They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this series focuses on a single picture and what it brings into my mind. In this particular post I’ve chosen two photos (and written closer to 2000 words) on the topic of “otherness”. One picture is me at a work party with the other teachers I worked with in Japan and the other is of me and my students when I taught in New Orleans.
There have been a lot of times in my life where I have been the “other”. In fact, most of my adult life has been dominated my some form or other of “otherness”. Some have been more pronounced while others have been more subtle. Since this idea of “otherness” has captured the national attention recently, and for very good reason, I thought I’d offer my own perspective.
After High School, I went to Penn State, a state university in central Pennsylvania. I didn’t realize at the time nor think much about the fact that the vast majority of people there were obviously going to be from Pennsylvania. There were always sports team loyalties and conversations about differences in accents and dialect that mostly went over my head. It wasn’t until much later, having spent a fair amount of time driving through rural parts of the state and recognizing town names from people I went to school with that I realized how different their upbringing was from mine. When I think of my time there though, I think mostly about our school spirit and camaraderie – how our “sameness” around our love of Penn State, our obsession with wearing blue and white clothing and our never-ending conversations about the football team overshadowed, for me at least, that sense of “otherness”.
In my professional career as a tour guide, I have taken hundreds of people from around the globe on cross country tours of the United States. While it is obviously my home country, I have spent much of the last 20 years surrounded by international guests. Most of the time, I am the only American in the group. Much like in Pennsylvania, the Australians usually duke it out with the British over different words or phrases they use at home. I’ve become an expert on all forms of English and can translate without thinking when someone wants a serviette (napkin) or capsicum (green pepper) or needs some paracetamol (Tylenol). I’ve also become an expert at moderating discussions about the politics and history of this country. I’ve loved what I do, but there are moments of deep loneliness out there too. September 11th springs to mind when I had to navigate those next few weeks guiding a tour for international guests when in that moment all I wanted was to be surrounded by other Americans to mourn and discuss what had happened. As a guide, my “otherness” has been the uniting force on our tours. While my guests are “others” in this country, I am “other” within the group and it’s my job to serve as the go-between. This process has really forced me to think deeply on some things and consider why things are the way they are here as I try and help navigate those questions from my international guests. It’s been an amazing experience, but it has left me often feeling like I live between worlds – somewhere between the international world of the people I talk with on a daily basis, and the United States which is my home. It’s only been recently when I realized how few American women I’ve dated in my life, and how they are less familiar to me than the British women who normally make up a huge part of my daily interactions.
When I left guiding to take a teaching job in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I didn’t really understand how segregated the school I would teach in would be. In the two years I was there, I had exactly one white student and one Hispanic student, neither of which would stay at our school past Christmas. Beyond those two, every one of my students was black, leaving me once again in a state of “otherness”. There was a prolonged and challenging period of building trust and building a relationship between my students and myself. While I may have been the one at the blackboard, I was definitely in the middle of their world. I had never heard the “N word” used so freely and so frequently in my life and was honestly a little shocked by it. It was a very strange day the first time one of my students referred to me using that word, but I knew it was a sign of acceptance in some way. It may have been the only time that word made me smile. Over the course of the two years I was there, we had some interesting conversations and I learned a lot about what it was like to grow up in a black community and how different it was from how I grew up. First we learned to get along with each other, and then we learned to respect each other, and finally there was real love between us. I loved those kids and they loved me and it was a special time. I remember feeling hurt when a new student called me a racist and a few other choice words, but I didn’t have to say a word as my students jumped in to defend me. My heart swelled. It was a strange day when Barrack Obama won the election in 2008. My students were ecstatic, as was I, but some of them expressed a sentiment along the lines of “we won and you lost” which hurt because I felt we had all won in one way or another that day. But of course they were only children and I know they were only expressing themselves. The two years I spent teaching in that school taught me a lot and it is and experience I wouldn’t trade.
When I moved to Japan in 2010, I experienced “otherness” like I never had before. I moved to a small, rural fishing town called Usuki where I taught English in Japanese public schools. There were, to the best of my knowledge, three other white people in my town. One was a Canadian and the other English teacher in town, and the other two were married to Japanese women and generally stayed out of sight. When I moved there, people were shocked when they saw me. It was a small town and I’m a big person. There were times when I would see people cross the street to avoid me, and several times I heard drivers lock their doors when I walked past. Some things which I found endearing when I arrived would grow to bother me over time. One school offered me a fork and spoon at lunch, fearing I couldn’t use chopsticks. After two years of living there, they were still offering these utensils. It seemed offensive that they would think that I couldn’t master this simple skill, but I know it was somehow ingrained into their hospitable, rural nature to offer. I remember being in a park one time with a teacher friend of mine to see the beautiful fall foliage and I watched a women approach with her children. When she saw me, she instinctively tucked her kids in behind her and stopped in her tracks. A tiny head popped out to see what was happening. “Michael?” the child asked. In seconds he had jumped out, explained to his mother that I was his English teacher and was doing a little dance out of excitement. His mother then conversed openly with us, but it was hard for me not to remember the fear in her eyes of a moment ago. I found myself carrying myself differently to appear non-threatening and always trying to smile no matter how I actually felt inside. At work parties I would often drink this really gross rice wine with fish tails in it because it would endear me to some of my older workmates. When I would travel to larger cities, there was a strange sense of camaraderie with black people and even non-Japanese Asians as we all fell into the same category of “otherness” in Japan. It was a fascinating two years there, and I wouldn’t trade it, but it was amazing to come home after that and be able to just fade into a busy street and not have to be “on” all of the time.
Throughout my life, I’ve experienced this “otherness” in one way or another. It’s helped define me and make me who I am today. And while there are certainly ways in which these experiences have helped me understand what that feeling is like, here is the difference, in my opinion, from what African Americans are calling into the spotlight. In all of my experiences with “otherness”, no matter how awkward, exposed or lonely I may have felt, I very rarely felt threatened. While there were definitely times when police officers in Japan kept their eyes on me or store owners may have watched me a little closer, and I could feel those eyes on me, I never felt like they might jump me at any minute. I have been in busy bars in Japan where I knew there were young, drunk and rowdy men who would probably prefer I not be in “their” bar, but I never feared they’d be outside waiting for me to teach me a lesson. I’ve never felt that when I go for a walk in my neighborhood that someone might chase me down and shoot me. That threat of violence is not something unique to African Americans, it is something many of my female friends and certainly my gay friends are intimately familiar with. It is something I wish nobody had to feel for just being themselves. That is the white male privilege we must acknowledge. That is what people are talking about.
Being “other” has always been something I’ve embraced throughout my adult life. It has allowed me to grow as a person and expand my understanding of the world and the immensely diverse people who live on it. While this post has highlighted my feelings of “otherness”, those experiences helped open my eyes to “sameness” as well. In all of my travels around the country and around the world, I have found people are more similar than many believe. Most people are good, hard working and want little more than to spend some time in comfort with family and friends. There are, of course, bad people too and I’ve seen them in every shape, size, color and nationality. But they are a miniscule minority. I truly hope that maybe in this country our time has come to celebrate our diversity, but embrace our similarities. No matter where you’re from or what you look like I promise you have more in common with the person standing next to you than you think. It’s just about opening the door which allows you to look inside and see the light.