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My American Culture Shock!

From the time I got to Harvard, everyone I meet has been asking me how I am coping with the transition and whether I have experienced culture shock. In the beginning, there wasn't really so much I could say, as I was able to adopt very quickly and didn't have so much trouble talking to people or finding my way around places with a map. The weather was good, it was just like Addis in mid October: sunny and warm and a bit humid. The one thing I had to get used to is not having injera around all the time and having to use a swipe card for everything. Yes, I had to swipe my Harvard ID card every time I enter my room or most of the buildings at Harvard University and every time I eat at the dining hall. And even though I was warned about American eating culture, what I faced was far from what I imagined. It was my first morning in the US, just before going to my first day of an exiting pre-orientation program, when I decided to go to a coffee shop for a cup of tea and by ordering a medium-sized cup I got half a liter of tea! That was the biggest cup of tea I have ever had! Restaurants serve food in immense quantities, and of course, are way more expensive than restaurants in Addis. But that was not something I would call a shock, so at the beginning I couldn't really feel like there was a culture shock. It was after spending a few months that the real shock hit me.
The United States is a country made of people of different national backgrounds and it is the most diverse place I have ever been to. Very few people I have met can trace their American identity for more than 5 generations. Society here is made up of people from everywhere. One of my roommates is American, meaning he is born here and holds an American passport, but his family's national identity comes from Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia. There are many people from China in Harvard and many are born here and call themselves Americans. The same applies to the many Ethiopians living in the US. This diversity was a great fascination for me, until I started to notice the negative side to such a society. It first hit me when I heard people referring to others as 'blacks' and the 'Latinos' and the 'whites' and the 'Asians.' I was first embarrassed to hear some of my close friends talk about the 'Asian guy next door' or the 'black priest,' thinking that it was really offensive. It is later on that I learned that it wasn't supposed to be derogatory, and that it is a simple way of referring to people. Out of all places Harvard is a community with a lot of respect and tolerance to racial groups, but to me, the shock was that people are racially classified. You could be thinking that this shouldn't be new to me having an Ethiopian background. Yes, we Ethiopians are very notorious with our tribalism and divisions, having the Amharas on one side, the Oromos on the other, the Tigray and the Gurage and etc. We even go so far as to say 'us' and 'them' so many times. So why should this be new to me? Well, what I experience here is slightly more than the marriage arrangements amongst the same ethnic group we have in Ethiopia; here, ethnicity and race is more of a classification. Everyone belongs to a racial group, and is constantly reminded of that. Every time you fill a form of any kind, there is always a part that asks for your race. Society is classified so much here, and race is a very primary way of classifying people. I haven't experienced any sort of racism or witnessed it, but the racial difference is always pointed out. I see that everyone is classified, and if it is not just race then there is religion and political view. I once heard someone asking me about my 'Jewish friend.' That was the first time I leaned that my friend was in fact Jewish. Such comments give me chills, to talk about Jews or Catholics as if they are all branded and their religion is part of their identity that is used to judge their character and personality.
So this is my culture shock; having to classify everyone one way or another, but worst of all, racially. I was privileged to have gone to schools that did not see race or religion as a way of identifying people, where even nationality wasn't a real classification, where none of that really mattered and people hardly noticed the difference. Here, the difference is emphasized over and over again, not meant to discriminate, but it is just the way society is shaped, at least in my view. Everyday I see how much the American society is racially aware.

Yoseph can be contacted at askyoseph@gmail.com