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sketchman · 6 years

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Are you proud of your ethnicity for the right reasons?

I asked this question because I have always been fascinated by the definition of culture and related phenomenons like ethnicity. But why now?

Because after the FIFA WORLD CUP I came across a few posts from my friends in France including a video which was shot in between the broadcasted Daily show where the host, Trevor Noah stated that AFRICA has won the FIFA World Cup 2018 because most of the players in France’s team are from countries that France colonized in Africa (paraphrasing here).

Before I go any further, CONGRATULATIONS to the France team for winning!

As a guy who has a French nationality, I grew up in India and later moved to Europe for higher studies, I can tell you, national identity has always been a complex issue in France.

In my journey to define Culture which I undertook in order to understand the feeling I felt when someone was talking about India, in a good or bad way, I am realizing that even if one comes up with a perfect definition of Culture separating things which are part of Culture and those who are not, the acceptance of such a definition will be even more difficult to establish.

For example, people can say that Indian people they have worked with all around the world are generally very competent in their work versus when someone makes fun of the sense of hygiene of Indians not only in India but also of non resident Indians in other countries. (I urge you to watch the Ted Talk called : “Why is India so filthy?” - TEDxBangalore) I have to admit this is a complex issue. You might also ask yourself why does it matter? Where should I start? Let me start with companies where people from different cultural background have to work together, this is challenging and often creates conflicts that go undiscussed because we are not able to distinguish between the action resulting from the influence of culture and the action resulting from personality of the given individual. My attempts to deepen my understanding on this subject will continue but the statement that France’s team’s victory should be attributed to the respective countries which the players are from, seemed wrong to me.

I was asking myself if the statement made towards the France’s team soccer players who are not of French ethnicity also applies to African American players in NBA, which is dominated by players from African descent. But in this case, people are not trying to find the original ethnicity of the basketball players in order to attribute the player’s success to the country of origin in Africa.

You can probably say: Boris, you are stupid THEY ARE AMERICANS.

OK so African Americans are more integrated than let’s say an Algerian player in France’s football team ? I have so many songs, movies and probably literature that would argue otherwise.

This is a big question for another discussion but what does the ideal integration look like for a immigrant person who has the nationality of the host country like France?

My take on this, is that by attributing the victory to the player’s lineage, his nation of origin, you are ignoring the efforts, the intelligence, the time that the individual has put in training to become the player X he is today. Let’s take an example, imagine the football player X has a brother Y and Y ends up becoming an incompetent accountant. Does that mean all people who are from that ethnicity and/or from the same country as Y are incompetent accountants?

This is why I said that the acceptance of what is culture will be more difficult than coming up with the definition itself because WE, and I include myself in it, accept assumptions as long as they are favorable to us and refuse assumptions which are not. You can’t accept the favorable comments and reject the negative ones, they are part of the same reality.

I have to admit, I am not a football fan, I love playing sports but I don’t enjoy watching others play but I do understand a nationally popular sport is more attached to patriotism than art. I grew up in India even If I don’t enjoy Cricket I could feel the tension during and India vs Pakistan matches.

This affected me because I started asking questions about the reasons I feel pride to anything attached to India.

Consider the following thought experiment (which I am sure exists in reality somewhere):

Imagine a video of slides which someone made, showing people of Indian ethnicity in high positions in the most powerful corporations in the world. To be more specific let’s take Sundar Pichai, an American-Indian (ethnicity in Alphabetical order), the CEO of Google one of the most successful and powerful organisations on the planet. In my opinion, saying that you are proud of being Indian because another person from Indian lineage has succeeded in leading a global company means that that person has accomplished what he did because he is Indian not because of his competence as a business person.

Was his ethnicity and related culture part of his journey? Sure, but we have not been able to define which one is exactly the result of Culture and what is exactly the result of the individual’s personality. Therefore, it is not possible to attribute a success or failure ONLY to a specific influence from culture, ethnicity, personality, professional experience and so on. So, there is no point at the moment in marvelling at his ethnic roots.

Also the reason why I talk about this, is because now everything is being politicized to get views online with click bait titles including sports, entertainment, religion I just don’t want everything to become part of the political sphere.

I have a theory which might be very difficult to swallow but imagine SPORTS as a universe with its own set of rules and beliefs and put in a bubble among other universes you come across in your life like movies, music, etc. I want to do this because problems arise when we confuse the rules of the said UNIVERSE with the rules of reality.

The rules of porn are not the same as in sex in reality, the rules in a video game are not the same as in reality even though the rules in these UNIVERSES have been inspired by the rules of reality.

I believe people should take a moment before acting on their beliefs and separate these beliefs whether it’s in sports or art and their intrinsic rules from the reality and the rules we have agreed in society. The person supporting the other side, the other team, the other community is not your enemy HERE IN SOCIETY where everyone wants to live together.

To be honest, maybe it’s just me, I am not connected to India as others can be, but I don’t feel pride for example when it comes to Yoga being invented in India. It’s just that people who came up with Yoga happen to be from India. Does that make any sense? I just wish more girls understood we came up with Kamasutra though.

PEACE.

#ethnicity #pride #football #soccer #fifa world cup 2018 #france #trevor noah #indian #sundar pichai #culture

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