September 19, 2003: Identities

I haven't given any explanations yet of what the Melton Foundation is -- mostly because it's hard to understand without experiencing it. At its most basic, it's an international student organization that is in communication throughout the year via the Internet and comes together at one of the participating campuses -- in Chile, Germany, China, India and New Orleans -- once a year. There are a variety of goals beyond this: each campus is responsible for some fairly intense social service projects, the conversations during the year on world events can get quite heady, and just about everyone involved is also focused on the forefront of science and technology. But no matter the focus, the underlying theme of cultures working together -- and therefore having to figure out how to work together -- is paramount. I find myself doing a basic dance at these conferences that goes something like: "Wow, we're all the same! Wait. . . we're so different."

In the end, though, it works. The friendships that arise between people of dramatically different backgrounds are profound.

We had a panel today -- filled with a variety of top name Germans on the forefront of working to help developing nations, all wrestling with the problem of how to present the best options to the specific cultures they worked with, all trying to come up with a definition of success that incorporated that specific culture's values. There were, of course, the usual amusing moments -- when a panelist discussed his experience with people in Bangladesh who practiced communal sleeping, a Bengali student jumped up to say it was extremely rare; when a description came up of Chinese citizens habitually walking with their heads down, one of the most vibrant Chinese girls said: " Look at me! Do I ever do that?" But all in all, it was a good panel, filled with people who acknowledged that there would always be these kinds of misunderstandings, and that in some ways that was really the point. As one panelist put it -- there should be culture clashes. There's no reason to whole-heartedly embrace whatever you see. One simply should go, learn, be aware, and in the end one learns more about one's own identity too.

"Accept the challenge of living with different identities," he said. And he pointed out that one could define onesself so very many ways -- here in Germany, I could be American, a female, someone from Washington, DC, or define myself by my religion. And something clicked. I realized that from the moment I set foot in Germany, I have defined myself as Jewish. That's been my identity.

The people I know in Germany -- whether from the West or East -- make up some of the single-most, radically liberal people I have met. They rally against the word "hierarchy" -- even "leader" makes them cringe. And yet, Germany to me, first and foremost, is about World War II and a dictatorship that attacked Jews.

Jews have a saying about the holocaust: "Forgive, but never forget." So I do not for one moment apologize for this insistence I have to associate Germany with that history.

But it occurred to me that there are other identities for me to play with too. I do not only have to identify myself as something in opposition to the locals. I am, after all, of German ancestry. On both sides of my family, I have a huge amount of German and Austrian heritage -- and yet I never look around this country and think to myself: my ancestors lived here. I have spent the day getting my head around that. These hills, these woods, my family lived here. I'm trying it on for size, and going to see how it feels.