Colture Clash
...t striped me of my pride. I always thought I was a normal teenager growing up in Chicago. All my friends seemed to enjoy my company. In fact they respected me greatly because of my beliefs and for being that person that I am. So it felt pretty strange for me to be completely rejected and event told to loosen up my beliefs a little. My positionality was so strong that I used it to judge others and their behavior. Little did I know that it was the same instrument they used to judge me. Pretty soon I felt ostracized from my school community. I no longer looked like a normal fifteen year old but someone with "conservative girl" branded on my forehead. I felt so frustrated and at the same time deeply saddened that no one in my community accepted me let alone understand me. People even came up to me and told me to "let go" and be an "American". I don't know if American meant sleeping around with other people, drinking alcohol and doing drugs. I started to to think that maybe I wasn't the American I thought I was and America wasn't the home I believed I lived in. Maybe I should have just gone home. I'd rather miss a good educational opportunity than loose my religion and my identity. This really started to get to me. I also noticed my grades starting to slip. I knew I had to do something about this. So I talked to my school counselor, and to my surprise she didn't understand what the problem was. She told me that this was "normal" and that I should be more open to the IMSA culture and stop trying to resist it. When I first heard that I nearly fell to the floor, that whole conversation went in through one ear and out the other. I left and ran out sobbing, I really felt abandoned and left to die outside somewhere. I couldn't turn to anyone and ask for help. Now I really began to think that I was different and strange and that I didn't belong here. This was probably the most life altering moments of my life, but it came when I least expected it. I decided to call my mom to tell her that I gave it a shot, things weren't working out, especially with me not being able to fit in and the people not accepting me. Before I could say anything further my mom began yelling at me, but her words were so profound that to this day I still get chill up my spine. She told me the following: "Samina I can't believe your, your throwing away you life to a bunch of people who can't accept differences. You didn't commit any crime, you didn't murder or steal, where's your pride. I don't ever want to see you back here, do you understand me! I want you to keep your head up high and a smile on your face. This country is just as much as your as it is theirs. Don't think for a minute that there is something wrong with you because there isn't. And at that my phone line went off the hook. I don't know what it was but I finally saw the light and understood my place in society, and what really shook me was that she was right. I had every right to practice my beliefs as they did. Looking back I think both sides ( my beliefs vs. school community beliefs) had a very ethnocentric attitude. I didn't understand their culture because I thought my lifestyle was ideal, free from any breakups with boyfriends, fear from getting pregnant, STD's, alcohol and drug addiction. But the very same could have been said about my lifestyle, not being able to go out and party, no relationships, nothing to experiment with, my lifestyle to many would have sounded very boring. Now that I'm older it's easier for me to understand other cultures. Especially when coming to Boston where it's a melting pot of cultures in one city. This interaction can be either positive or negative depending on the level of sensitivity and respect people have for other culture groups. Which brings up an important concept of ethnocentrism. This type of behavior exisits when placed in a new environment. One may think that their view point and way of life is to be prefered to all others. For example the statement I made about how people could live such lives accordingly and not think about their consequences.There is nothing wrong with such feelings, because it characterizes the way most individuals feel about their own cultures, whether or not they verbalize their feelings. It is this point of view that gives people their sense of people-hood, group identity, and place in history. But this doesn't constitute ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is negative when ones own group becomes the center of everything, and all other are scaled and rated with reference to it. In my case there were several situations where it was apparent that ethnocentrism became negative. Especially the judgement I passed about my roommate as being vulgar in her behavior an speech which in turn made me formulate negative opinion about her. It reaches extreme negative form when a more powerful group not only imposes its rule on another, but actively depreciates the things they hold to be of value. Which brings me to the second point of cultural relativism, that concepts are socially built and vary cross-cultually. These concepts may include such fundamental notions as what is considered true, morally correct, and what constitutes knowledge or even reality itself. My Islamic upbringing taught me everything to lead a straight life and anything out side of that was wrong and morally incorrect. In the American society many of their views conflicted with mine and made it hard for me to cope in my new environment. Wheras many of my religious views tend to be very oppressive and strict according to American standards which may make many Americans react negatively to my culture. One of the issue which seems never to enter the discussion in the debate over incorporation of western values into the world is the question; is westernism better? Westerners tend to look out into theworld of human existence which a degree of conceit at cultures we view as less developed. However, a close look at Western society leads to many questions over just how well our values have worked. From that perspectiv...