LONDON'On my flight from London to Malta, the woman beside me kept peering over my shoulder at an article on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Jammed into the economy class row of airline seats, I could nearly feel her shaking her head and sighing, presumably at the all too familiar picture of violence in the Middle East that accompanied the article. A few pages later, an article on foxhunting came up'again eliciting the audible sighs of my neighbor. Of the two, it was the comparatively smaller, nearer, legislatable atrocity that brought us to conversation. I asked her what she thought of Parliament's attempts to ban the curious upper-crust English past-time of terrorizing foxes all over the countryside before letting the dogs tear them to bits.
I learned that she was not a fan of the foxhunt or its unnecessary cruelty. In fact, as is sometimes the case between strangers on long flights to warmer climes, I learned a great deal about her in those few hours. Our conversation drifted from foxhunts to her home in Wessex, her three children to her several grandchildren. Eventually, tentatively, from Northern Ireland to the West Bank.
\It's a shame,"" she said. ""But it's hard to live together. My son married an Indian. She was born in England and even converted to be a Christian like us. But it's difficult. There are cultural differences still and she's hard to get on with.""
It seemed somehow irreverent to compare the deep-seated animosities that have grown in the Middle East and Northern Ireland to not getting along with your daughter-in-law. But perhaps it isn't irreverent at its heart, or irrelevant for that matter. It recognizes a simple truth: There are things we don't choose to be, and people we don't choose to live alongside.
There is a very strong current of American culture that seeks to overtake cultural differences, render them obsolete and keep them around as museum pieces or ethnic flair. It is optimistic, well intended, somewhat sadistic and quite possibly requisite to a healthy community. Everyone gets to play on the same playing field, but they can only play by one set of rules; the price of equality is often mainstreaming.
But what about when you don't want parts of your identity rendered obsolete, even if its memory is celebrated? It is a problem African-Americans have certainly faced since before the civil rights movement. African-American culture, separated from other dominant American cultures for centuries by institutionalized racism, is vibrant and distinct. But its art forms are too often treated as if they were artifacts rather than art, and its dialects must be left behind to attain mainstream success in the business world. Many conventionally successful African-Americans find themselves struggling to reconcile with their own culture. One of my high-school friends, a student of color who would herself go on to a top university, insisted on referring to Colin Powell as ""the whitest black man"" she knew'and she was not commenting on his skin.
It is a crisis of identity that some Middle Eastern Muslims might relate to. All around the world, ""success"" is increasingly Western-style. English is the international business language. The global economy depends on the idea of interest, which the Koran forbids as usury. Science and technology'even weapons'are imported. It's no great wonder that some feel they must choose between a proud past and a future of American cultural imperialism, others that they are in some sort of war.
Diversity and globalization are immensely valuable, but can levy an enormous price. By comprising diversity, cultures must give up a degree of ethnocentrism, among other things. In the clamor of diversity, their claim of authenticity sounds a little hollow. Frustration grows to a greater or lesser degree. The sources of cycles of hate and violence can, in fact, be pitifully simple, exacerbated by relentless frustration'an old story, a bit of land, a misunderstanding. To my friend from Wessex, it is a minor tragedy. She and her daughter-in-law terrorize one another a few times a year and otherwise avoid speaking. Elsewhere, though, there are greater pressures'and far greater stakes.
While writing this, I flipped back to the article I had been reading on the plane. It was nothing memorable. More dashed hopes, young suicide bombers, young soldiers. The picture that accompanied the story was also an archetype of the present. Two men, fists raised and clenched in anger or anguish, mouths wide with hate and frustration, screaming something that is, in any case, inaudible.
