Why I hate talking about ethnicity and culture - Part 1

If you've spent very much time around me in the last few years, you might have noticed that I like to talk about race, ethnicity, and culture.  "Wait a minute," you might say, "you're title says you hate it."  I know!  I love it and I hate it.

It's pretty easy for me to see why I love talking about ethnicity and culture.  But understanding why I have such a deep gut resistance to some new ideas about ethnicity is a very interesting puzzle.  And the answer has a deep impact on how I show the love of Jesus in the cross-cultural setting of the campus here in Bakersfield.

I love talking about ethnicity and culture.  Understanding the value systems and traditions shared by different cultures within our world helps me to enjoy my diverse friendships more deeply.  I get to explore who my friends are, why they do things differently from me, how I can love them in ways they will appreciate, and how I can "broaden my interests" to enjoy things that I would have never been exposed too.  It's like solving a puzzle, opening a present from God, trying a new food, and reading a good story all wrapped into one.

I'll tell you one story as an example.  A little ways back, I tried to offer an orange to my friend "Abe", who is originally from a country in West Africa.
"Here, Abe, would you like this Orange?"  I asked. "I have plenty of other fruit in my lunch bag, I have more."
"Why do you have to explain that you have extra fruit?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Why do you have to explain that the orange is out of your surplus, and that you won't really be making any sacrifice to give it to me?  Why can't you just give me the fruit because you want me to have it?"
I was confused.  Obviously I had explained my extra fruit because I didn't want him to feel bad for taking the orange from me.  But as we talked, I realized that the dissonance was coming from a cultural difference.  Abe was from a culture where sacrificial gifts were given and received with joy.  In his culture, the sacrificial nature of the gift should not be hidden but celebrated.  It shows that a person considers another person as family--with resources shared freely (in fact I doubt Abe would use the word sacrifice--he might describe it more like passing off resources to another part of yourself).  When I told him that I had extra fruit, what he heard was "I wouldn't offer this to you if I really valued it myself.  I don't love you that much."
In my culture, which I refer to as "German-English-American Midwest Farmer," we have a value for self-sufficiency, and individualization.  In my culture, to receive a sacrificial gift is to surrender a little of my dignity by appearing burdensome or less self-sufficient.  By telling Abe that I had extra fruit, I was actually attempting to protect his dignity by assuring him that he could accept it without becoming a burden on me.  And if I am totally honest, even though I had more fruit, I would have enjoyed eating the orange too.  But even so I decided to highlight my abundance out of the strong desire to protect his self-sufficiency.
Although I was attempting to show love to Abe, he received it as an insult.  Now that I know this difference, I am able to offer gifts in a way that can be recognized as loving.  This is what I love about talking about ethnicity and culture.  Not only can I love Abe more effectively, but I also have begun to embrace his culture of “enjoying sacrifice.”  His culture is not better than mine, but in some contexts I actually do think his giving style communicates love in a different and better way.  Now I can enjoy both.  This is what makes learning about culture, ethnicity, and race fun. 

I think I’d better save the “I hate” part for next time, but are there any thoughts so far?