Cultural Capital

A kid at my job was sitting behind me earlier this week. And after messing up his computer clean up by accidentally pulling a plug, I tried engaging what seemed like an otherwise friendly dude in conversation. For some reason, my code switching kicked in, and this reason is not unknown to me. I tend to code switch depending on who I am talking to. But, often, when the actual switching of codes happens in front of the person I'm speaking differently to, the results are usually relatively awkward.

[Like the time I was saying good-bye to a friend by over-pronouncing all of my r's as I would speak to most of my college friends, and my proper good-bye got intercepted by a dude in Central Square saying,  'Ey yo, what up,'
And I, in my many years of experience with getting hit on in Central Square, just said,
'Wud up,'  which, in turn, elicited an awkward response:  'Why you talkin' like that all the sudden?'
 Ah! Cuz I adapt how I sound to who I'm talking to and I'm a confused bi-product of a multicultural context.]

So my slang kicked in at the office and the computer kid said,

                "Please don't use that word ever again."

 He says this with a sense of authority, as if he is the slang-keeper, holding the authority to approve or deny the use of slang terms to anyone he deems incompetent. And worst of all, he says this to me as if I'm some suburban white person trying to impress him or something.  No offense to suburban white people, but that's just not who I am. And if I was, I would be writing a whole other post about the socially acceptable uses of certain terms and how who one is affects how well these terms are received.

      Well, the conversation doesn't end here. He proceeds to challenge how Dominican I am, asking me to "say something in Spanish."
"You were born here?"
"Yes," I respond.
"Then you're American. Say something in Spanish, you probably can't speak it."

And here I am sitting in my cubicle with my pencil skirt and button down blouse, with client files stacked next to me, listening to this kid in baggy jeans with a modern day jerry curl challenge me to a cultural match, reminiscent of High School "yo' mama battles.'

        I ignore it because...why wouldn't I? I'm done with my friendly attempt at conversation. This has now stepped into a realm I am not willing to engage.

        My coworker happens to pass by, addressing me in Spanish, to which I respond in Spanish. And of course, he says: "See, you're not Dominican. You don't speak Spanish."
Ummm ok.... I ignore.

He proceeds to educate me about said Dominican spanish and explains, "See, you have to know about el tigeraje..." Now, tigeraje is actually not used correctly in this sentence. Tigeraje refers to street smarts, which he meant to use in order to explain that if I did not speak with Dominican slang I surely wasn't Dominican.

      Although the encounter is laughable, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and with questions about our perceptions of people. Granted, I was born in the United States and went to a private college. But had he known my background, would he have treated me this way and questioned me so intensely? Had he seen me in a context other than my work environment where my language sounds different, would he have received my switch into slang as defensively as he did?

     Of course I was not going to speak Dominican slang in the office, because 1. I'm in an office setting, which requires a certain degree of professionalism.2. I was not born in a rural town outside of the city in Dominican Republic, I was born in Cambridge.  And 3.  The Spanish I know as my first language comes from a family that is relatively proper.

    Had he known that our backgrounds were probably not that different-that my mom was a single parent, that I grew up in project housing, that graffiti intrigued me as a 14 year old and that I was part of a rap group throughout my adolescence, known as the girl that raps; that I read Source magazine and followed the East Coast-West coast battle long before he was born (represented by Tupac and Biggie); that I cried when The Lox and Faith Evans sang We'll Always Love Big Papa--would this encounter have panned out differently? But listing my credentials is a waste of breath in this situation. The only reason I list them here is to get at a larger point: We assume things about people, especially when it has to do with culture. We use our "cultural capital" to lord over others sometimes, like-

"I grew up in the projects, my big brother is in the Latin Kings, my cousin snorts coke and my mother left me when I was two, what about you?"

Someone in this situation is not lamenting their childhood nor projecting their feelings of brokenness here. They are, in fact, gloating in a self-aggrandizing manner because the culture affirms this kind of background as evidence of cultural badges of honor.
     And this attitude is not limited to people growing up in an urban context. I see this in suburbia all the time. Take the all too familiar post-Gordon party, for instance, I hear conversations like this often:

-"I went to community college for six months, so I was totally in shock when I went to Gordon," says the blonde kid from New Hampshire whose family is Republican, as he ostentatiously smokes a cigarette and blurts out the word "sex" every five minutes.
-"Six months!" Cries the other. "I went for two years before I transfered to Gordon! Ha! Take that, you ignorant fool!"

Well, friends, guess what? There are people in the world with even greater exposure to all things un-Gordon than you! Who have no clue what evangelical even means and who have never seen so many look alikes together in one place in their lives.

    And the same goes for homeboy who was so proud of his knowledge of street Spanish. Listing my 10 years of bilingual schooling, my experience providing interpretation services and my experience tutoring Spanish is probably irrelevant here. Never-mind the fact that Spanish is my first language and it's the only thing I've ever spoken with my mother. I would be just like him if I began to engage him in his world of laying claims to cultural capital. Because in the end, there is someone who speaks even better Spanish, who is more Dominican than the both of us combined; namely, people who live in DR. So our cultural battle here would be nothing more than trying to prove one of us is more clueless than the other. So that it doesn't have to do with culture at all, but with pride.

Suburbia (Warning: the beginning is slightly angry and it gets happier towards the end)

Sometimes suburbia upsets me, like when people who I know to have very limited experiences try to shun others who they deem "inferior" to themselves.
When cliques of far more "superior" people are formed at the expense of those crowned with middle school titles of "uncool." Like-Oh, I'm sorry. Your skinny jeans and oversized glasses give you an excuse to be rude.
-"No, but I smoke cigarettes and only lived in the suburbs 23 of the 25 years I have lived."
Impressive......
(Sarcasm abounds).

Except no one calls anyone uncool in their twenties, they simply give looks and walk around with an air of superiority.
Little do they know that this is precisely what their fathers and mothers did before them, excluding Blacks, Latinos and others who were not deemed as "superior."
" Oh no!" Cries the hipster. "I voted for Obama."
Obama?
Your previously conservative ass voted for Obama?
Well, don't you get a golden star! Oh, wait! You went on a study abroad trip for two semesters and had a cross cultural experience too?
Wow. Good for you!

And then, there are parts of suburbia that are near to me. Like the beaches and the families and the moms who bake you cookies when you meet them. And the hobbies and the outings.

And then there are the experiences I have in this place (that happens to be in a suburb) with people who are genuine. They transcend every category I might have placed them in, just because we are friends. These people are not 'suburban.' They're not 'White' to me. They're not way too privileged for their own good. And they're not people I resent because I gave up what I had in a cosmopolitan hub to live in a place where no one would understand my experiences. These are lovely people. Compassionate people, who I know by name and as individuals-who may or may not fit into the stereotypes I may have for them. You want to make fun of my occasional accent? Go ahead, because we're cool like that. My defenses are down. Fists are lowered. And we are more similar than any theory or category might deem us to be.

Stereotypes are for people we resent. They are reserved for people we misunderstand or who misunderstand us. When someone offends us we call them "suburban" and remind them of how oppressive they were to our people so that it stings. We speak in grand large scales. We remind them of how provincial and narrow their experiences are. We remind them that they, in fact, are not superior. We unleash the ghetto and scare them with our slang. And it works. Two neck rolls and one finger raise and I get you to crawl back behind the white picket fence you grew up in-fenced from the large, diverse world that you got a peek of on your trip to Uganda your junior of college, but will always remain somewhat clueless as long as you live in the hipster world of rebelling against daddy and mommy (and of course, your Palestinian scarf does not mean that you are a hipster. You are, in fact, not a hipster).


But isn't this the root of many conflicts, small or large scale, in the world? You shun me, I let you know who's boss. You make me feel small, I make you feel small. And suddenly, we draw our guns.
And then, in a whole other realm, friendship happens, where we are given the space to breathe; to get to know the idiosyncrasies, the "weirdness" and the "coolness." Where masks are let go of. And suddenly the "suburban" person you were trying to belittle becomes your best friend. The approach here is different. We come to the table as equals, with nothing to defend. We offer our weapons as gifts and leave them at the irrelevant corner they belong in with crayons and beanie babies.

I see you. With clarity. Because all you are is my brother. All you are is my sister. You are not my attacker. You are not my oppressor. You are not the privileged kid who is trying to pretend he or she knows something about my culture and my demographic that I supposedly do not know just because you heard about it on NPR. You are blood, flesh and bones. Just like me.
I am not your judge, smashing my gavel on the pages of history to make you feel ashamed of your skinny jeans, pretension and escapism. I am your housemate who yells when she's offended, who you get to tell to shut the hell up, because I'm only bullshitting because I'm offended. You call my bluff because we are the same and different. And we revel in it all. Together.

A journey through the eyes of my itunes

I got my old Dell laptop back today. This laptop was the one I got in September of my freshman year of college with the scholarship money the City of Cambridge gave me. It was one of the first larger items of mail I had ever received, and it helped usher in a convoluted chapter of ups and downs.
On it, I downloaded tons of 90's R & B that I would sulk to in my dorm room my first semester in 2004. Monica soon welcomed Switchfoot-"I Dare You to Move" in the Spring of 2005. I remember listening to this and all of the contemporary christian music you could think of. In light of the culture I have come to know of indie-hipsters where turning against daddy's religion is key, this might sound a bit absurd. But at the time, these CCM artists (I learned the acronym recently) helped establish a cultural connection to this new culture I had discovered, of oriental scarves, going to the gym at 6am, sitting in the green grass between classes and sipping lattes at the former Claymore at 12:30 am every night.

Then came Common, John Legend and spoken word artists when I went back home to Cambridge that summer to try to make sense of the new culture I had found and it's relationship to my own context.

But then sophomore year rushed in at the end of August of 2005 and Mercedes Sosa was ready to help me deal with cultural identity. Marx was sitting on my desk-and I didn't just read him for class. My Dominican flag was my security blanket that helped me hang onto my roots as it hung from my dorm wall. Listening to the songs from Latin American revolutionaries singing through the Nueva Cancion Movement served as the soundtrack for my Latin American politics class and my participation in May Day 2006, rallying for immigration reform. The Rock en español that I had discovered in Dominican Republic that year took me through the angry moments that spring.

Junior year brought me Radiohead through an old boyfriend. Sufjan Stevens came flying through to speak to my more culturally heterogenous soul when I worked as a barrista at the small closet they called Claymore "If you have a father or if you haven't one, I'll do anything for you." And it all went downhill from there--or uphill.
Listening to the variety of music on my old itunes takes me back to these places. The smells of my apartment senior year in the basement of Ferrin. Flashbacks to getting ready to go to parties in Beverly, where I was more an observer than anything else-not quite sure if I was a full fledged participant quite yet. The colors of the tiles in the bathroom, the smells of cleaning product during times of extreme motivation-Jarabe de Palo bring me back. Laying in bed thinking about how I was going to get through it all during times of extreme difficulty-Lifehouse was the tear jerker.
The songs from different genres going one after another like a really awkward mixed CD take me to the activism, the optimism, the cultural questioning. It gives weight to my experience and reminds me of how profound these were. Even the Spanish Christian songs take me there-to times when I was more sure, but also to times when I was in tune with changing my bad habits or detrimental character traits. "Cancion de Sanidad": "Ven, saname Senor." These take me back to times of profound prayer, of crying out, to the times of absolute desperation and to times of absolute elation.

They remind me of the incredible transformation that has taken place in the last 5 years. And to top it all off, there's a spoken word piece in there that I had written for my friend's communication class at Emerson College in 2008. It was all about my journey from Dominican chain-wearing days to the whole foods shopping and cafe going days.
Crazy. Cathartic.




It makes me think....
When I look back I feel that I have gained so much, that I am empowered in a way I had never been. I feel that I have climbed a really tall tree or something and now can see that when I was so sure that the world consisted of three roads and 1,000 trees, it might have atleast 300 roads and 10,000 trees, if not more. In fact, I'm sure that I have more trees to climb and that there are more roads and trees to see that I do not have access to now.
It makes me think of this idea that salvation lies in tapping into these universal principles that break us free and help us to transcend our previous limitations or at least to understand them more fully. Now, there a whole new set of limitations and I'm excited to keep climbing.