Bahá'í Family Forum, 23 October 2004 – Bahá'í National Centre, Dublin

Intercultural Families-Strength in Diversity

by David Douglas

Good morning. I am so happy to be here to talk with you about the opportunities that are inherent in intercultural families to bring peace and unity to our strife ridden and battered world.

Before we begin I would like to share with you a little of a little of what I have learned about greetings. When I was in Swaziland, a small country in southern Africa a few years back, I was taught their Greeting—Sow-bow-Nah-. It means I see you. I see you as you are. I don’t see you through the veils of stereotypes. I see you as an individual a human being. Another greeting I learned from a young boy in a school where I work who happened to be from India is Nameste—My soul greets your soul--a meeting of spirits at the deepest level. This is far different from the superficial greetings that we in the West are so used to. In every cultural encounter there are lessons to be learned. Intercultural families offer an abundance of these lessons.

It won’t surprise you that I am a member of an intercultural family. Many of you know already that my mother was “White” and my father “Black”. You may not know, however, that my mother was Irish/American and My father—had African, Indian, and European Ancestry. To look at him, you would simply think that he was Black, Negro or African—whichever term you prefer. But underneath his skin, lay a great deal of mixed ethnic heritage. Other family members enrich my intercultural family experience as well. My Sister, Brigid Eileen Douglas has had a successful marriage to a Swedish National for a quarter of a century. My wife’s brothers are both married to women from the Philippines. One of my nephews is married to a German born American. My other nephew is married to a Romanian. My niece has a serious relationship with a Mexican American. Thus I have a great deal of personal interest and experience in intercultural families. Some of which I would like to share with you.

In addition, I would like to share some of my country’s experience with intercultural relationships. I come from a land that is diversity rich. People from nearly every corner of the earth have emigrated there. Our land has been struggling with issues of diversity for at least 500 years. For most of those years, this struggle has been long and bitter. Including 300 years of slavery, the near extermination of the American Indians and systematic discrimination against a variety of immigrant groups including the Irish. In many way s my country is still recovering from the wounds of this agonizing struggle. We are now, however, beginning to realize some of the many benefits that have come from the interactions of these varied and rich cultures and peoples. I would like to share with you some of those benefits and the lessons we in the United States have learned.

As you know, there is an increasing interest in intercultural families around the world. As Blacks marry Persians, as Jews marry Catholics, as Japanese marry French, as Irish marry Australians, people want to know what good, if any, will come of these strange and varied families? Will our cultural heritage vanish? How can people from backgrounds so different get along in one household? And of course “What about the Children?” These questions arise because social, economic and political forces are bringing together in ever increasing interaction, people from all across the planet, and as you know love is not limited by cultural or national boundaries.

Such was the case of my parents who met and fell in love in 1942 in America. Fifty years ago my parents were married in a country that outlawed interracial marriage in 27 states and frowned on it in the rest. They experienced every form of

discrimination that you can imagine short of physical harm, because of their union. They were harassed, ostracized and had shots fired through their window. Although people were obviously curious about interracial marriage, because our family attracted attention wherever we went, most Americans had very negative attitudes about such unions. In the south Black men were lynched for showing the slightest interest in White women. There was a great fear about mixing of the races. This fear was based on the false assumption that some races were purer than others, and that if you mix races you will end up with an inferior breed of people. We sometimes have the same fears with respect to our cultural heritage. We are naturally proud of who we are where we come from and enjoy the security that comes from our rich family traditions. I also think that sometimes there is a fear that if we marry someone from a different land, who has different beliefs and customs, we will lose our cultural heritage.

This fear is also based on the assumption that culture is static rather than dynamic or evolving. The America of today is not the America of 50 years ago or 100 years ago. The Ireland of today is not the Ireland of 100 years ago. There has always been interaction between people of different cultures with people of different cultures learning from each other trading with each other, even marrying each other. These cultural exchanges lead to cultural enrichment. We see this in the flow of ideas that may have started even before the Egyptians met with the classical Greeks and have found their way to every country of the earth. We see it in foods like corn and potatoes that before Columbus were raised mainly by aboriginal Americans but in the last 500 years have become standard European fare. The creation of Jazz, Blues and Rock music in America came from the mixing of the Rhythms of Africa, with the instrumentation from Europe We are in the middle of a developing world culture that is incredibly rich. Take any modern idea or art form that you want, trace its history and you will find influences and variations in other cultures.

This fear, the fear of losing our culture or identity is also based on the language of race and the conscious attempt to equate cultural, ethnic and religious differences with race. Historically, Africans and people with the slightest hint of African decent have been identified as members of the Black race. Europeans have been identified as member of the White race. Followers of the Jewish religion have been identified as members of the Jewish race and so forth. With each of these racial categories negative stereotypes have been created. Even for national groups like the Irish

According to David Roedigger, author of the Wages of Whiteness“The Irish are a particularly interesting instance of racial identity and racial formation. The majority society in America, the privileged working class, was white. In order to be a part of the privileged, you had to be considered white too. Mexicans, Armenians, and the various European ethnic groups all faced this problem of being accepted as white and thus getting the privileges of being a member of the majority society. The Irish example is particularly telling because they were so closely identified with blacks (Roedigger [The Wages of Whiteness]

134).

“ Irish comparison to blacks went so far as to consider them a Celtic tribe of "dark" or possibly African origin. In antebellum society, the Irish were considered "low-browed, savage, groveling, bestial, lazy, wild, simian, and sensual," terms almost identical to those describing blacks (R 133). Politically and socially they were scapegoated and oppressed much as the black population was.”

http://ny.essortment.com/racialformation_rspk.htm

Such stereotypes as these powerfully influence the way we think about people who are culturally and ethnically different from us. Racism is related to the rejection of people who are ethnically and culturally different from us. It is based on the scientifically false concept of race. In my view interracial families are in fact intercultural families who are subject to the forces of racism. The negative concepts associated with race make us fearful of intercultural marriages.

Opposition to intercultural marriages goes against the trend on planet earth towards developing a world culture. Because of changes in transportation, commerce, communication people from all over our planet are encountering other people with cultural backgrounds different from their own on a daily basis. Some of us embrace the potential, the excitement of the beauty of these daily cultural encounters. Others of us greet these encounters with fear and anxiety even dislike or hate. We often cling to a limited racial, cultural, or national identity believing that mixing too much with others, especially in marriage will cause us to lose our identity. We cling to idealized images of the past and feel threatened when someone challenges our dearly loved traditions. Intercultural families have a vital role in helpings us move into the era of a global culture and global civilization. In clinging to the past we ignore the bright possibilities of the future.

There are three major benefits that derive directly from Intercultural Families that I would like to address today.

1) The synergy of cultural blending—building a culture that helps us meet the needs of today.

2) The power of overcoming prejudice and racism at the family level.

3) And the transforming influence intercultural marriages have on our society

The first of these benefits is almost self-evident. Common sense tells us that if you put two people from different backgrounds together in a single family, you enrich the cultural heritage of the entire unity. You have the original culture of the father plus the original culture of the mother. In my own family I was exposed to the works of European artists-Van Gogh, DaVinci, Reubins, Picasso, Monet and many more because of my mothers background and interests. My father on the other hand introduced me to the world of jazz. Count Bassie, Earl Garner, Thelonius Monk. My mother made certain that all of her children were made aware of their African ancestry and Black heritage. She made a major effort to make certain that we all knew that the first patriot to die in the Revolutionary War was a Negro, by the name of Crispus Attucks. She informed us before it was popular knowledge that Alexander Dumas, renowned author of the Three Musketeers was Black. My father exposed us to great literature at an early age, reading us the poetry and short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. Because of our parents naturally sharing their cultural knowledge and interests my brothers and sisters were given a great deal of variety in our cultural heritage. In a very real sense, my brothers and sisters and I became bi-cultural.

Yet, ultimately cultural blending is more than the equation one plus one equals two, because people have a tendency to blend cultural components and not to keep them as separate elements. This cultural synergy is visible in every field of human endeavor of the twentieth century. In the field of music you hear sounds like Afro-Cuban music with rich musical patters that have both African and Latin American elements. In Medicine we find dozens of manufactured drugs that are derived from the herbal remedies of traditional medicine one—aspirin is one of the most common drugs of this class. One example from the art world is the dramatic way in which the art of Picasso changed because of his exposure to African art. The American art form of tap dancing came from blending Irish step dancing with the freedom of movement from African dances and the rhythms of Jazz. The English language itself has elements of Greek, Latin, German, and many other languages from around the world. The synergy of cultural blending enriches our cultural heritage. It does not diminish it.

In my view, culture serves three purposes: It gives us the foundation of our understanding of the world. Our beliefs, our world view, the framework upon which we build the meaning of our lives. It is also the ocean in which we swim and it filters our understanding. Secondly it enables us to survive. All of the skills for feeding and clothing and sheltering us come from our culture. Thirdly it enables us to enjoy life. It gives us our music, our poetry, makes food more than just the simple grains and fruits and meats that we eat because of our need to survive. It is also the stories, traditions and spiritual beliefs that inspire us to a higher calling, to worlds beyond this world. Without this element of culture our lives would be rather bleak and bereft of what my father and mother termed the “finer things in life.” When we blend cultures we add more meaning to our lives. We gain the possibility of seeing the world with a broader vision and depth. We bring more variety to the arts that sustain our souls.

We also have more tools at our disposal when it comes to the needs of survival. Educational researches have long noted that there is a difference in how heterogeneous versus homogeneous groups perform. When given a problem to solve, homogeneous groups almost always come up with a solution faster than mixed groups. On the other hand while diverse groups take longer to solve problems, they come up with more solutions and better solutions. Likewise, intercultural families help us see beyond the box of our own cultural paradigms by bringing greater problem solving potential to the family.

The interaction of cultures brings diversity to our environment. It is very interesting to note that the University of Michigan, one of the World Class educational institutions in America fought a legal battle before the United State Supreme Court for the right to include diversity as one of the admissions criteria. The university was joined in it’s fight to retain the diversity criterion by more than 300 organizations filing more than 60 amices briefs in support of the University’s position. I want to give you a sense of who these groups were: They represented universities, faculty and more than 13,900 law students across the country; over 63 Fortune 500 corporations; the largest labor unions in the country, the largest educational organization; the American Bar Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges; dozens of civil rights and religious organizations; 23 states, many members of Congress and more than two dozen high-ranking military and civilian defence officials.

The arguments of these organizations included the following:

• Diversity creates stronger companies;

• Diversity stimulates an open, robust and creative exchange of ideas;

• Diversity imparts invaluable education and social benefits;

• Diversity increases cross-cultural competency.

• Diversity gives us the advantage of being able to understand how others think and function.

• A diverse environment gives us the skills to cross racial divides.

I would like you to consider the possibility that each one of these advantages that make diversity desirable at the university and corporate levels also applies to intercultural families. Intercultural families bring the possibility of more creative exchanges of ideas, invaluable educational and social benefits, increase cross cultural competencies and help us cross the racial divide.

As I mentioned previously, despite these many positive aspects of cultural blending many of us fear that we will lose our own cultural heritage if our families become culturally mixed. We also fear the loss of our cultural, national, or racial identities. We feel threatened when someone challenges our dearly loved traditions and deeply held beliefs, so we resist this natural impulse towards change. This resistance often comes in the form of social rejection, discrimination, and sometimes legal repression. During my father’s lifetime Blacks in certain parts of America were lynched or burned or mutilated or all three for associating with White women. Marriage to White women was out of the question. More than half the states had anti-miscegenation laws that were meant to prevent interracial marriages from occurring, preserving the purity of the “White Race.” Even though their marriage was legal in the state where they were married, they became instant outcasts when they chose to get married. They were ostracized for most of their lives because their marriage broke the rules against mixing with “those people”.

That brings us to the second major strength of intercultural families. Such families challenge the notion of “Them and Us”. One of the noted researchers in race relations in this country is a Dr. John Dovido of Colgate University. According to his research the moment we divide people into groups, we begin to change our attitudes about those groups. We form an “in-group” and “out-group” mentality or a “Them and Us” attitude. We think of our own “in-group” more favorably and the “out-group” less favorably. This has profound implications. It influences our social habits. It determines who we feel comfortable with and who we feel uncomfortable with; who we eat lunch with and who we don’t. In America, it influences our housing patterns and hiring practices influences our hiring practices. Let me give you two examples.

The David Wessel a writer for the Wall Street Journal recently noted that:

“In a carefully crafted experiment in which college students posing as job applicants visited 350 employers, the white ex-con was called back 17% of the time and the crime-free black applicant 14%. The disadvantage carried by a young black man applying for a job as a dishwasher or a driver is equivalent to forcing a white man to carry an 18-month prison record on his back.” (Wall Street Journal On Line)

http://www.careerjournalasia.com/myc/diversity/20030916-wessel.html

Mr. Wessel notes further in the article that:“In a similar experiment that got some attention last year, economists Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology responded in writing to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston, using names likely to be identified by employers as white or African-American. Applicants named Greg Kelly or Emily Walsh were 50% more likely to get called for interviews than those named Jamal Jackson or Lakisha Washington, names far more common among African-Americans. Putting a white-sounding name on an application, they found, is worth as much as an extra eight years of work experience.”

These instances of discrimination come from the “them and us attitude”. We want to hire people who are more like us, with whom we feel more comfortable regardless of their qualifications. Intercultural marriages help blur the lines between “Them and Us” so that its harder for those inside the intercultural family to maintain the artificial distinctions. My parents grappled with the notion of “your people” and “my people” early in their marriage when they were trying to decide where they would live. My mother objected strongly to my father’s even thinking in the terms “your people” and “my people”. After several years of discrimination my mother changed her attitude. She began to think of Black people as her people, simply because they were the people who accepted her and her family. So here you have a “White” person who has adopted the “Black” community as her extended family because of an intercultural marriage. As a multicultural child, on the other hand, I never accepted the notion that I belonged to a single race. I could never accept the notion that I belonged more with one group of people than another. I cringed when I heard racial slurs of any kind. I always thought of myself as a member of the human race, not someone of a particular sub-group. That belief enabled me to marry someone of German and Norwegian descent. It enabled my nephews to marry Germans and Romanians respectively. It enabled my sister to marry a Swede. When we marryinterculturally the “Them” becomes “Us”. We begin to realize that there is no them that there is only “Us”.

Martin Luther King once said, “Men hate each other because they fear each other, they fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they are often separate from each other”. Intercultural families help us to get to know each other on a deeply intimate level. On this level the notion of “Them and Us” disappears.

This brings us to my third point. These intercultural family relationships have an amazing transforming influence on those who are touched by them in the extended family and in society at large. My mother’s mother held deep fears about the prospect of her daughter marrying a black man. She wept when she learned of their marital intentions. She knew that they would face many hardships just because of their marriage. She was concerned about he prospects of social rejection. She was also concerned about how the children would turn out and what their experience would be. She worried about “those poor little mongrel children.” After their marriage her attitude changed. She supported the marriage and she adored her beautiful and intelligent grandchildren.

The story of my marriage to Kim is similar in many respects. Before I dated my wife Kim, her family was deeply opposed to any form of interracial marriage. Like most European Americans (Whites) her parents held deep prejudices against Blacks. Furthermore they were afraid of what their friends and neighbors would think if their married a Black man. Her father thought of interracial marriage as a calamity. Yet he was persuaded by his father to at least meet me, to see and judge me as an individual. So I was invited to their home for dinner. I, of course, mustered all of the charm that I could for the occasion and in fact had a wonderful time with both of her parents. We talked of common interests, laughed and shared a meal. In the end they gave us their blessing and even invited their entire extended family to our wedding. They absolutely dote on our children. Since my marriage to Kim, their two sons have both married women from the Philippines.

Her parents now live in a small town in a rural area where residents don’t have much exposure to Blacks. And in that town they sometime hear disparaging comments about people of African descent. Her parents respond by staunchly defending Black people. They will not allow racial jokes to be said in front of them. They have become allies of African Americans in their struggle for equality. If you had looked at their behavior in the fifties, which was typical of the racist behavior of many American families, you could not have guessed that they in their own way have become leaders in the struggle for racial equality in America.

Talking to many families who have adopted children of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds I find similar transformations. We know a variety European American couples who have adopted African, Korean, Chinese and mixed ethnic heritage children. Almost all of these couples report an increased sensitivity to racial and ethnic issues. To start with, the parents almost always take the time to become more familiar with the cultural heritage of their adoptive children and often seek to surround their children with positive cultural experiences from their birth culture. One family I know has taken their African American children to ethnic heritage camps for a number of years. Another single European American mom who adopted a Chinese daughter participates in a Chinese culture club, and has taken her daughter to China to enrich her daughters Chinese cultural life. These families also become very sensitive to ethnic slurs and subtle forms of social discrimination. They notice when someone treats their children differently and they no longer tolerate ethnic jokes and stereotypes. In short they become defenders of their children’s ethnic groups. They often become advocates for other oppressed minority groups as well. In short intercultural families not only broaden their own cultural horizons, they also become instruments of social change and begin to have a ripple effect in society as a whole by becoming advocates for fairness and equal treatment.

You may consider that this effect is minimal. It is difficult, or course, to measure the extent of this ripple effect. I would like you to think about the extent to which attitudes towards intercultural marriages have changed in the last fifty years. In 1957, almost fifteen years after my parents were married and at a time when interracial marriages were still outlawed in more than 27 states, the Gallup Company took a poll of American attitudes towards interracial marriage. They found that 95% of Americans were opposed to interracial marriages. In the last fifty years, however, attitudes have changed. In a poll taken earlier this year the Gallup Company discovered that 70% of Americans now say they have no problem with interracial marriage, even if it involves a member of their own family.

America, it seems is getting used to even accepting interracial marriages. This of course includes cross-cultural marriages of all kinds. I understand from that data from the US census reveals that mixed heritage children are the fastest growing group of children in the United States. We encounter intercultural families on a daily basis in America. On the day before my trip here I ran into a Thai woman who was married to an Italian. She jokingly referred to her children as Thai-talian. We are all familiar with Tiger Woods, mixed ethnic heritage. He jokingly refers to himself as Cablasian: a mixture of Caucasian—Black and Asian. The cultural landscape is changing very rapidly in America, Ireland and in the world.

As I have argued, this change in the cultural landscape is enriching our families and helping to abolish the “them and us” attitude with profoundly positive implications. The “them and us attitude” is the very foundation for prejudice, fears and hatreds. Intercultural families undermine the psychological attitude that is the pre-condition for discrimination and violence. Such families undermine the foundation of war itself. When we see people as part of our family; when we love people for who they are--their pain becomes our pain. Then it becomes impossible for us to brutalize and murder them.

I would like to close by giving a piece of advice to the people of Ireland, not because I know more than you. Simply because I have had different experiences. You have a choice before you. You can resist the global trend of increasing intercultural interaction by isolating your country or by dividing your country into ethnic enclaves. But you do so at your own peril. Such separation inevitably leads to heartaches, hostilities, suffering and bloodshed. We have four hundred years of American history to prove it. You can also actively work to discourage intercultural marriages by every legal and social means at your disposal, but it will not work. You will be wasting your precocious energy and valuable human resources. People will fall in love despite legal and social sanctions. They always have. They always will. The forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet is a universal theme in our world, played out again and again by people of different cultures all over the world. All of he forces of humankind are powerless to resist the force of cross-cultural love and intercultural marriage. You may as well spit into the wind as try to stop this powerful social trend.

On the other hand, you may choose if you like, to conquer whatever fears you may have about losing your cultural heritage and instead watch your culture grow and flourish from the cross-fertilization that occurs when people with different world views and experiences encounter each other. You can support and embrace intercultural families and their mixed heritage children.

You can recognize that each of these families is a treasure chest of untold cultural gems that will be a unique gift to Ireland and the world. Their children will be the peacemakers of the future. Cross-cultural communications will be second nature to them. They will be the bridge-makers who will cross the racial divides. There skills will be needed to bring peace to our strife torn world.

I often hear comments about the beauty of inter-ethnic children. Their features have a unique quality of beauty that is very striking. Yet the real beauty of these children is their inner beauty. It comes from their intercultural heritage. They are the harbingers of a new global civilization that will be characterized by unity in diversity--a new world culture that will be infinite in its variety and has all of the delectable flavors of civilizations from around the world. The cross-cultural knowledge and skills of multi-ethnic children can bring peace, unity and strength to our fragmented and war-torn world.

The choice is ours we can reject all of the wonderful possibilities that these children and families have to offer or we can accept them and hasten the day when mankind will live as one human family.