The fate of the grasshopper

As an Americorps volunteer with an agency that serves three predominantly Mexican neighborhoods in north Denver, I have followed with vested interest the latest developments of immigration policy. In doing so, I have noticed that underlying understandings of culture have great potency to affect how we treat immigrants and legislate their fate.

It seems that one main assumption about culture is that it is both static and vulnerable. Once solidified in its particular values and rituals, a culture is in constant danger of disintegration. More specifically, many seem to regard American culture as fixed and threatened, while Mexican culture (or that of any entering immigrant group) is insidious and clever enough to deteriorate the host culture, tugging with sharpened nails this or that cultural vulnerability until the whole tapestry is a pile of thread on the floor.

Adherents to such an understanding of culture would understandably retreat into a protective mode, barricading themselves from potentially corrosive foreign cultural influences. Hence the heated rhetoric about education and societal affairs conducted in two languages, a sure sign that (English-speaking) American culture is one adios away from vanishing from world history to a chorus of trilled ‘r’s.

At the same time, in a fascinating burst of exploitative schizophrenia, Mexican imports such as burritos and tamales are hotter than the frontera sun for non-Mexican consumers. A recent Qdoba ad features ecstatic Mexican food lovers, with nary an accent nor Hispanic face among them.

Or take the example of a student in my English class. Electrician by day and bartender on weekends, he told me of a patron who, once sufficiently drunk on tequila, would lambaste in slurred expletives any Mexican within earshot. “Go back to your own country!” he would scream. I presume he hoped the deportees would leave the tequila behind.

Perhaps culture is neither as static nor as vulnerable as we presume; rather, perhaps it is a dynamic entity, constantly but subtly transforming in response to both internal (i.e. native) and external (i.e. foreign) influences. Historically speaking, this principle seems obvious to the point of absurdity; how can one speak of any culture without reference to the leaders, inventions, and events that shaped its identity?

But also historically speaking, it is clear that the development of culture is not desirable in and of itself, such as the development of slavery as an institution in the South. The question du jour, then, is how does a culture develop well, to be more worthy of human beings, to take care of its little ones, and to provide opportunities for all persons to flourish? It is in response to this question that an encounter between two cultures can be beneficial for both. Every culture, even (gasp!) our own, has blind spots and malformed organs that are often better diagnosed by outsiders than by those who bear the deformity.

Hence, a great challenge and opportunity arrives with every new immigrant: to reexamine our own culture in the presence of someone foreign, to be honest about our shortcomings, and to humbly share our successes that can improve another culture’s deficiency. Such an approach to immigration, an embrace, is admittedly messier than the alternative, a barricade. But then again, love is more complicated than isolation. And in the long run, if we aim to preserve our culture with fences and threats, we’ll find that it indeed keeps well, as well as a grasshopper that a child loves so much that he seals tight in a glass jar, and finds it marvelously unchanged come the next morning.