Meaningful conversation - who would of thought?

I had planned to write an angst filled post.  I was majorly and very un-productively frustrated, so I started writing.  I didn’t get around to finishing it.  And then a couple of days went by and something a lot more interesting and a lot less depressing came up.  I figured it would make a much better post.

The context for this is a team project I’m doing with 3 classmates that involves extensive market research concerning immigrants to Canada.  In thinking about questions to ask for our survey, I had suggested the question “How do you define your identity?” (or something along those lines).  One team member who is black said she doesn’t think it’s a good question because people wouldn’t necessarily reply with a cultural identification and gave herself as an example.  She would not think of saying “I’m black, I’m American, I’m a woman”, but would most likely give character traits.  My initial reply was to say that if that was the answer someone would give, it would certainly tell us something about his cultural identity as an immigrant.  She at that time insisted we phrase the question as “What is your cultural identity?”.  At the time I didn’t see the point of continuing the discussion about it and standing my ground (though I will when we actually come to the final version of the questionnaire), but back to the point – even when we had finished up, I was still pondering her response and how it was completely opposite of what I expected it to be.  Obviously some of my surprise was due to stigmas that I have about American-educated-black-women (I wonder now if that is the right order to describe this group) but part of it was because she is part of both the Women’s Management Council and the Black Students’ Association. 

So today I talked with her about it.  It was really interesting.  I had wondered if it’s an effect of growing up in a multi-cultural society, or maybe just the opposite.  I don’t think we really got down to the bottom of it (it was after all a Sage Social), but part of what she said I really related to: She said that it had always really bothered her to be automatically associated with the “African American” group.  As though she had to be friends with them despite not really having anything in common with them.  And added that while she is for the general cause, on a personal level of interaction, it was something she chose not to do.  She also said that on those same lines she didn’t like the term “African American” because it forced her into a cultural connection that she didn’t really have (neither she, her parents or her grandparents have ever been to Africa), and it’s not as though white people recognize themselves as Irish American or German American.