BREAKING NEWS: REFUGEE YOUTH HAVE OPINIONS
PART OF OUR WORK WITH UNCSA DMA-DEGA PROJECT
With a Flip refugees can “talk back” to Americans without first mastering the long checklist of self-sufficiency skills imposed on them.
Simple digital tools like Flip cameras can empower individuals. As part of our
collaboration with Bob King and his UNCSA students I gave four young people the assignment to talk about what they saw at an international festival in downtown Greensboro and to interview people we met. They agreed that it would be interesting to ask them the kind of questions they were asked repeatedly, such as Where are you from? How long have you lived here? and Who taught you English?
Today it is common to see people with cameras and video recording devices at public events the world over. What is unusual is to see someone holding a camera and formally interviewing apparent strangers. The interviewer must be a reporter, we think, or have a special duty or job. Our impression might be further reinforced if the interviewer was professionally dressed and was an adult. But in our adventure this was not the case.
Holding a video camera and asking questions not only empowers the interviewer, it makes her responsible.
And participants can say No.
The view of the camera of our youngest reporter betrays her height. She is small.
When you're small everything around you can be alarming and confusing.
Someone who is tall can seem intimidating. In these instances the camera can help the interviewer "level the playing field" by giving the interviewer control of the interview, asking the questions and deciding when it's over.
A camera takes in its operator's unique viewpoint. It can present or "talk about" things that adults generally ignore such as these frightening drawings made by Palestinian kids.
Here is the above image digitally corrected to clearly show the scenes they depict.
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The Mosaic organizers objected to the display of these drawings by the Islamic Center of the Triad and wanted them taken down. Undoubtedly they gave good, bureaucratic reasons (“They upset visitors who came here for a good time” etc.) — all of them clumsy, tasteless, heavy-handed, insensitive — in a word, parental.
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Postcard from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, depicting Darfur kids living in refugee camps.
Being a refugee youth here in the Piedmont often means being subjected to a set of questions (Who are you? Where are you from? What are you?) that remind you that others regularly see you as an outsider. For some refugees and mainstream Americans, the solution seems simple. The more quickly the behaviors, ideas, language and visual appearance that make refugees seem different can be erased, the less likely refugees will be asked such questions.
Of course, this is an absurd solution. It is absurd because it is both impossible and racist.
What's the difference between “acculturation” and cultural erasure? The mission of omnipotent American agents is not to erase refugees'
cultures here in the Triad, but that’s the way the collective system
operates. Broadly speaking, acculturation implies some degree of exchange and sharing between two cultures. In practice, it seems to mean encouraging refugees to learn enough English to fill out forms by themselves, to find their own transportation solutions, get jobs, pay taxes, stay out of trouble and allow resettlement agencies to report them as success stories. Since there are few forums to discuss what could be shared between refugee groups and Americans, individual family survival (“self-sufficiency”) tends to replace acculturation as the benchmark for refugee success. This may help Americans avoid being called racists, but it does nothing to address the core question, When is a family “resettled”? In the absence of dialog, the default relationship —
one of huge power disparities between Americans and refugees — prevails.
This is why matters of empowerment and not just economic self-sufficiency are important to young people, refugees, immigrants, people of color, minorities, etc.
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Refugee women armed with Flips tour UNCSA. A simple device like a video camera is a way refugees can “talk back” to Americans without first mastering the long checklist of self-sufficiency skills imposed on them, because a camera has a viewpoint — that is, an opinion — spoken in a universal language.
Skype conference call connecting American and refugee youth. When youth have a voice, they may say things that adults (big surprise!) might not like. Add sounds, music, words and what do you get?
Bom Mondega's breakout CD. You get cultural expression. You get art. You get
opinion.
Push back. Some people belittle culture and artistic expression. They might think that they're decorative niceties, but not as important as making The Other look more and more like themselves. In other words, they're saying their views and reality are more important than say, refugees’. In refugee and immigrant discussions they seek to narrow questions and issues about multiculturalism, remove conflicting or opposing views and frame problems in ways that meet their own organizations’ missions and funding schemes. This is why organizers’ tasteless attempts to remove drawings like the ones shown above are especially reprehensible.
