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a small town near where I'm from, Oil City, Pennsylvania |
A friend just asked about me sending a postcard to her daughter's class, since she is now a teacher back in rural Pennsylvania where we grew up. That relates to the kids learning about local regional US sub-cultures by way of having people send postcards and thoughts on distinct local culture, practices and perspective unique to that area.
I just wrote a little about local Hawaiian culture, here, and will send a postcard and some thoughts. Due to living abroad for so long, in Thailand for most of the last 17 years, it's odd considering how similar culture is in US states, since it seems more uniform in comparison with Asian cultures than different, but that still works. I'll add my own thoughts here.
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wild turkeys at my parent's house |
Pennsylvania: really this spans a range of local culture forms, since the West side is more like the Midwest, and the East side the East coast, even a bit like New Jersey. The two main cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, each have their own character. Beyond all that there still is a distinct local PA culture.
People are friendly and open, especially in rural areas. Maybe too open; it's normal to talk to strangers in restaurants or shops, and people love getting into other people's business, gossiping and offering opinions. Older parts of US culture tend to be valued, things like older holiday tradition observances, harvest fairs, and other festivals related to seasonal themes. Following sports is unusually popular, at every level, grade school and high school, college, and professional teams.
People tend to be conservative; supporting Trump is a main current theme, and anti-vax sentiment. People hunt (kill animals for food and sport). There aren't many minorities so the typical related conflict between races doesn't come up as much, outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. I suppose for people without a mainstream, white, conservative perspective things could seem rough, even just for being a minority or gay.
The "rust belt" economic shift is a real problem where I'm from; the former industrial area is currently living through economic despair. It's a shame, because it's a beautiful area, with a wonderful natural setting and four season climate, with lots of quaint and picturesque little towns and villages.
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my daughter's school, in Honolulu |
Hawaii: it's awkward for me to say much about local Hawaiian culture, because I don't represent that in any way. A close family friend, sort of an extra uncle, is truly local, so I've been in on some insight, but I can only state some positive generalities. Local Hawaiians value family, nature, traditional social roles, and family gatherings. All that is true of everywhere, to some extent, but all the more so "here," (I'm in Honolulu now, living here for three months again). They don't necessarily feel alignment with mainstream mainland US culture, but to some extent lots of people might feel that way now.
Another type of local is people with mixed non-native background, or that plus outsider input, and there are plenty of other Asians, and some white mainlander transplants. Culture is mixed as a result, not at all unified. All the same people tend to be relaxed, to value nature and outdoor activities, and to try to de-emphasize forms of tension and conflict that can come up in the mainland of the US. That's even though people do seem to align with either the mainland left or right political inclination form, in relation to transplants. Military personnel tend to be conservative and lots of other types of people are somewhat liberal, even into "hippie" range.
The economic pressure of a high cost of living definitely divides people, at least in Oahu. There are beautiful communities full of high end shops and nice restaurants and then poorer local living areas and other bad parts of town. That pressure has lots of younger, more native locals moving to the mainland, where eventually buying a home is much more practical, since home prices don't typically start at a million dollars, for the lowest demand locations.
Colorado: this is where I've spent the most of my adult life, in the States. People there really value nature as well (I guess I'll just keep on saying that), and sports participation. Here in Honolulu people surf and swim, and running is popular, while winter sports, hiking, rock climbing, and biking are the main themes there. People sometimes tend to be conservative and liberal at the same time, taking up parts of each spectrum of perspectives.
It's a state full of transplants, as California always was, so local US cultures tend to mix. Maybe that dilutes some themes a bit, eg. a consistent take on holidays like Christmas. Commercial influence is diluting the traditional forms of that kind of thing anyway.
Fleece is like the default local uniform; that plus an outer shell in the winter. The weather is a factor that shapes daily life. That's true in PA too, where winters can be long and cold, but in CO in higher elevation communities winter lasts half the year. It almost has to be seen as a positive factor to put up with it.
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where I lived in Baltimore, Fell's Point |
Maryland: I "only" lived in Maryland three times, for a total of less than two years, so it's the state I'm least familiar with. I suppose it's representative of East Coast culture. I've lived in Baltimore and Ocean City, two completely different places.
In all of these places sub-culture varies by economic level, by social class, and I suppose that's as pronounced as anywhere else in Maryland. I mixed with the low and high ends there, oddly. Being from a rural area, from modest means, I've always felt plenty of connection with the modern working class. That was stretched a bit trying to communicate with people working on the docks in that shipping related part of town; the local accent could be hard to understand.
People can be very genuine and generally kind; it's not like New Jersey, where rough edges stand out more, or NYC, where really high population levels lead to people keeping to themselves. I found the people in the lower social class levels more open to talking to an outsider, where at the other extreme there could be more emphasis on placing you, related to being one of them or not. I was clearly not one of them working in piers and warehouses but in general they didn't care.
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downtown Austin, Texas |
Texas: I've had uniformly positive experiences living in Dallas and Austin. I suppose my experience isn't up to date or relevant for this time since all that was long ago, in the 90s, long before modern social problems evolved in the US, drug epidemics, crime, and political divide. Transplants seemed relatively welcome back then, and local perspectives were open and flexible.
Racism could've been a real issue, given the influx of Mexican immigrants was already far underway, but even that seemed somewhat moderate. I lived in a Mexican neighborhood in Austin and it was nice, not as well-maintained as it could've been but comfortable and friendly. In both Dallas and Austin it seemed like the divide between black and white didn't go as smoothly as with Mexican immigrants, the related class division. Mexican immigrants were fine with carving out their own place in society even if the work placed them at a lower class level, but entrenched poverty is something else.
In one sense Texas seemed to have a unified culture, to me, but in another all the different communities and types of areas were a bit different. Dallas had a lot of transplants, as Austin did, and El Paso seemed to be a completely different place (which I only visited a couple of times).
Austin was quite liberal, and Dallas was progressive in a lot of ways, but still a bit more conservative. I never noticed anyone being racist in Dallas, for example. Racism takes different forms, and can tend to come in degrees, and as a white person you wouldn't necessarily be "in on it," if there were subtle forms of differences in opportunities, or if the legal system seemed to include a bias.
In all of these states you could move around freely, because that's a main running theme in the US. Hawaii might be slightly different, since there is some bias against new people moving there, especially outside of Honolulu, or similar transplant areas on Oahu. That seems somewhat justified, to me, since economic pressure partly related to people moving to local areas is a different kind of problem in Hawaii. Austin may seem to be bursting at the seems related to a lot of new residents moving there over the last year or two but it's still not really the same kind of thing.
Next one might wonder about main common themes, and main differences, across areas. Is Christmas observance generally the same, or are typical diets the same or different? Christmas seems uniform, and I suppose typical diets are more the same than different, which may have been true even 40 or 50 years ago. Regional foods vary, but those tend to be things people eat some of, as much as the basis for eating completely differently.
In Texas I would often eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and routinely ate Tex-Mex and barbecue, but still other food choices were common. In Maryland people ate a lot of seafood, local blue crab, shrimp, and mussels, and from what I experienced less fish, but most other foods were similar to elsewhere, meat and potatoes, fast food options, etc. Hawaii has a lot of local and Asian influence. White people are a small minority here, so many more locals have Asian heritage.
Beyond that minor differences add up to local perspectives that are hard to capture, even by listing out minor differences, and what those mean to a larger picture. Religion may be a main running theme or somewhat less emphasized, or work forms and work ethic might vary.
The transplant theme really shifts everything, muddling it. Most of the people I knew in Dallas and Austin weren't from there, and in Colorado, which is true in a different sense now in Hawaii. Some of my friends in high school ended up in Virginia and North Carolina. It can be tempting to put a time-frame on shifts in population change, to say that an older and more established residence base was already there in the 90s, and then people new to areas in the 60s and 70s hold more claim to local status. The next generation following the one that moves there is definitely "more native," having been born in that new place.
Growing up I experienced a much older form of rejection of immigration: members of the last wave of foreign transplants were regarded negatively, as outsiders, while earlier immigration patterns were more accepted. Irish people moved to the US somewhat long ago, related to me being born in the middle of the 20th century, but somehow a more recent wave of Polish immigrants left them less accepted, as the butt of residual Polish jokes and negative stereotyping. Some of that pattern applied to Mexican immigrants later, but there were so many spread across so many areas in different distributions that lack of acceptance was inconsistent.
Comparing US culture and Asian culture
This is outside the scope of any of this, but a few sentences might clarify what culture is even doing, for people who lack broad exposure to have noticed this.
There is no unified Asian culture or perspective. I've seen lists of oppositions, points like emphasis on individuality versus group-role self-definition, and those can work, across all of Asia. That said Thai culture and corresponding forms in places like Japan, China, Korea, and Indonesia are all relatively different. Immediate manner of being, how you portray your public image to others, varies a lot. Self-definition at the next level down, about being defined in relation to levels of connections with others, instead of as a list of personal attributes, might be more common.
Differences in food preferences and such seem important in a sense but also somewhat trivial, to me. I'm not rejecting Anthony Bordain's consistent commentary that relationship with food and the overlap between that and social connections defines people, as much as anything else. I'm saying that if you swap out all the Thai dishes for Vietnamese equivalents, keeping all the customs, aspects of self-definition, and daily lifestyle patterns, that it doesn't matter so much that you are eating something else.
It's interesting how US perspectives, local sub-cultures, seems fairly unified in comparison with forms and patterns across other countries. For sure the East coast, Midwest, South, West, and Southwest are all different places in the US but they're all relatively identical in comparison with the vast differences between Thai culture and perspective and the versions in Japan. The difference between worldview in Mexico, Canada, and the US is also narrower than that divide, per my understanding. At the risk of oversimplifying and trivializing complexities I'll offer my own too-limited summary of what I mean.
Thai culture emphasizes self-definition in relation to social level and roles, as I've said. There are no Thai nursing homes, that I'm aware of, for example, since families take care of each other. At work, or even in all public exchanges, differences of opinion are minimized, and all conflict is avoided. In some cases it's regarded as easier and more appropriate to say yes when you really mean no. That's hard to unpack; I don't mean that people don't have freedom of expression and speech, but they are encouraged to use their public expression within the bounds of accepted norms.
People are pleasant; they smile when they are happy, and other smiles indicate agreeableness without happiness, or even disapproval, in some cases. You can see the difference in their eyes, with practice.
Japan is a lot more restrictive. Social connections and forms are experienced even more so in relation to levels of social closeness or distance. People are said to have multiple faces, to show others versions of selves in relation to how close they are. It doesn't tie to the idea of being "two-faced," to being ingenuine or deceitful. It means that who you show yourself to be, the persona you interact through, is different with family, close friends, acquaintances, business contacts, and strangers. Really that's happening in all cultures, to some extent, but it tends to be emphasized and encoded in more extreme or rigid form or else largely set aside, depending on the culture.
Americans are quite genuine, in general. I know a lot of Americans would disagree with this broad claim, thinking that most others they know adjust how they come across, and the content communicated, based on varying goals and social forms, in essence rarely being completely open and transparent. I accept that's true, but I'm claiming here that within Asian cultures additional social constraints are added to those social context forms.
In Thailand you shouldn't come across as angry or unhappy, ever, in general. That seems a bit odd at a funeral, but it carries over even to there. By the time you get in a bar fight it's fine to express anger but most Thais would never be in any comparable situation, or even a tense and vocal argument at work.
I can't compare that to Japanese culture, since I've had Japanese friends (some close ones), and have visited Japan (twice), and have worked for years with Japanese work colleagues, but my exposure to that culture is still more limited than to Thai perspective. It's my impression that Japanese people filter what they tend to communicate quite a bit, not just shifting form to be pleasant and screening out harsher elements, but adjusting it all a lot in relation to what is expected.
That's barely a sketch of differences, but it seems like enough to help place how the limited variations I've described in regional US perspectives compare.
