Ch. 7: Barriers to Intercultural Communication

So let’s keep going on this. This is kind of an interesting topic. Barriers to Intercultural Communication. And I guess we’ll start with this, Barna’s Six Barriers to Communication.

And I’m going to talk about these in more detail in a minute, but first is “anxiety”. Right? Where … I don’t know, I’m sure you’ve been in this situation, where you’re the new kid in school or you moved to a new town or you got a new job or… you know, something where all eyes are on you. And you have to find a way to work your way into the community. And you get nervous, right? I mean, I certainly do. Still, every semester, the first couple of classes. And then sometimes that nervousness becomes the central focus of … of the thing, so you’re not actually able to communicate anymore, because you’re so busy and focussed being anxious about being unable to communicate that it becomes totally impossible to communicate. So that’s one of them.

Another one of Barna's barriers is assuming similarity instead of difference. Which is easy to do. Especially in an increasingly globalised world where everything kind of looks the same, it’s just very easy to just assume that the behaviour in one place is the behaviour in all places. Americans are being accused of this. And not, you know... not unfairly. I mean, I guess we do this all the time, I guess it’s deserved. We go to other countries and… You guys live in Paris, right? Most of you? And I’m sure you’ve met American tourists walking around, in our big cargo shorts, shouting questions in English because what American speaks French? Just sort of assuming that everybody speaks English, right? If I yell it, you’ll understand. But, the idea that they speak English everywhere, just sort of hoping that volume makes up for it. Which is … you know, I mean, look. They do speak English everywhere. They may resent it, but they'll do it if they have to.So it’s easy to make that assumption.

Whenever I go to France … I mean, I can’t speak French, my French is terrible, but I always give it a shot. And then people go “No, no, no. Please stop. Let’s stick to English. Please don’t do that to my language.” But at the same time I always think it’s important to at least make the effort. It’s just good manners.

“Ethnocentrism” we’ve talked about before. Do you remember that? That’s basically the thinking that your culture is the right culture. For whatever. Food, art, fashion. Whatever. And that the further it goes from that, the less … correct, I suppose, it is.

And then stereotypes and prejudices. We’ve talked a little bit about this before but, you know… again, if you remember we talked about the concept of "noise" before, when we talked about culture and communication. It’s a form of “noise.” Cultural noise.

And then these last two. I’m not really going to talk about “non-verbal communication” because we already did, more or less. And I’m not really going to talk about “language” because we talked about that as well. But those are two obvious barriers to communication. But really the first four are the ones I want to focus on. Anxiety, Assuming Similarity instead of Differences, Ethnocentrism, and Stereotypes and Prejudice.  

So...

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OK, so “Stranger Anxiety.” I forgot who it was, but I read not too long ago… maybe we talked about this before. Somebody said that there are basically two stories in the world. Right? That you can take all the stories in the world and you can basically boil them down to either “A Stranger Comes to Town” or “A Person Goes on a Journey.” And I’m sure there are other types of stories, but when you think about it, a lot of stories are just those two. You know, “A Stranger Comes to Town” and everybody gets freaked out in the town - you know, who is this unknown quantity? Or maybe the stranger gets freaked out, because they’re suddenly surrounded by menace and danger. And then the other one, “A Person Goes on a Journey”, and it’s essentially the same story from a different perspective. 

Again, this is where if you are new in a town, or you’re new in a school. Are they going to think I’m cool? Are they going to laugh at me? Are they going to say something about my haircut. Or my clothes. Or my accent. Are they going to beat me up? How do I fit in? And what am I going to have to do to fit in? And you can apply that to a personal experience, and you can also apply that to a new minority group or an immigrant group in a country.

I was reading an article this weekend about Macron, and it was all about the blowback that he was getting from Turkey, which has its own domestic political reasons for giving France some shit right now, and from Saudi Arabia and from Iran … after the funeral of the teacher who was killed outside of Paris. Samuel Paty. And the article basically argued that there are two ways of looking at that event, right?

One way to look at this story is “Well, it was an attack on secular freedom.” Which of course it was. I mean, the teacher was killed for showing cartoons from Charlie Hebdo and so on one level his killing was an attack on freedom of speech, on French secularism. And we’ve talked about that before. The other way of looking at that story is that the French government is reframing their own inability to successfully integrate the Muslim population into the wider definitions of what it is to be French. That if integration was working, the cartoons wouldn't have had such a triggering impact or maybe wouldn't - from a Charlie Hebdo point of view - wouldn't be necessary. That there’s a disenfranchised part of the French population and that what happened to the teacher was a response to that disenfranchisement.

And while the article was saying “Well, you can look at it this way or you can look at it that way” I thought, well, you could also look at it both ways. Both are equally true. And it’s essentially “A Person Goes on a Journey” and “A Stranger Comes to Town.” It isn’t like “This interpretation is right, so this interpretation must be wrong.” It just depends on where you’re standing, if you remember “Standpoint Theory.” It was an attack on secular freedom and it’s also about the failure of the French government to integrate people into the population. And the criticism Macron’s getting, by just focussing on the “Attack on Secular Freedom” aspect, is that he’s kind of letting himself off the hook. Because in order to integrate a new population into a culture - at least with any success - that culture also needs to be willing to change a little bit. That's how culture works.

But I thought it was interesting and I thought it kind of fed into that “Stranger Anxiety” thing. When people come in and the response to that and … you know, this is a big thing in America, right? The stranger can be the individual or it can be, you know … “Black Lives Matter” who, for a lot of people … even though the guys from the Black Lives Matter movement have been in America for four hundred years, they’re still being regarded as “The Stranger” and a threatening stranger. It’s assimilating the stranger.

“People who act differently from one’s cultural norms.” How do you act around an unknown or outside quantity? How should an outsider act around you? And remember, culture changes all the time. And the way culture changes is through incorporating what was once the stranger into the society. And generally speaking, it’s the person in the weaker position who has more to lose. And who that is - who the person with power is and who's in a weaker position - that changes all the time.

One other quick thing about anxiety and discomfort. And I think this is important, the last point here, where it reads that “critics argue that reducing uncertainty is not the driving force of interaction.” I think that’s important. It isn’t … whether or not you are comfortable is not the main thing. And it shouldn’t be. Communication isn’t about you being comfortable, it’s about you communicating, which is inherently kind of uncomfortable if you don’t know the person you’re communicating with. A stranger comes to town. A person goes on a journey. Whether you’re learning something from somebody else or you’re giving information. The problem now is that uncertainty itself is seen as a threat, right? People don’t like to be uncomfortable. They don’t like to be uncertain, uncertainty signals danger, and so what they do is they tend to limit the … they tend to block out the things that make them uncomfortable, anything that doesn’t confirm their own view of the world. And this is true in Red State Texas and it’s also equally true in Blue State Brooklyn. Or whatever the French equivalent to those places are. We’re all living in this bubble, right? And everything in the bubble reinforces your comfort and your reality, and anything that challenges that - instead of being listened to or being considered - is just automatically rejected because the main thing - the primary thing - is certainty. Being certain. Being comfortable in your certainty. And so, being safe.

And that goes against everything that I think is important about this wider topic, about this class. Which is all about ambiguity. Because the point here is “Yeah, but…”

And so what you have right now, for example in the United States, is you have this hardcore group of people - the 73 million that voted for Trump, for example - that reject anything that doesn’t go along with their narrative of events. The election was stolen, sticking with that example. Because the alternative is terrifying. If the election wasn't stolen, if a majority of the people you pass every day on the street aren't seeing the culture you're seeing the culture, then whose culture is is? And where do you fit into it? Because they either have to question the reality, as most people agree to it, or they have to question their place in that reality. And people would rather challenge reality than their world view. And do. Reject what makes you uncomfortable, and I don’t mean uncomfortable in a kind of casual way. I mean existentially uncomfortable. And I'm no different.

So, if you understand what I mean, the point of communication isn’t to make yourself comfortable in all situations. The trick is to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s the job, that’s the work. And the people that scare me are the people that believe in - I don’t know the French word for “Orthodoxy,” it’s probably the same word - but that there’s a set of rules and you stick to those rules. And this can be on the political left, and it can be on the political right, it doesn’t matter. But the idea that “these are the rules and they don’t change.” Well, good luck with that. Because if you carry that kind of thinking to its furthest extreme, you have to start lining people up against a wall.

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“Assuming Similarity instead of Differences.” I like this one, and I’ll tell you why. I used to use this book when I was teaching this class, I don’t use it anymore. “An Introduction to Intercultural Communication by Fred E. Jandt.” And when he talked about “Barriers to Communication” the example he used was this story that happened in New York. So in New York, about … I don’t know, I guess about twenty-five years ago … there was this Danish woman. And she and her boyfriend, who was this local guy, this neighbourhood guy, were walking down the street. And she had a baby, maybe a year old. They were pushing the baby down the street in a stroller. So she’s walking down the street with her boyfriend and her baby and it’s lunchtime. So they decide that they’re going to go get some lunch, so they go to a restaurant on the corner of St. Mark’s and Second Avenue, and they leave the baby outside the restaurant in her stroller while they go inside the restaurant and eat lunch.

Now, in New York you do not do that. You don’t leave babies outside on the sidewalk while you go in and eat. Because it’s New York, because you don’t. Because who knows what’s going to happen? But in Denmark, apparently, you do. And so this Danish mom left the baby outside, figured “OK, this is fine, this is what you do.” And so inevitably somebody saw the baby and then they called the cops, and then the cops came and arrested the mom and arrested the boyfriend and they took the baby away. Pretty soon there were news cameras and it became a big big story. But anyway, the reason I like it is because I knew them. I knew those people. At least, I knew the boyfriend. I don’t know if I liked them very much, but he used to come into the bar where I worked. So I just thought "Huh, small world."

I mean, it’s easy to do. The Danish mom is kind of an extreme example of that, but it is easy to make assumptions. I mean, everybody in the world knows “The Simpsons” and everybody in the world knows “Friends” and everybody in the world knows CNN and everybody knows McDonald’s. And one of the appeals of those things is that everybody knows the ground rules. Everybody knows what you’re supposed to do in a McDonald’s. That’s the point of McDonald’s. It might not be great food. It might not be fantastic, but it is familiar. You’re comfortable.

I remember once I was walking down some street in Paris and it was early in the morning. And I’m walking down the street and there are these two middle-aged English couples walking down the street in front of me. And they’re hungry, they’re looking for breakfast. And they don’t speak French, and they can’t read it, and they’re kind of looking through the windows of these restaurants but they can’t really figure it out. And what they want is... there’s a big difference between a French breakfast and an English breakfast, right? Just two philosophically very different approaches towards breakfast. And one one level, what they want is their Paris experience, but what they really want is breakfast. You know, eggs and sausages and beans and, they want comfort. It’s breakfast. They don’t want to have to do the work, it’s too early in the day. And they can’t figure it out and it’s making them anxious and they’re hungry and finally one of them turns to the other three and goes “You know what? Fuck it, let’s just go to McDonald’s.” And suddenly they were all happy. They were relieved. They were going to have a French moment, but they didn’t really want a French moment. They wanted breakfast. And I was thinking about that. I mean, that’s the thing about McDonald’s. Right? That whole "I'm Lovin' It" thing? Nobody loves McDonald's, but everybody knows McDonald's. Nobody goes to McDonald's because the food is amazing. People go to McDonald’s because you know what to do when you’re there.

OK, Ethnocentrism.

I mean, we kind of talked about this before. The idea of a reference culture. “Judging aspects of another culture by the standards of one’s own…” We’re going to talk about culture shock later, towards the end of the semester, but you know how the first stage of culture shock is this kind of honeymoon stage? Where everything’s great and amazing? And then the second stage is the opposite of that, the flip side where you find yourself saying things like “Why the hell don’t they just fix this thing?”

When my French students come to Ireland, you know, they’re here for about three months and they have a pretty good time. But at the end of the semester you ask them how it went and they say “Yeah, it’s great. You know, it’s all fine. The weather’s not great, but it’s OK. But, uh … you have no bread in Ireland.” And people here, they get a little defensive and say “Sure we do. We have bread.” And the French kids are like “I’m sorry, no. That’s not bread. We have bread. You have beer, don’t feel bad. But we have bread in France. In Ireland, you have no bread.”

And it’s that idea that French bread is the correct bread. In fact, I can feel some of you guys right now thinking to yourselves “Well, that’s true.” But every culture likes its bread, it’s almost a maternalistic … it’s visceral. Every culture likes its bread. French bread is great, no question about it. But Indian bread is really good. India has great bread. It’s interesting, actually. Every culture has like an emotional attachment to its bread. And they all think that their bread is the bread. Ireland has some good bread. And the point is… the idea is that reflexive notion that “Yeah, it’s fine, but it’s not really bread.” It’s a cultural superiority complex. That our culture is basically…

It’s funny, because I was reading your essays a few weeks ago and there were a couple that read, basically, “France is a land of luxury and sophistication, and we have fashion and we have wine and yadda yadda ya.” And that’s true. I mean, you definitely do. But, uh, but so does Italy.

So the question is, is French wine “better” than Italian wine? And if you say "yes", how do you measure that? How do you prove that? French fashion “better” than Italian fashion? How? Why? When you move into the territory of “better” where does that come from? We're right back to that "bottom of the iceberg" stuff.

It's the opposite of “cultural relativism”, if you remember. The idea that every culture has developed in its own way because of its own unique set of circumstances, and that the reason that French culture is different from Italian culture is because the French had to deal with different things than the Italians did. And so you can’t take the standards and judgements of French culture and apply them to Italian culture. Or to Saudi Arabian culture, or to Chinese culture, or whatever. At least not in any useful way.

At least, not fairly. If France has a different bread culture than Ireland, it’s because of the weather and the soil and the water and and who migrated where and the skills they took with them. And keeping that in mind saves you from sounding like an asshole. "You have no bread..." And, you know, remember it goes both ways. I mean, it’s easy to forget that while you’re judging some other culture based on the standards of yours, they’re doing the same thing with you, and just as sincerely. "In France they have no bread."

You know, we all got to where we got to for a reason.

That said, there are some things I just don’t want to be a relativist about. You know? I mean, there are cultures where I don’t like the way that they treat women, for example. Or there are cultures where I don’t like the way they raise children, necessarily. Or whatever. But you have to be able to separate the people from the culture, as well. At least for the purposes of communication. I mean, I’ve had students from places where I have fundamental disagreements that I want to have. I want to have those disagreements, but at the same time, I like the students, they're nice guys, and my job isn’t to get them to think the way I think, my job is to teach them something. English, for example. Right? I’m not teaching the country, I’m teaching the guy.

OK, that’s cultural relativism. And then “cultural nearsightedness.” I think we kind of talked about this before. Or maybe we talked around it. The idea that a dominant culture pays less attention to a less dominant culture, basically. And I don’t think it’s deliberately rude, it’s just…

I remember I was in Prague once, a couple of years ago, and I was walking around, just as a tourist, just kind of checking stuff out, and all of a sudden I turn the corner and I see at least a couple of thousand people standing on either side of this main busy road and they’re all holding flags that I don’t recognise and speaking in a language I don't understand. And everybody's very excited, and there are all these soldiers and guns and more people and journalists and cameras and there’s music and trumpets and this limousine comes driving slowly up to the gates of the castle. More flags and I didn’t know what the flags were and this limousine stops and this very important-looking man with silver hair and a big black coat comes walking out of the castle, with this very elegant woman standing next to him, and this other very important-looking man gets out of the limousine and they walk up to each other and they shake hands and everybody on the street starts clapping and cheering and shouting. Some of them are weeping, right? People taking pictures. And I had no idea who anybody was. Not a clue! I mean, obviously this is a big deal, and no clue. Because, you know, look... I’m an American. It don’t matter to me.

So that’s cultural nearsightedness. Right? It’s nothing personal, and I probably should know who they are, but, eh … you know. "Fuck it, let's go to McDonald's." And in America, cultural nearsightedness is easy, right? I mean, oceans on either side and… The President of Mexico? I don’t know. Can’t remember. Probably never knew. Canada? Justine Trudeau, but only because he’s hot. We remember the hot world leaders. Name me the New Zealand Prime Minister before Jacinta Ardern. See?

Here, let’s play a quick game. Let's see how you do. You guys are Europeans, right? You’re young sophisticated educated Europeans, you should do great at this. OK, here are ten current world leaders, how many of these guys can you name?

That’s a long pause, guys.

Two? That’s it? Just two? Guys … that’s pathetic, you guys. OK, so I made it easy. There’s Biden, and you all know him. And then there’s Macron. OK, so you’ve got Macron and you’ve got Biden. Well, OK. What about countries. Can you do countries? No? You can just do the country, you don’t even have to do the … What about this guy? This guy’s been the Prime Minister of his country since 1981. That’s a long time. Or this guy? No?

Alright. Getting back to our game, let’s see how we did. We got Biden, we got Macron, we’ve got Denmark with Mette Frederiksen. We’ve got Abdel Fattah al-Sisi from Egypt, we’ve got Cyril Ramaphosa from South Africa. We’ve got Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern from New Zealand, we’ve got Recep Erdogan from Turkey, and we’ve got Hun Sen - the guy who’s been in power since 1981 - in Cambodia. Finally, we’ve got President Emmerson Mnangagwa from Zimbabwe (which was once Rhodesia, if you remember Rhodes. If you remember that far back in the class), and last but certainly not least, you’ve got Leo Varadkar, Prime Minister (kind of) of the Irish Republic.

OK, let’s play one more game here. Because why not? Alright, you ready? Let’s see how you do on this one. Name That TV Sofa! You ready?

There you go. There you go. You couldn’t give me more than three world leaders, but I show you the sofa from “Friends” and everybody … “Oh, yeah, that’s Friends. Oh, yeah, that’s The Simpsons. That’s usually where Homer sits, right there.”

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Stereotypes. Just want to talk for a few minutes about stereotypes. Another reason I’m not crazy about this Jandt book is because… basically because when the whole subject of stereotyping and prejudice comes up, it seems that he really doesn’t want to talk about it. It makes him uncomfortable. And so what he does is he says “Well, stereotypes are wrong. And in many ways, stereotypes are like optical illusions!” And then it’s just page after page of optical illusions. And you have to come to the eventual conclusion that, with respect, you’re kind of avoiding the central question there.

Stereotypes are … I think there are two types, though I’m open to arguments on this. I think there are prejudicial stereotypes and I think there are more benign observational ones. So, let me ask you this. In Italy do people tend to use their hands when they talk? Yeah, OK. Great. They do. Fine. Is that a bad thing? Is that even a good thing? I mean, maybe it’s just a thing. It’s just a distinctive cultural behaviour. People in France, for example, do things differently than people do in England. Right? People in Italy have a different set of cultural mannerisms than people in... I don't know. Germany. And it’s a stereotype in that it’s a generalisation about a group of people, but it’s not a prejudicial stereotype that, that … you know, that leads to “othering” if you remember “othering.” When we talked about segregating one part of the population from everybody else? Right? And so Italians talk with their hands, and that’s observational. And nobody's going "Goddamn Italians, always talking with their hands."

However, you can’t trust Italian men because they all sleep around? That’s prejudicial. They're all in the Mafia. You know what I mean? I mean, I’m pretty sure that couldn’t be true. But it becomes accepted reality, whether it’s real or not. And going back to the idea of “hegemony” - remember, the influence - the influence through popular culture, when you want to reinforce the values of a culture  - or shift or shape the values of a culture. Stereotypical prejudices are one really common and effective way to do that, and now we're into "othering".

Uh, I have a friend back in New York who is an actor, and he’s black. He’s a … you know, he’s my age, so he’s this fifty-something year old black guy, and he’s a classically trained actor. Shakespeare. Moliere. That’s his thing. He likes Moliere. And any time he ever gets a job on television, on "Law and Order" or whatever, every time I see him he’s either playing, like … he used to play the guy in prison, right? Or he used to play the kid who attacks the cop. Or whatever. The criminal. And now that he’s getting older, now he plays the father of the kid in prison. Now he’s the father of the guy who attacks the cop. But then he goes home and he goes “Yeah, but I’m a Shakespearian actor. But those are the jobs, right? And rent’s expensive.”

And why do we do it? Well, to re-enforce political messages, for one thing. “The zombies are coming!” Or the Mexicans, or the Muslims, or the Jews. Or the Blacks. Or, once upon a time, the Irish. Or whatever.

Also, this anxiety right here, rape and miscegeny anxieties. I mean, one of them is - rape, obviously, is sexual violence. Miscegeny is even more complicated, I think, as an anxiety, because what you’re looking at is “mixed” marriages, or anyway “mixed” relationships. Which feeds into all sorts of complicated sexual and sexist anxieties as well. And the anxiety that “you” - white guy - are going to be replaced by “them” generationally. You know, it’s not an accident, for example, when Trump gave his speech about Mexicans, and he said “They are drug dealers and they are rapists.” Because that has an immediate emotional visceral effect on his white male audience. You know, “We've got to protect our women." That thing.

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And then racial profiling, which we’re going to talk more about in a little while and we’ve talked about it before. “Law enforcement practice of scrutinising individuals based on characterised indications of criminal behaviour.” Essentially. But that the police essentially target minorities. And especially young male minorities, though not exclusively. And I’m sure this is true in France. I know it’s true in New York. I mean, in New York it tends to be black kids. In Paris, I’m guessing … what, North African kids? But the idea that the police are specifically looking at one group differently than they’re looking at other groups. Is that … would you say that’s true?

Now, I know they’re not supposed to, and they might deny it if they’re asked, but… And here’s what’s interesting to me about that. There are two ways of looking at this. One of the ways is “Oh, well, that’s just because cops are racists.” Right? But I think that’s too simple. I think that’s too reductive. I mean, I’m sure there are racist cops, but here’s why it’s interesting. The myth, the story, is “we don’t discriminate based on ethnicity.” Right? You know, this goes back to the whole "We don't see colour" thing. "There is no such thing as race. In America, and in France for that matter, everybody is equal. But the way that the police work tells you that that’s not true.

So, for example, in New York, if you see a young white guy in an expensive car, the assumption is “Oh, that’s probably his dad’s car.” And if you see a young black guy in an expensive car, the first thought is “How’d he get that car?” Now, the reason people think that is because, socio-economically, it’s much more likely for the white kid to have access to an expensive car than it is for the black kid. That’s just true. Well, so what that means is that there’s a socio-economic inequality based on ethnicity. Of course there is. It's played out on the street every day. Whether you say it’s true or not, the police are telling you it’s true every time they pull over a young black kid in a decent car. Because that’s the way the police operate. And we all know it, but we can’t say it, so the cops have to make up reasons like “there was an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror” or some other bullshit. Do you understand what I mean by that? Anyway, we'll come back to this in a minute.

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Oh, I thought this was interesting. I found this when I was putting this lesson together a while ago. It’s basically a chart from the 1720s, 1730s. Do you remember when we were talking about high culture and folk culture, the culture in the cities and the culture in the country before the farmers moved into the cities and worked in factories? Well, this chart would have been something for the people who … obviously, because it’s written, it would have been for the literate elite. This is the Spanish guy, this is the French guy, I guess this guy over here’s English. Polish, Hungarian, Russian. Turkish. But basically, what this is is a chart so that as you’re travelling around or if you’re kind of idly studying, you look at this and you go “Ah, OK, Spanish people look like this, and this is how they dress and this is what they eat and…” So that when you were travelling you’d know what to expect, basically. Based on generalisations.

And I like these two pictures here because they were taken around the same time, in the 1950s, and they’re two countries in Europe. And any idea which two countries these might be? OK, this is definitely London. This other picture? You wouldn’t get these guys in England. It’s Rome. And I think you can see the differences. Dress, behaviour, expression. And, you know, cultures are different, right? I mean, the French act different from the English, and the English act different from the Americans, and the American act different from the Russians, who act different from… all that sort of stuff. And so generalisations in and of themselves aren’t necessarily “wrong.” I mean, that’s sort of what we’re basing cultural studies on, the idea that people do different things in different places. And then they merge and then it forms new cultures. And it gets more complicated and it never stops getting complicated.

Where it does get wrong is where you start using generalisations - which might not be at all accurate - but where you use generalisations to segregate one part of a population. So here’s another game I want to play.

They all talk with their hands. They’re fat. They think they’re the best. They’re cold. They’re aggressive. They’re loud. They travel in big crowds. All they do is fight. They don’t tip. They’re lazy. The men sleep around. They’re drunk all the time. They always say they’re the victim. All they care about is money. They’re racists. They’re ignorant.

OK, now here’s my question. And I want you to be honest here. When I said “they all talk with their hands” did you think Italians? When I said “they’re fat” did you think Americans? Be honest. Yeah, of course you did. It’s OK. Now here’s my next question. When we did the rest of them, did you start putting nationalities to the descriptions? “They think they’re the best?” Boom. “They’re cold?” Boom. “They’re aggressive?” Boom. Did you start making associations with these? I thought so.

Now that’s interesting, right? That's interesting.

Do you remember the “stages of perception” that we talked about? You see the red light, you go “Ah, a red light” and then you stop the car? It’s the same thing, you’re doing that here. These associations you make - Boom - that’s culturally determined. That’s a taught response. I mean, yeah, there are fat American. But there are also fat Germans. Yeah, there are aggressive Russians, there are also friendly Russians. But what’s interesting… I mean, I’m saying you shouldn’t do that. I'm not saying you shouldn’t make those associations. Because I do it too, absolutely. But where did we get those associations from? What was it in your culture that put that name to that description? And I think is really interesting. I mean, you remember learning any of those? I don’t. And then, again, if in popular culture all you do is see scary black people - even if they’re played by my friend the Shakespearean actor - if that’s all you see, and that’s your main experience with black people in America, then you’re going to go “Oh, yeah. They’re scary.” Because that’s the message that popular culture reinforces. You understand what I’m saying? We talked about hegemony. This is all about hegemony.

And how hard is it not to stop at a red light? It’s hard. It's really hard.

OK, so the Irish. Let's use them for a little while. Seems safe enough. And I think we talked about this before, but when the Irish first came to America, they were not really regarded as … you know, entirely “white,” if you understand what I mean. They were Catholic, which was already suspicious. And while they were kind of like the English, they were different enough that they… they were like the inverse of the English. They were routinely shown as or compared to gorillas, they were seen as kind of violent, they were drunk and they were dangerous and they weren’t quite civilised in the way that the English or the way that the American Protestants - who regarded themselves as essentially Anglo-Saxon cousins of the English - were. You know, this goes back to that "earlier stages of evolution" thing we talked about a few weeks ago. And so when they first started immigrating into America in big numbers, in the 1840s and 1850s, if you look at the political cartoons, you can see the caricatures. Monkeys. Gorillas. Swinging a bottle of rum.

And over here, this political cartoon, it’s essentially that “you will not replace us” thing, with the Irish coming in from the Atlantic and the Chinese coming in from the Pacific and they’re consuming America. Literally, in the case of this cartoon.

Now, this gets into another issue, right? Because the Irish, when they showed up in America they were seen as kind of like, unassimilated and savage. But that was 1840-something. 1847. Following the Famine. But today, of course, the Irish are completely assimilated into the American mainstream. Joe Biden, always makes a big thing about being an Irish Catholic. Nobody really cares anymore. If anything, the Irish give white people an excuse to play ethnic without actually having to be ethnic, which explains every movie that ever comes out of Boston.

There are two sports teams in America. There’s a university in Indiana called Notre Dame, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it but it’s a famous football team. And it belongs to a Catholic university and their mascot is this little leprechaun guy. They’re called “The Fighting Irish.” And there’s also a baseball team one state over, in Ohio, called the Cleveland Indians. And this is their mascot, this guy called Chief Wahoo. And, you know… absolutely nobody is offended by the Notre Dame Leprechaun. Nobody’s offended by the little Fighting Irish guy. But plenty of people are offended by the stereotype caricature of the Native American guy. First of all, people are saying “You probably shouldn’t call your team the Cleveland Indians anyway. And you definitely shouldn’t have this sort of cartoon big-toothed smiling mascot.” And there are protests against it, get rid of this mascot. It’s racist, get rid of it.

And inevitably, when people say “Well, you’ve got to get rid of this mascot” there's this pushback - usually from the more conservative end of the political spectrum. And the argument is “Well, listen, they have a caricature Irish guy and you don’t see the Irish guys complaining. So if it’s OK with the Irish guys, it should be OK with the Native Americans, too.” And I don’t know if you know the term “false equivalence” but that's basically what this is. Where you say “Yeah, well, it’s all equal. I mean, hey, we’re making fun of you but we’re making fun of me and we’re all one big happy family” - this debate between the Cleveland Indians mascot and the Notre Dame mascot is basically an example of a false equivalence. Because the situation of being an Irish American is not the same as the situation of being a Native American. I mean, if you look at issues around education, healthcare, employment … you can go down the list. Suicide is a huge issue in Native American communities. And so the Irish Americans, not only can they afford the caricature, they’re actually kind of flattered by the caricature. Whereas, for the Native Americans, they’re already in a … they’re not in as secure a position in American society. And so if this is the one equivalence, it’s not a positive one. And so this is kind of making fun of people that can’t afford to be made fun of in the same way.

Do you understand what I’m getting at, here?

Now, what’s interesting to me is … and I don’t want to get too into it, here, but what’s interesting to me is the debate about … one of the many ways to talk about the Charlie Hebdo thing is by drawing parallels to this idea of a false equivalence. If you say “Yeah, but we’re making fun of Catholics, too.” It’s like yeah, but in America, the Irish can afford the mockery, and the Native Americans can’t. In France, you could argue, the Catholics can afford the mockery, and the Muslims can’t.

It goes back to what I was saying before, there are two ways of looking at this argument. One, it’s an attack on freedom of speech and a secular society. Yes, that’s true. Two, it’s an indication of the failure of French society to assimilate people when there’s an imbalance in “How much of a French person are you?” If you know what I mean.

This is just a … you know, just to illustrate why the Native American mascot is different from the Irish mascot. Because not only is it racist, but it’s also really familiar, this sort of smiling ridiculous cartoon. It’s interesting, because one of the things that people do when they’re afraid of something, they make it ridiculous. Once it’s ridiculous, you don’t have to be afraid of it anymore. You understand what I mean? And that’s exactly what this specific kind of caricaturing is, taking something and making a cartoon out of it and once it’s a cartoon it’s not scary, it’s funny. And in America - I don’t know if it’s the same in France, France has got its own history - but in American popular culture, traditionally, black people and especially black men are portrayed as either scary or ridiculous.

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Which leads me in a roundabout way to this idea of “cultural appropriation.” And I don’t have an answer for this. I think it’s a really interesting question, but I don’t know how to answer it. First of all, let's start by remembering that there’s no "culture police" to tell you what you can and cannot do. Right? I mean, maybe this guy shouldn't be wearing a Native American headdress at a music festival, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go to culture jail. No culture police, and no culture jail. There’s no law against being an asshole. It might be offensive, and I get into a lot of conversations with my American students about “should he do it? No, he shouldn’t do it” but as a rule once you start using the verb “should” it’s a pretty good indication that you're in a weak position. Like, yeah, but what’re you going to do? You’re going to stop him? How? You know, should - I guess we’ll stick to it for a minute - should this young white woman over here have dreadlocks?

Is it inappropriate for her to have dreadlocks? Or is it inappropriate for this Irish guy to have a Maori tattoo? That’s a tribal tattoo, it has cultural significance for a Native New Zealander, and this guy is definitely not a Native New Zealander, so is it culturally inappropriate for him to have a Maori tattoo?

Or is it just, you know … he thought it looked cool. And it’s his arm.

Here’s the interesting thing about cultural appropriation, and my American students tend to get very upset about this, which is interesting because most of my American students tend to be middle-class white kids from the suburbs. Generally speaking, when you talk about cultural appropriation, you’re talking about middle-class white kids from the suburbs adopting the fashions and styles from other cultures. Right? And I get why that is so emotionally charged. At the same time, I don’t want to tell people what they can and cannot wear from other cultures, right? There’s two issues here, it seems. The first, does it go both ways? Right? So I’ve seen a picture of Kanye West and he’s wearing a kilt, right? Which is a very specific and very Scottish thing. And I’m not going to tell Kanye West that he can’t wear a kilt because he’s not Scottish. But at the same time, I suppose you could make an argument that that’s a form of cultural appropriation. I'm not going to tell my black actor friend that he can't perform Moliere because Moliere's not from "his" culture. It’s none of my business. And anyway, that's how culture works. The way that cultures work is that people mash up against each other and they take from each other and people borrow from each other and all that sort of stuff. And so we come up with new cultures. Right?

So I find myself in this really uncomfortable position of… again, with this class, I find myself in this really uncomfortable position of defending things on principle that I don’t necessarily agree with. We're going right back to our Belfast baker.

And then, of course we can’t really talk about cultural appropriation without of course talking about our old friend Rachel Dolezal, who I guess wins first prize for cultural appropriation here. This is major league cultural appropriation. So where do you draw the line between the girl with the dreadlocks and… Yeah, you’re right, she did rename herself. But, you know... so did David Bowie. People are allowed to do that. There was a long-standing tradition for actors with “Jewish-sounding” names to change their names to something “whiter,” and what’s the difference?

But where do you draw the line between this kind of music-festival Native American headdress cultural appropriation and Rachel Dolezal? And again, she’s really interesting to me because I don’t think that it is cynical, you know? That’s the weird thing about it. I don’t think it was just entirely cynical and opportunistic “I’m going to do this so I can get some money out of it” kind of deal. I think that I have a weird feeling that she’s being sincere. And if she is, that makes it more complicated. At least it does for me. It’s like, if she was just being cynical, then it would be a really clear and obvious “No, this is wrong. This is the wrong thing to do.” And don’t get me wrong, I think it probably was the wrong thing to do, but at the same time, if we’re saying that race and ethnicity is a social construct to begin with, then there’s no reason not to take things from other cultures.

Well, anyway, it cost her. I mean, she got into a lot of trouble. She got into a lot of trouble and she lost her job and I think she’s working in a nail salon somewhere. There’s a BBC interview that I kind of recommend, if you have a thing for uncomfortable interviews. Yeah, as far as I know she’s living on part-time jobs from grocery stores. So it cost her. But, in fairness to her, maybe, she stuck with it. You know, she hasn’t gone back to being “white.”

OK, and so this. The whole idea of “blackface” - and I don’t know what the hell Gucci was thinking. Does anybody remember this? Last year, when Gucci came out with this, er … this turtleneck sweater? So this … to an extent I have more respect for this other guy Billy Van, the Monologue Comedian, who did this whole straight-up blackface vaudeville routine, because that was 1900, when people were just unapologetically racist. “Yeah, I’m racist. Of course I’m racist!” However, by 2019, when Gucci came up with this black turtleneck sweater with the big red lips… I don’t know what they were thinking. Unless they were just thinking “this will be publicity.” Now that's cynical. That's cynical in a way Rachel Dolezal never even got close to being.

Anyway, after the inevitable blowback they said “Oh, we had no idea that this could be interpreted as…” I mean, you guys are business students, right? So you have to learn how to say things like this. “We had no idea that this could be seen as a racist gesture. We are going to take this as a learning opportunity.” But, honestly, how else could you see that? How else were you looking at that? And I can't believe for a second that they didn’t find this woman modelling the sweater - the most blonde and blue-eyed incredibly pale model in the world to model this thing - accidentally.

I mean, let's assume they knew what they were doing here. The question is why are they doing it? As opposed to Billy Van, this sort of minstrel thing. There's no real ambiguity with Billy Van. No "learning opportunity" here. By the way, do you remember when I was talking about how the Irish became increasingly assimilated and regarded as increasingly “white” in America? Do you remember that? Like ten minutes ago? Whatever it was? Right, well, one of the things that I think is … there was a tradition in Irish-American culture to perform. Singing and dancing and stuff like that. And it became really common for Irish performers, Irish entertainers around 1900 to perform in blackface. And in a weird way, by doing that, they were able to make themselves whiter because, you know … they weren’t really immediately regarded as completely white - and when I say “white” I mean metaphorically white. I mean “acceptable” white. So then, if you do this whole blackface thing, you can take off the makeup and when you take off the makeup you are “whiter” than you were before you put the makeup on. You’re drawing a contrast between yourself and the thing you’re pretending to be, and that people are saying you are.

It’s that repeated pattern of “if you want to get in with the dominant power, you pick a fight with the victim of the dominant power.” It's those kids that orbit the High School bully. As long as the bully's picking on the other kids, he's not going to be picking on you.

Again, with another really kind of complicated blackface thing. I don't know if you remember the Childish Gambino video from a couple of years ago? Yeah? OK. So, Donald Glover’s a very smart and media-savvy guy, and what he was doing - he was doing a lot of thing, but one of the things he was doing - with the clothes he was wearing and the weird sort of awkward dance moves that he was doing, was, he was working off of this. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the expression “Jim Crow,” but Jim Crow’s basically a caricature of a black person created by… you know, essentially a white cartoon caricature of a black person, created for the entertainment of white people. Right? A white creation of what black people are. And so what Donald Glover was doing, was taking the white invention of blackness - specifically of Black minstrel entertainers - and remember, Donald Glover is a black entertainer with a huge white audience - and claiming it as… It's a black entertainer caricaturing a white audience's caricature of a black entertainer, if you can follow all of those things. And by claiming it, and by claiming it as your own, he’s able to take the power away from it. I suppose. It’s like the opposite of Chief Wahoo. It's also, in a really weirdly convoluted way, a form of cultural appropriation.

And then Jean-Michel Basquiat. Who … you’ve probably heard of him. Maybe you know him. Famous painter, New York in the ‘80s. And one of the interesting things about him is that he had a really weirdly paradoxical relationship to the art world that he was in. Right? Because, first of all, it was overwhelmingly sort of an upper-class white art world. And he … I mean, he was a great painter, I really like him. But a lot of his success was down to the fact that he was “cool.” And the reason he was considered cool was because he came across as this black New York street guy who didn’t give a shit, in an overwhelmingly non-black non-street world. And he knew that. He was marketing his own image, as well as using that paradox as a subject for his paintings. He was a thoroughly middle-class kid. His dad was an accountant. I mean, it's not Rachel Dolezal levels of cultural role-playing, but he was playing a role. And what choice did he have, in a way? To an extent, his success depended on how well he could play that role, and he didn't make the rules but he was certainly aware of them. But Jean-Michel Basquiat had to be a "Black" artist in a way that... I don't know, Keith Haring didn't have to be a "White" one. And so it was really a kind of complicated game he was playing, and I’m not sure in some ways it didn’t kill him.

But anyway, this painting. “The Irony of the Negro Policeman.” Which, again, circles back to … well, we talked about this already. The racial profiling thing.

OK, so Racial Profiling. “The law enforcement practice of scrutinising certain individuals based on characteristics thought to indicate a likelihood of criminal behaviour. Profile also refers to, for example, conducting traffic stops based on the driver’s perceived race, ethnicity, gender, or economic status. Is profiling a useful and necessary law enforcement tool, or is it a form of stereotyping that unfairly targets minorities?”

This is another one of those examples, it’s like the Macron thing. Is it an attack on freedom of speech or is it an indication that France has failed to assimilate the minority population? Maybe it's both. It could be both. Is racial profiling a useful and necessary law enforcement tool, or is it a form of stereotyping that unfairly targets minorities? Well, both. Again, maybe it's both. But the thing is, the law that is being enforced here is a law that racism is built into. It's baked in, it's the banana in the banana bread. You know what I mean? And so yeah, if you want to enforce the laws as they stand, you know, you engage in racial profiling. Of course you do. The problem is with the legal system itself. The cop is just the guy who puts a face on the system.

There was an interview, I forgot who... we’re going to talk later in the semester when we talk about the fundamentals of American culture but... You know, America was built on the idea of constant expansion, right? And so there was always a border. There was America, and then there was a border, and then there was the frontier. Mexico. Canada. The West. But either way, the frontier. And I can’t remember the name of the guy who was talking about this, but basically what he was saying is that now the borders of America are inside America. Right? Based on class or neighbourhood or race or city versus country or whatever, and that the police - I mean, they do other things too. I don’t want to get too carried away here, they’re mostly good guys. And they get kittens out of trees. I’ve got no real time for that kind of “The Police are Pigs!” thing, which just seems kind of adolescent. "The Police Suck, I’m going to my room! I hate you, Dad!" They don’t suck, and a functioning society needs a functioning justice system that includes cops, but at the same time, they are enforcing a border inside the culture, not between the culture and some vast frontier.

And the problem there is that who are you enforcing those laws against? Like, who’s on the other side of the border? Who is the "other"? If you require one? Because, in this case, everybody is American. Or French, or whatever.

Uh, I’m sure you remember this. Because this was a big story at the time. Amy Cooper, and this was May 25th, 2020. The same day that George Floyd got killed. Which is sort of amazing, that these two things were happening more or less at the same time. Either that or not amazing at all. This was Amy Cooper who, you know … she knew what she was doing. Right? And interestingly, the last name of the guy she called the cops on, his last name is Cooper as well. Which, if you know anything about how African Americans got their last names, it was usually from the the people that owned them. So there’s a certain irony in that they were both named Cooper.

Anyway, I mean, she would say she had a reason, right? It’s like all those people that call the cops if they see teenage black kids at parties, or at swimming pools or whatever. I mean, this is a common occurrence now. But again, it’s that idea that “we have to protect our border. Our internal border.” Right? “From you. And right now the border runs through Central Park.” Or, that same day, the border runs through Minneapolis.

I mean, what happened is that the guy said put your dog on a leash and she said “I’m going to call the cops and I’m going to tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Knowing full well what what could very easily happen once that call is made. She’s threatening him with the police and she’s basically claiming the police on her behalf, if you understand what I mean. She’s essentially threatening his life. It's a sharp move, and it's a move that tells you exactly that she knows how the game is played. I mean, we all do.

And speaking of Central Park, this thing from 1989. This was a woman who - they made a movie out of it recently, or a documentary - but it was a woman in New York who was jogging through the park at night and she was attacked and raped and nearly killed. And the police arrested - I think it was five, the “Central Park Five” I think - arrested these five guys who were either black or hispanic, these teenage kids. And they were sentenced and…

Now here’s what’s interesting. I mean, they were innocent, that was the first thing, but this is an advertisement that Donald Trump took out in the New York Times in 1989, this full page ad that cost eighty-five thousand dollars, saying “bring back the death penalty” so that they could execute these kids. Who, again, were exonerated. And one of the things Trump says in this ad is really telling, in the ad he writes “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalisation of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!” Those are his capital letters. Anyway, Trump ran this ad in the New York Times to say bring back the death penalty so we can execute these guys. Bring back our police.

If you remember, we talked about stereotypes used to reinforce political (othering) manipulation. Mexicans, Muslims, Blacks. Or, you know, Jews or whoever. But this idea that “I am a strong leader, we are under attack, and what we need is law and order.” Which is a very powerful and very seductive message to a scared population. We talked about this. And, you know, in all the books they talk about one of the chief negative effects of stereotyping is that it operates as a tool for maintaining the status quo.

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There’s a really good documentary called “LA92” - about the Los Angeles riots in 1992 - and it got very bad very quickly. And the way they put the documentary together is they just used footage from the time. There’s no explicit editorial aspect to it, although I suppose the editorial aspect to it is the footage they chose, but essentially it’s just news footage from the time. And it’s the whole trajectory, it’s the whole story. From the thing that started it, which was the police beating the living shit out of a motorist named Rodney King on the side of a freeway to the end of it where the government sends in soldiers and the riots stop for the time being. Armed soldiers out onto the streets of Central Los Angeles, they're reading maps of the city off of the hoods parked in front of the Denny's. And I can’t recommend this thing enough. And it’s about what happens when society breaks down and what are the lines that society breaks down along, about how it breaks down.

So that’s your homework, if you can find it.

And I guess this goes back to the Trump ad, this “Authoritarian Personality” thing. The idea that scared people tend to gravitate towards a strong authoritarian figure to break things down into real basic binary choices. This is right and that is wrong, it’s all black and white and ambiguity is the enemy. This is right and that is wrong and we're under attack. The zombies are coming. And, you know, in this last election 73 million people voted for Trump, right? That’s a lot of people who need an authoritarian figure. “Prone to over-generalise and think in bi-polar terms of absolute good and absolute bad. Highly conventional, moralistic, and uncritical of higher authority … Trust in a strong leader and willing to surrender personal autonomy to the greater authority of the state.”

You know, the whole "I alone can fix this" thing.

I mean, not to draw extreme parallels, but Germany was in bad shape after the First World War. They didn’t have any money, people were starving on the streets. A lot of people had been killed. The infrastructure, and the national identity - maybe more important - was a disaster. It was all over the place. So the environment was already there, and then the right person - well, the wrong person - but the right person comes along with a message that feeds into the needs and anxieties of a scared and existentially defeated population. And the message is received because the pre-existing environment let it be received. Do you understand what I mean? If Germany had been in a better position after the war - and I’m not saying they should have been, but I suppose that’s the thinking behind the Marshall Plan - but if they had been in a better position, then Hitler might not have had the traction he had. The ground has to be right for the tree to grow.