories showed a jigsaw puzzle of influence. I wondered why so many tribes lived side by side in such relatively small land mass, and then realized many of these boundaries are largely island or peninsular areas; others are probably segregated from their nearest neighbors by untraversible rivers or mountains. Like the Galapagos Islands segregated races of finches, turtles and other creatures, these tribes evolved their own unique ways of understanding and dealing with nature, creating a rich tapestry of arts and cultures. In style, I was impressed with the similarities to Aztec, Inca and even Hawaiian masks and design.
The wood sculture above (at least six feet across and eight tall) is by Haida sculptor, Bill Reid. I created my own interpretation of Raven and the First Men. I saw the Raven as a symbol for the hardships of life that wait to pick us off the moment we emerge from our protective maternal "shell." The tribal stories of the raven have him much more a friend of man, or at least a benign trickster who both bedevils and looks out for man. Read one version of the story here.
I was impressed by the facts that, while in Vancouver, we saw almost NO litter.
People use the cross-walks; and drivers honor them by always stopping, even when you wave them through.
I was appalled at the open drug use on the East side of town, and disappointed when my son's girlfriend's car window was smashed in broad daylight right outside the Gastown pub they were in. Some things were stolen--a few dollars, maybe, for the next fix or bottle.
I was impressed by the large population of--be careful here--Asians we saw in every part of the city. I was curious which country had the most resident Vancouverites: Korea, Japan, China, Viet Nam. But when I asked, I referred to them as Orientals. I was informed that sometime in our seclusion in our Small World, that word has fallen out of favor. My son and I got into one our little language debates about how good words keep falling from the vocabulary in the name of Political Correctness, and I was branded an Achie Bunkerite. I since have found explanations such as the following, though I still think the O word is more precise (and will say goodbye to another bit of English language) referring to a particular PART of the much larger ASIA:
Asian is now strongly preferred in place of Oriental for persons native to Asia or descended from an Asian people. The usual objection to Oriental—meaning "eastern"—is that it identifies Asian countries and peoples in terms of their location relative to Europe. However, this objection is not generally made of other Eurocentric terms such as Near and Middle Eastern. The real problem with Oriental is more likely its connotations stemming from an earlier era when Europeans viewed the regions east of the Mediterranean as exotic lands full of romance and intrigue, the home of despotic empires and inscrutable customs. At the least these associations can give Oriental a dated feel, and as a noun in contemporary contexts (as in the first Oriental to be elected from the district) it is now widely taken to be offensive. However, Oriental should not be thought of as an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. As with Asiatic, its use other than as an ethnonym, in phrases such as Oriental cuisine or Oriental medicine, is not usually considered objectionable.
Comments
I am with you on the general linguistic argument, Fred. What happens (in many of the Political Correctness dictates) is that words refer to realities that are not pleasant and people wrongly think that changing the WORD will somehow also change the reality. For instance, "slum" is out, as are "squatters." But "the housing challenged" or whatever the bullshit is these days for those words, is not going to change the reality. "The mentally retarded" are not going to turn into folks most of us choose to spend our leisure hours with, unless we are related to them, simply by changing what we call these folks.
That said, it does seem as if the ethnic terms we use for various groups of people can be looked at and thought about. For instance, the African-Americans, I've noticed, still tend to call us "whites," while eschewing the term "blacks" for themselves. The reason for this, quite simply, is that "European-American" is clunky and awkward to pronounce, as is "African-American" for that matter. Only for them, they can refer to themselves as "us," so their tongues don't get caught up on their own appellation.
"Oriental" does seem to me to reflect more of an ignorance of geography left over from an age when people from anywhere outside of Europe were a rare oddity, except in San Francisco. "Asian" doesn't have the peanut-butter-in-your-mouth effect, and is just more specific. For a writer, specificity is understood as the golden rule of naming: the more specific the better. Lumping everyone not from Europe (or Africa, since THEY can be distinguished by their color...usually) as "Orientals" is just too sweeping a generalization.
We need, on the other hand, to be able to refer to groups of people, and the idiotic tendency of Political Correctness to denigrate group referrals, especially those that refer to groups of sad, sorry, poor, afflicted, defeated, and low class/caste peoples, only leads us into nonwords and nonsight. If you can't name a thing, you can't see it. This is the unsought consequence of political correctness: invisibility.
On the other hand, if you call me a femi-nazi, I'll break your balls.
Posted by: trish | May 29, 2005 10:18 AM
Thanks for the lesson on the use of Asian versus Oriental. I have copied it to my husband, who is also an Archie Bunker regarding politically correct language. Perhaps it will persuade him to use the more recently preferred version.
Posted by: kenju | May 29, 2005 1:16 PM
OK, I am a feminazi. I think trish is onto something when she says that calling attention to a term like "oriental" gives us a chance to think about how we use labels. But I alsoI think that there's a tendency to go on the defensive. i.e. to assume that they're being told they're inherently racist or sexist or something.. when that's not the case at all. It's simply that the term deserves some attention.
PC (if such a thing exists any more; it's a very eighties thing) does sometimes get silly. But it has had the effect of making us think more carefully about blanket terms. I'd get pretty grumpy (and do) if someone called me Australian, rather than a New Zealander. And not just because of geography but because NZers and Australians have very different political philosophies.
Posted by: beautiful | May 30, 2005 2:56 PM