In the north-western region of Vietnam lies the mountainous town of Sa Pa. Many of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities live there, Black H’mong and Red Dao women sell handicrafts to the tourists and hikers who fill the town. I traveled there in the summer of 2006, with a group of high school students working on a variety of service projects during our time there. We had been making our way through Thailand and Vietnam, working on houses with Habitat for Humanity, teaching water safety to children living near rice fields, rebuilding temples with Buddhist monks. During my time in Sa Pa, I met a group of young H’mong girls, selling bracelets and necklaces, who would walk with us each day through the mountains, and we did our work at different sites, talking and sharing stories as the days wore on. Most of the young girls spoke English quite well, having learned from the increasing number of English-speakers coming through and the introduction of Internet Cafes to the region.
My service group worked on learning Vietnamese and Thai. We practiced customary greetings and polite conversation with everyone we could. Our communication with those we met, in English, and my very broken Thai and Vietnamese, was more about understanding body language and connection than common language. We found that something deeper joined us than our nationality, cultural background, even the words we spoke. The friendships we built introduced me to a culture of which I had never heard, and enabled an exchange of our ideas, our work and our jokes.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently made comments regarding her perception that multiculturalism has failed in Germany. She spoke about problems of assimilation of immigrants, problems with celebrating what is German while embracing the cultures, religions, and languages of those new to Germany. She claimed the German attempt at living in celebration of a culturally diverse country had failed.
BBC: Merkel’s Comments on Multiculturalism in Germany
Professor Tariq Ramadan, a CNN London news correspondent, replied in defense of continuing to try. He speaks about a mutual responsibility of immigrants and their new countries: to abide by the laws and languages of our nation, and let our cultural distinctions be celebrated. He claims that while Merkel blames immigrants’ failure to assimilate, the real problem lies in social inequality and discrimination. Multiculturalism has not failed because we have not truly been living it.
While the nature of our globalized world has sent English to young girls in northwestern Vietnam, and me to fumble over Thai in the central rice fields of Thailand, has a celebration of the world’s multitude of cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds failed? Are we living together separately?
Exposure to people living across the world from our hometowns gives us an awareness of the diversity all around. We are living during a time in which we can communicate with more people than ever before. Taking advantage of our connections, traveling, having authentic conversations, could bring us closer to actually “[living] side-by-side and enjoying each other” (Merkel, BBC).
What are your thoughts? Are we living together separately?
