American Passages

Living in Austria has taught me a lot about being an American. It's curious in a way that an Austrian film recently released and chosen by my students to see would not only center around the United States and the "American Way of Life" but in doing so give me pause, leaving me to question how I fit in to this picture.

Last night, I went to see American Passages, the new film by Austrian documentary film director Ruth Beckermann at the Votivkino in the first district with the 7th form (juniors) Wahlpflichtfach (English elective class). All the girls (there are only girls in this class) were late, buying popcorn at the concession stand, trudging into the theater after the lights had dimmed and the previews started, sloughing off their winter gear in the row behind me, reserved just for them.

The film we were set to watch was about the American dream, I suppose. Or the inverse-American dream. As a whole, the film had little storyline, not much to connect images to dialog, aside from the fact that the interviews collected from around the United States served as the common denominator. The interviewees were of diverse cultural backgrounds, many of them underprivileged or part of the minority somehow. Pans of Harlem residents celebrating Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win, a bride-to-be in Mississippi telling the audience how she and her husband met, a gay couple living in Arizona explaining how they came to adopt a set of twins and a former pimp and compulsive gambler at the roulette table of a Las Vegas casino all take part in the aural and visual melange Beckermann gives us. The names are not given - just the stories and the circumstances in which they came about. The footage is coherently edited and flows from picturesque landscapes to portraits of denizens, but the stories seem dislocated, abstract, aborted, unfulfilled. Scattered. It is never fully explained who these people are - why they are important. They are all Americans. I suppose in its way, that is enough.

On Beckermann's part, I felt a very skewed version of reality confronting me from the silver screen. A one-sided commentary on the United States from an Austrian: a foreigner who has had little other, actual cultural contact with the USA. I couldn't help but feel her lack of objectivity on the subject not only prejudicial but lacking in professionalism. Displaying each side of the American story coherently and without injecting her own preconceived notions of what she expected to find seemed absent to me. The "documentation" was not unbiased.

My discomfort with the portrayal of Americans was perhaps underscored by the audience. As a scene of a Memorial Day celebration in Mississippi took up the screen, a woman sang the Star Spangled Banner and, upon saying a few words about the armed services - men and women who make the ultimate sacrifice for their country - she began to cry at the podium. Snickering began in the theater, and in some cases, I'm sure I heard full-blown laughter.

Perhaps she has lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan. Perhaps she loves her country so much, her empathy overwhelmed her. Perhaps it was just too stinking hot on that May day in Mississippi that she couldn't keep her emotions in check. Because it was not explained, we will never know. Despite why she began to cry, it is to me unfathomable that her reaction should be mocked and ridiculed. This woman, in giving respect to her country and the US Armed Forces deserves respect in return.

This may sound hypocritical, and on some level it probably is. Before I spent any considerable amount of time abroad, I was an America-hater, too. It was a pretentious and rather ugly form of self-hate that I hope I've grown out of. Yes, I hate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I hate that all of (what I perceive to be) the bad aspects of American culture (junk food, SUVs and unchecked consumerism being high on this list) have been exported to Europe, and lauded by young Europeans. I hate that non-Americans assume the United States does not have or has not produced anything worthy of the title "culture" but I now realize that, as an American, I am not defined by what my country does or is, unless this is what I allow. I, one person, am not responsible for 300 million. Perhaps the president is, but I am not. I can hate things about America, but I cannot hate being an American. What else do I have?

I've heard from many Austrians that they don't understand American patriotism. They don't have any idea why a person would sport the Stars and Stripes on a t-shirt or bumper sticker, why they would send care packages to the overseas troops. Or why the Pledge of Allegiance must be recited every day in school. I can't exactly explain it myself, but I do think that there's nothing wrong with loving one's country, and being proud to be where you're from.

Xenophobia and dogmatic patriotism are not all right, but most Americans, including the woman who was filmed, are not crazy patriots or bigots because they commemorate the soldiers who served in any war for their country. And since the equivalent of First Amendment rights came so much later to Austria, it's no wonder to me that there's a cultural gap - that freedom is inherent to the human condition, and that it can - by definition - safely mean two different things to two different people.

Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder

Another interesting program on the ARTE channel (from the same source as the potty special), this one dealing with the so-called Mischungskinder, children who were the offspring of African American G.I.s stationed in Germany and German women after World War II. The program follows four different people who were placed in orphanages by their German mothers and adopted by black American families in the 1950s.

As part of the documentary, these people (three women and one man) in search of their biological heritage, and with that, their identities,travel back to Germany to discover these aspects of themselves. Two of the mothers have already died at the time of filming, but the two alive got to meet their daughters, and one, currently living in the United States with her more "acceptable" white husband, gave an on-camera interview.

The mothers, all women around my own grandmother's age, coming of age in Nazi Germany, were of course products of their time and culture. Yes, this was still the time in the South when a white man and a black man could not eat their sandwiches at the same lunch counter, had to drink from separate water fountains, use separate restrooms. African-Americans were treated not only as second-class citizens, but were terrorized in their own home towns and just had to bear it. In fact, Hitler once said off hand (probably off the record, too) that he got the idea of Jewish segregation from the American model of segregation. Separate but equal? Not exactly.

Europe, on the whole, got a good reputation for being more liberal and accepting of other cultures when American G.I.s were stationed there during World War I, and to this day it still has somewhat the same reputation. Famous examples are black American expats Josephine Baker and Richard Wright, who settled in Paris. And, according to the documentary, the African-American G.I.s stationed in France and Germany during and after the war were treated better than they had ever been at home. Mostly this had to do with their relative novelty, the fact that there weren't a lot of black people in Europe at the time, and what lady can resist a man in uniform?

Well, unfortunately, the G.I.s (and not just the black ones, all American G.I.s) were expected not to fraternize with the enemy - which Germany still was at the time - and certainly not to pick up German girlfriends. The women who ended up having affairs with black G.I.s (or relationships, or marriage proposals) and subsequently became pregnant, had a double burden: not only was the father gone (in many cases, the U.S. Army purposely relocated the men after finding out about illegitimate children), but her baby was a Mischungskind - a "mixed baby" that stuck out like a sore thumb and ruined the whole Aryan race concept. Many women kept their children and were stigmatized, or gave them up for adoption to lead "normal" lives with German husbands.

In the United States, pamphlets circulated trying to send these "brown babies" to black American families, where they would "fit in better." This was the fate of each of the four people followed. Sometimes they were treated well, sometimes they were treated poorly, but they always knew they were adopted - always knew they didn't belong. Henriette, one of the women who was lucky enough to find her mother alive, visits her frequently in Texas where the old woman lives. Speaking in a thick Bavarian accent, she tells the camera with tears in her eyes, "It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and maybe the worst mistake of my life." Owing that, it still turned out well for them, thanks mostly to Henriette's interest in genealogy.

It's amazing to think that that was just two or three generations ago. Nowadays mixed-race couples are completely free to get married, have children, and live full and happy lives together, without the social pressures terrorizing them. Of course, there are still differences among individual families, but in most of the Western world, it's easier than it's ever been to love whomever you choose. It's come a bit late for all the "brown babies" but hopefully they can rest knowing not only a bit more about where they come from, but that their grandchildren or great-grandchildren will not be put up for adoption based on the color of their skin.

Dreams from My Father

2004 UK-published book cover

Typically, I try to avoid memoirs written by politicians. To me, most of what's out there seems doctored, another bid at election or reelection, a way to color the past in an attempt to keep reputations intact, or prove no wrongdoing while in office. As Winston Churchill once said, "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." That's all the proof I need.

I balked originally at reading Barack Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father for these reasons. A copy sat on a shelf in my apartment all year, and I decided, only after getting favorable reviews from one of the teachers at school, that - as an American - I might as well read about my president and his past. In any case, I knew it would be better than Arnold Hautnah ("Arnold: Close-up"), a biography of the former "Governator" Schwarzenegger... It appears the former inhabitant of my flat had a penchant for biographies, which I do not possess.

I was surprised, in a way, and pleasantly so, with the story. President Obama's experiences as a boy, his situation growing up, were not only unique from any other US president to date, they were also unique for the time in which he was young (1960s in Hawaii) and for most Americans. Here's and example. For one of my classes this year, I dug up the statistic that  only 37% of Americans (114,464,041 people out of 307,006,550 from the latest census data) have passports, and only 25% of Americans have valid passports. In addition, only 9% of Americans speak a second (non-native) language fluently. Half of Europeans, according to a recent EU survey, speak two languages. I found these statistics (and more) at The Expeditioner, an online travel magazine.

Despite many dissenters who've recently popped up in the media (Mr. Donald Trump being just one of many examples), I find it refreshing that the current American president spent part of his youth in Indonesia, and had one immigrant parent. This shows that he has perspective that reaches beyond the United States, and an understanding of global affairs. I may be biased as an American living abroad, who got her degree in languages, but it seems to me that a global perspective in today's world is a very, very good thing. It doesn't mean being less patriotic, or less American, to have an understanding (if ever so slight), appreciation and respect for other cultures. Half of the problems in the United States come from a lack of respect for those different from ourselves - a lack of experience with foreign cultures, a disinterest in even trying to get to know anyone who is not just like you.

And here is where I found Dreams From My Father particularly moving. Not only do we get stories of the president's childhood, but as he grows, so do his reflections about race, culture, identity, belonging, the American Dream, his father. What it means to be a black man in America. His reflections become less about him and more philosophical, even spiritual. He talks about his quest to belong, from elementary school days in Honolulu where he looks for acceptance from his father in their one and only encounter, to confused party-monster evenings at Occidental where he admits dabbling in drugs (a phase he quickly grew out of), to community organizing in Chicago's South Side, to going back to his roots in Kenya. 

W.E.B. DuBois in 1946

In a class I took on diversity in the classroom, as part of teacher training, we read W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk which, although dated, was a particularly enlightening read on race relations in the 1900s. In particular, the interviews of former slaves struck me as particularly pertinent. This is part of American history which is less discussed. Of course, everyone knows what Slavery was, but in your average American history classroom, far more attention is paid to the intricacies of the Battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, to Lincoln's speeches and Grant's horse, than to the end of slavery in the 1860s. In fact, your average American history classroom mentions slaves all of twice: the first slaves who come from Africa in the 1700s and the Emancipation Proclamation. In short, much of this part of history is never explained. Americans ignore the shameful bits of history, hoping they will just go away if no one talks about them.

This is quite the opposite in Austria. Nowadays (though this used not to be the case) the Holocaust, Nazism and World War II are openly discussed in classrooms, as a way to enlighten students, to explain the perils and stupidity of prejudice, which is still rife in many parts of Europe, unfortunately - mostly toward newer immigrants from Africa, Turkey and Southern Europe (the former Yugoslavia particularly). How can a nation as a whole relate such atrocities to its people? Ignorance and blatant honesty are two options, but there must be more, with integrating acceptance into the cultural pathos the end result.

As I followed the story of Barack Obama's return to his roots in Kenya, meeting his family, discovering ever more pieces to the puzzle that was his father, I came to realize that many Americans who travel abroad are looking for this same thing: a place to belong, culturally. A place to call home. A return to the homeland, to the ancestors. Not everyone needs this, of course. I suppose I'm getting this from a number of other American teaching assistants who learned German in the first place because their ancestors immigrated however long ago from Central Europe, be it Austro-Hungary, Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland.

I guess that was part of my idea, too. But after living in Austria for nine months, I don't feel any real need to find my family roots, to explore genealogical pasts, retrieve distant cousins from Bavaria or East Prussia, as I probably could if I looked hard enough. It does make me a bit sad when some of  my students ask, "What is the American national costume?" The Austrian one, of course, is the Tracht consisting of Lederhosen or a Dirndl, Alpine hats and sturdy shoes, varying by region in slight ways. I find the question funny - of course, I could always answer "Jeans and a T-shirt" which seems to be the American national dress code. But I always reply that we don't have one. Some people wear the national costume of their ancestors, but since over 90% of Americans stem from immigrant backgrounds (at one point or another, be it one or seven generations removed), and the USA has such a huge population compared to Austria, it would be impossible to categorize us all as one thing or another.

Going back to DuBois: mixed-raced himself of almost equal parts European and African descent, even he found solace in Europe where none could be found in America, saying at one point that he was treated with more respect as a scholar in Nazi Germany than from white American colleagues. Such remarks today are inflammatory, one of the reasons DuBois has fallen out of favor, even to an extend with the NAACP, which he helped found. However, I think this shows the fervent human need to belong. To be accepted, respected, and acknowledged. President Obama, in his travelling to Kenya to confront his father's ghost, recognized his need to unite the bifurcated parts of his being: his white American half, and his black African half.

The true power of the memoir is the acknowledgement that with an understanding of one's self, of identity and one's place in the world, fulfillment and happiness are more easily attained. I'm not going to go into politics or anything, or conjecture that Barack Obama feels fulfilled. That's really not my place - I've never even met the guy. But his ability to take something so personal and apply it broadly is the real power of the memoir.

As the oracle at Delphi said, "Know thyself." Sometimes more easily said than done.