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trinker is fond of pointing out that "exotic" is a relative term. It doesn't refer to a particular culture, or to cultures that vary from a particular reference culture. She thinks molded lime jello salads are exotic. She thinks Methodist church suppers are exotic.
All of this is a lead-in to saying that last night I had the unusual (for me) experience of being exoticized.
I was at a dinner meeting for a research study I'm coordinating. We've trained lay counselors to do a phone intervention with women who are facing a scary medical procedure. Our six peer counselors were at this dinner, as well as the surgeon and nurse practitioner who comprise the medical half of the study. As we ate, the conversation flowed freely until it came around to the subject of funerals.
One of the peer counselors mentioned that she'd been talking to a co-worker "who happens to be a white lady," and that she had just been amazed at some of the differences between white people's funerals and black people's funerals. She went on to explain, in exactly the tones in which I might discuss something I'd read about coming-of-age rituals in Samoa. "So, at a white funeral, they... and apparently, they believe that... which I thought was interesting, because of course we would never..." Her tone wasn't derogatory or critical. Nor did she seem the least bit self-conscious about taking this anthropological tone in front of actual white people. The other peer counselors were very interested in hearing about and shaking their heads at exotic white customs. The surgeon (also black) interjected several comments trying to make sense of the described behaviors, or justify the differences: "Well, probably they feel that... maybe that comes from...."
There were two white peer counselors there, and me. As we addressed these "white customs" we found ourselves trying in vain to make the point that there are a lot of cultural differences between white people, depending on region and religion and ancestry and class. Our responses ranged from an outraged "Hey! That's not a white custom, that's just creepy!" (food served at a wake, in the same room as the open casket), to confusion ("Huh. No, I wouldn't think it was an insult to slip money into a sympathy card for the widow, I've just never heard of it being done. I wouldn't even think to give money at a funeral.") to clarifying explanation ("Well, of course you usually go back to the house afterward for a meal, but sometimes instead the church ladies will put together a lunch and serve it at the church, or...").
It was a fascinating conversation. More liike my last trip to a foreign country than anything else. Previously, I've had an intellectual understanding of whattrinker meant about definitions of "exotic" - but I'd never felt exotic before, not in my own country. Not in a country where lots of people like me live and work and have funerals, and are readily available for observation. It was a strange experience.
trinker is fond of pointing out that "exotic" is a relative term. It doesn't refer to a particular culture, or to cultures that vary from a particular reference culture. She thinks molded lime jello salads are exotic. She thinks Methodist church suppers are exotic.All of this is a lead-in to saying that last night I had the unusual (for me) experience of being exoticized.
I was at a dinner meeting for a research study I'm coordinating. We've trained lay counselors to do a phone intervention with women who are facing a scary medical procedure. Our six peer counselors were at this dinner, as well as the surgeon and nurse practitioner who comprise the medical half of the study. As we ate, the conversation flowed freely until it came around to the subject of funerals.
One of the peer counselors mentioned that she'd been talking to a co-worker "who happens to be a white lady," and that she had just been amazed at some of the differences between white people's funerals and black people's funerals. She went on to explain, in exactly the tones in which I might discuss something I'd read about coming-of-age rituals in Samoa. "So, at a white funeral, they... and apparently, they believe that... which I thought was interesting, because of course we would never..." Her tone wasn't derogatory or critical. Nor did she seem the least bit self-conscious about taking this anthropological tone in front of actual white people. The other peer counselors were very interested in hearing about and shaking their heads at exotic white customs. The surgeon (also black) interjected several comments trying to make sense of the described behaviors, or justify the differences: "Well, probably they feel that... maybe that comes from...."
There were two white peer counselors there, and me. As we addressed these "white customs" we found ourselves trying in vain to make the point that there are a lot of cultural differences between white people, depending on region and religion and ancestry and class. Our responses ranged from an outraged "Hey! That's not a white custom, that's just creepy!" (food served at a wake, in the same room as the open casket), to confusion ("Huh. No, I wouldn't think it was an insult to slip money into a sympathy card for the widow, I've just never heard of it being done. I wouldn't even think to give money at a funeral.") to clarifying explanation ("Well, of course you usually go back to the house afterward for a meal, but sometimes instead the church ladies will put together a lunch and serve it at the church, or...").
It was a fascinating conversation. More liike my last trip to a foreign country than anything else. Previously, I've had an intellectual understanding of what
trinker meant about definitions of "exotic" - but I'd never felt exotic before, not in my own country. Not in a country where lots of people like me live and work and have funerals, and are readily available for observation. It was a strange experience.
exoticism
Date: 2002-01-17 05:29 am (UTC)Especially the bit about variety: people who exoticize something (or someone) tend to assume at *all* X are alike, when X is too large and varied a group for that to even be likely, let alone true. (My own mostly-white ancestral culture is such that I still find the idea of an open-casket funeral somewhere between strange and disturbing, for example. But I'd map that on religion, not skin color.)
Re: exoticism
Date: 2002-01-17 12:09 pm (UTC)In my family tradition, also. (Despite the fact that the two sides of my family are completely different religions - my father's side is Jewish, and my mother's side is Presbyterian.)
My grandfather's funeral was held in the Harvard lecture hall in which he'd taught a well-beloved introductory course for many years. There was no funeral director or minister. Besides my father and my step-grandmother, there were eulogies given by the historian Howard Zinn and by a Cambridge storyteller named Brother Blue. A group of Buddhist monks did some chanting. Dave Van Ronk sang and played the guitar. Then everyone came back to the house for a buffet dinner and looked at a display of photos of the deceased. ("Look, here's George with Fidel Castro. Here's George with Bianca Jagger. Here's George with the King of Sweden. Here's George being dragged off to jail by the Cambridge police.")
It amuses me greatly to think of someone attending this event and coming away with the impression that it was the standard funeral pattern for elderly upper-middle-class Jewish guys.