Beware The Group
The idenniny trap.
This is the reason why the pedagogical practices that many elite private schools have adopted of late, like racially segregated affinity groups or encouraging students to “own” their “whiteness,” infuriate me. If you know anything about the world, you know how dangerous it is to teach kids to define themselves by the group into which they’re born—and how easily such a culture can lead to the worst forms of zero-sum conflict.
I think the US has always had that problem, though. It just wasn’t as noticeable before social media brought it all out in the open.
When we moved to Oklahoma, I was 10. I started a new school, because I left my old one behind in Maine. One of the first questions kids asked me was what church I went to. The answer I gave was the wrong one. I was branded.
Then they asked me about my funny accent. I didn’t know I had one, but it’s so mixed up with the moving constantly (my dad was in the Navy) and with the disparate background accents of my parents (Mom from New York, Dad from Oklahoma), most people don’t know what it is. I was always able to trick those guys at the fair who wanted to guess where you were from. For some reason, they usually picked Michigan, a state I haven’t spent any time in at all.
TL;DR We divide ourselves into groups in many ways, and always have. The last thing we need is more in-groups and out-groups.
#1: I am disappointed and angry that you have culturally appropriated our refined, poetic Michigan speech.
(Heh! Michigan-ese as generic default Midwestern to the rest of the country is pretty funny. For any who haven’t seen it, look up the old SNL skit “1-800(or 900)-LANSING”)