2 December 2005

THE WEST IS DEAD (2)

Karen Watters Cole, Portland, Oregon, writes:

What Adnan Khan describes is a neo colonial vision of racial/national power shift in the future. Having lived a mere half dozen years in my teens as a white foreigner in Kobe, Japan, graduating from an international school, my vision of the future is more international, maybe optimistic, but I think attainable.

Yes, in America as elsewhere there are still racial divides, and there will always be racists as long as we tolerate provincialism and ignorance. But I see so much less of this in today's school children, who are encouraged by pop culture and consumerism in a global age to think beyond the boundaries their parents and grandparents lived.

Not only do we eat from a much wider menu of cultural food in the West than we did a generation ago, we are fascinated with Asian culture, as well as fashion (I love the sari and Vietnamese ao dai) tech gadgets, and travel. Additionally, I believe there is less opposition to interracial dating and international marriages. You are not going to convince the MTV second generation that their social options are limited to their own birth family first preferences. I have a Bulgarian brother in law and a Japanese sister in law. This will be more common in the future, just as blended families are now.

Call me pollyannish, but I believe there is more to be optimistic about in the future generations than whose skin color is predominate. We will certainly need to learn foreign languages and appreciate that all in all, we are in a much better world when we recognize our commonalities.