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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #26 (June 26, 2007), page 7.
Get this one big thing right
The other day, St. Johns Sentinel news editor Will Crow told me he snipped and saved our column "Oma Rules." If you will recall, those three easy rules —
(1) If You Have Nothing Nice to Say, Shut up, Sit Down;
(2) Keep Your Hands Off Others’ Stuff; and
(3) Wake Up Every Precious Morning and Thank Allah for Another Day
— were published on January 2, 2007, suggesting a solid way to start a new year. They’re the directives that got our simply sincere elders through their darkest times.
Mr. Crow’s acknowledgment felt so good, I figured I should try it again. Try getting snipped out and tacked up for people to see. But this time, I do it not for fame or fortune. Not even for me.
This time, this column, is intended to get your favorite glodok’s attention. Sure, it’s not as subtle as leaving a silver bullet on a dopey co-worker’s desk, and it’s a lot less messy than finding a severed horse head in your bed — but this article is just as much intended to correct bad behavior. Clip it below. Set it on the woodenhead’s chair.
We publish it on purpose in June. School ends and vacations start in June. American summers are for recreating. Americans set this season aside for visiting Mexico’s long beaches and Hawai’i’s fantastical reefs, for seeing Egypt’s ancient pyramids or China’s great big wall.
All this makes June an excellent opportunity for recreating some rather sloppy American norms. Actually only one. A real important one.
Now, we all know someone who commits this monster ethno-cultural booboo around the office, in your neighborhood, at any number of places white folks and brown ones intersect. I’m talking about the one GIANT thing that makes Old Worlders (Asians and islanders, Arabs and Africans) immediately distrust, disengage, and otherwise really dislike Yanks.
————— Okay, clip here —————
The BIG Rule:
When we go into another’s emotional space, we must respect our entry.
This is simple, this is important: If you enter my neighborhood or nation, you have to greet me.
Without this courtesy, on a good day you may be seen as just another rude American; on a bad news day (a U.S. bomb accidentally hits an Afghan school) you will be perceived as arrogant, as "being above" acknowledging my humanity.
Some explanation is necessary.
As a general rule, if you enter my space not letting me see your eyes, plus withholding a proper greeting in a good tone, it all adds up to having and hiding bad motives. You are not friend or family.
When we pass at a Managua mercado or in a downtown Portland office hall or on a Kota Ambon sidewalk, civilized people say hola or good morning or praise God. Tension between strangers is immediately eased when you affirm me in your life, when you wish me well, when you express reverence for our common creator.
Even though I’ve lived well in America for forty years, even though our family has endured Western adventures in our sweet homeland for 400, this rule is so essential, and traditional people are so stubborn, that we still respond badly to white folks lacking these manners.
Here or there, same rule
At the office, after all these years, I am still hurt when Anglo bosses or coworkers don’t greet me as I arrive in the morning. Among our folk, friends get warm words and warm touches when they arrive. Foes get nothing.
Likewise, when I leave and no one says salamat djalan. Our elders always taught that family is missed when they leave. Enemies are not.
In America it’s often hard to avoid feeling that folks feel nothing for my being here, it feels as if my leaving makes no difference. Ouch. Like I am not human.
Watch what Hmong or Malay or Mexicans do when someone leaves their home. You’d think those departing were young rock stars or old former presidents. Goodbyes go on while you’re pulling on your shoes, while you’re yacking in the driveway, so long as you can look back to see folks waving from their sidewalk.
American businessmen and tourists and soldiers need to know that moms on their way to market, pops on their way to work, kids on their way to school, will either embrace you or spite you, depending on that first contact. It’s that important.
It’s so simple. Learn a proper greeting, put on an open face. Don’t mistake café waiters and resort staff smiles for sincerity. They are paid to be nice, no matter how awful an American’s manners.
If practicing a foreign phrase is too hard, just get the gestures down. That’s what kids do. Among Koreans greet with a head-nod down, in African-American neighborhoods meet with a chin-jerk up. Hippity-hop eyebrows at friendly Filipinos. Shake hands with everybody. Lot of cheek-kissing if Imperial Spain was once there.
Little gesture, big fixer
It’s no use denying how much harm America has done to others, to ourselves too, over our last dark decade. Sorrow, and her close cousin Anger, are everywhere.
A big fix is in order. But setting ourselves right starts with just that tiny understanding about human beings yearning for affirmation from each other. Affirmation of our humanity — because once humanness is out, all kinds of ugliness becomes possible. Between people.
And it takes such a small gesture: When we pass, greet my eyes with your heart.
I cannot hurt you from that slim moment on.
Ed. nota: "Oma Rules (2007)" can be found at The Asian Reporter website, <www.asianreporter.com/stories/polo/2007/p-01-07.htm>.