My Shameful Identity

At the esteemed University of American, we tend to get obsessed with having an "ethnic identity."  Much like the days when my generation used to pain for hours over a cool sounding AIM screen name, my fellow students often go to extreme lengths to have a non-white people group they can identify themselves with, just to have a cooler story than that girl who taught English in Nepal over the summer (if you think you know who I'm talking about, keep in mind there are several hundred girls that match this exact description on our campus, and probably wear Buddhist prayer beads to show how cultural they are).  It gets so ridiculous that I often hear third or fourth generation wasps define themselves as "scottish-americans" just to avoid that terrible word "Caucasian" or (God forbid) "white."  These days, admitting you're white is practically admitting that you personally peed on a Native American's land and then proceeded to invade a small Asian country.

Unfortunately for me, there is no getting around the fact that I am, dare I say it, 100% white (aside from the scrap of Cherokee that my relatives successfully covered up).  Even worse, the word I use to identify myself is "southerner," a word that continues to conjure images of hooded, Bible beating rednecks who watch "Song of the South" and think of the good old days in the minds of alot of people.  But I tried, dear friends.  I searched my genealogy and looked for a cool 64th to identify with and brag about in class, but in the end I've faced the truth.  I am a southerner, and I am tired of feeling embarrassed to admit it.

The reality is that Southern culture is so much more than what people make it out to be.  Living in the south all my life, I know that I live in a culture that has deep roots in a lot of beautiful things, and many of my fellow southerners will agree that it offers something that Northern culture cannot offer.  For instance, in the South we're not afraid to make conversation with complete strangers.  It still wigs me out how unfriendly people can be in the North.  Also, we're not afraid to invite people over that we don't know, even feed them.  We'll even stand on the porch and wave at you as you drive off in your cars.  I would even go as far to say that we respect our elders a lot more than people in the North care too.  Southerners sort of have an unspoken rule that anyone more than 5 years older than you is a sir or ma'am, which usually gets a strange reaction from a lot of people.  Finally, this is a little ethnocentric, but "you all" and "yous guys" are the most awkward things I have ever heard come out of anyone's mouth.  Common, ya'll.

But no one cares to see this anymore.  Instead, our region becomes the whipping boy of the nation, the butt of every joke about anyone seen as backwards or uneducated (For the record, we don't eat squirrels in the South.  We prefer possum).  Understandably, I realize that to some extent we've reaped what we've sown.  We held on to slavery, we held on to racism, and, worst of all, we tried to pass it off as culture.  However, at the end of the day, this shameful identity is the only thing I can really claim for my own, so I prefer to forget the past and the racist blood that runs through my very veins and hold on to the beautiful things that we can still offer our country (fried okra anyone?).

As a closing note, here's a portrait of the cousin of my direct relative, dear old John Calhoun.  He was a pro-slavery advocate, and it often causes a pit in my stomach to think I share an ancestry with someone who advocated the civilized genocide of human dignity.  Often times I make it my personal mission to spite him.

But then again, hard to take a man seriously when he looks like a muppet.

~Jared

Give us an inch, and we tear the world apart

It’s been about ten years since I last stepped foot into the Air and Space Museum. The museum had not changed too much, but I certainly had. Now, I am older, more aware, and more out of place. Most everyone there was a tourist, who totted their kids along the museum, while the kids’ eyes gazed in wonder at all the planes around them. It’s strange to think I was in there shoes at some point.

I’m sure that when I was a lot younger, I saw the giant model planes just as they did, but now, ten years later, the first thing I saw was the bombs strapped to the bottom. I would also bet that when I was younger I saw the big rockets, but only now did I notice the nuclear warheads that they were carrying. Did the Smithsonian purposefully make the instruments of war look so fun and educational?  Is this the reason we blew up dolls with firecrackers on our driveways?

When I was young enough not to notice bombs and warheads, I used to get sage advice from my mom, one of which was "give a person an inch, they'll take it a mile."  In the Smithsonian, they show old grainy photographs of the Wright plane, perhaps the most important innovation in flight. This happened in 1903. Next to it, there was a picture of the very same model, only this plane had a gun attached to it, and the photo was taken in 1909. In less than ten years, the military had transformed an innovation into a weapon. In another part of the museum, rockets that launched satellites into space were displayed. Sitting right next to it was a polaris missile.  Again, a less than ten year span between discovery and destruction.

Science has given mankind amazing power, but what have we done with our power? Most of the time, we’ve looked for ways to use it to kill the people we hate. Sometimes, hate and war is a bigger driving force towards invention than scientific inquiry. Some of the greatest discoveries in rocket technology have come about when hateful men sought for ways to destroy their enemies across the ocean. Innovations in breathing apparatuses came about to allow early pilots to breathe while on bombing raids. Technology gives us the inch, and when it gives us the inch we take it the mile. We then see what its really like to tear the world apart.

Walking out of the museum, I kept thinking about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly the scene where the monkey discovers how to use the very first tool, a bone, and the first thing he uses it for is to kill a tapir (what tapirs were doing in Africa remains a mystery to this day.  I plan to ask Zombie Kubrick that some day). In midst of cheesy costumes and several tapir maulings that would make any PETA activist cry, Arthur C. Clarke knew what he was talking about. The twisting of invention to satiate man’s desire to kill. It still happens, just with different monkeys and different bones.

~Jared