In 1978, I was a trainer for a graduate student professional development program sponsored by the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine. The participants were in a week-long sensitivity training group (known as a T group). Our theme for that week was “Management of Similarities and Differences.” In revisiting the paper I wrote at the time, I realized that the same needs exist today: the need to understand the impact of cultural differences in all our interactions with people different from ourselves. My paper was based on the experience I had that week working with Rahim, a dark-skinned, sloe-eyed Malaysian Muslim whose cultural and religious values did not fit into a predominantly Western culture. Rahim tried to identify with two black men. He invoked his dark skin as a similarity, but his hair was straight and his eyes were slanted; he was not part of them. Rahim tried to identify with the Philippino Catholic priest; he invoked Asia as their cultural similarity, but their histories, religion and cultural patterns were dissimilar. Rahim joined the Jewish group, but he is a Muslim and even though he invoked Abraham as their common ancestor, he was only well tolerated, but not one of them.
So Rahim wrote a letter to our community:
“Saudara dan Saudari (Male Relatives and Female Relatives),
“Assalamualaikum (May the blessing of God be upon you). I am faced with the issue of culture and race that bother me at this moment, the intensity of which I have not experienced previously. I ask myself why?
“I am at a point in my life that requires me to prepare to return back into my own culture, an Asian/Malaysian Islamic culture. This phase in Bethel for me is the termination stage of an experience so intensely personal and yet in some ways so distant.
“I find myself relating to others in an American cultural context quite foreign to me and often times conflicting with my own cultural values and principles. I have learned a bicultural orientation to Western/American values, but with no reciprocity in this process. I feel my culture devalued. I have straddled cultural barriers and have learned values alien to myself, but I despair for there is no perceived need for others to learn from me.
“I feel alone as a Muslim, a solitary Muslim in Bethel. I feel a need to express from that uniqueness and to have interchange from that uniqueness. I have a need to be different and yet to be one with others different from myself. I have a need to have others share what I have.
“Sekian. Maaf dan Wasalaam (Asking for forgiveness and closing of greetings).”
What spurred Rahim to write this letter was the result of anger expressed openly in the group. He sided with the victim of the outburst but was reprimanded for being overprotective. Rahim explained that confrontation is a sign of ill-breeding, a concept foreign to the rest of the group. In fact, Rahim stated that to react too quickly is dangerous, emphasizing that one must reflect on an event before responding to it. The value of spontaneity is not a value shared by all cultures. One must turn one’s tongue seven times in one’s mouth before answering.
Rahim believed in waiting, in being able to be passive. When my authority as a trainer was challenged, Rahim expressed with enormous pain that to lose respect for authority is unacceptable; trainers are teachers one does not challenge. He added that there was great dignity in being a good follower—as much as a leader. The non-competitive, non-challenging, non-active mode of responding is so foreign to us Americans that we see it as deviant behavior from the norm—the only one we have been exposed to.
Asians give negative feedback indirectly allowing the receiver to save face by ignoring it publicly. They also do not make demands directly or publicly, seeking to influence covertly. The cues are subtle but recognizable to Asians. The indirection permits the demand to not be acknowledged publicly and, if refused, to save the demander from shame. We call it cowardly. We call them devious and manipulative. They call us insulting and humiliating.
The global climate has changed since 1978. Since then we have had more opportunities of contact with Muslims and other cultures—some of it positive, some negative. What is important today is to be aware of the different, subtle cultural signals that are sent, but don’t know how to interpret, denying the validity of those signals. We don’t turn our tongues seven times before responding, but we do say “count to 10 before uttering an angry word” (although we seldom do so). Other concepts are harder to bridge such as our Western openness and face-to-face conflict resolution, which is foreign in many other cultures.
Almost 40 years later, the same lessons need to be continuously re-learned as our exposure to other cultures keeps increasing. Identifying our values in order to explain our behaviors to each other is a necessary ingredient to be able to get along.
Natsha Josefowitz is the author of more than 20 books and resides at White Sands Retirement Community. Copyright © 2017. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.