"You are from Hawaii? So you surf."

TOPIC: Seeing Culture

SOURCE: On HSU campus during the first two weeks of school. My observation happened while meeting new people and making friends. I was getting to know students all over campus: In the “J”, dorms, The Depot, Library, Common areas, etc. 

RELATION:
Over the last two weeks I have met hundreds of new faces. When meeting people on campus, the “where you are from” comes up a lot. During these meetings I have observed the questions I get, and paid attention to the assumptions people have made when they learn I am from Hawaii. Many people will think something about you based on what they know or believe about the place you come from. There are many assumptions made subconsciously by people that expect you t o be exactly like everyone they know from Hawaii. In my experience I was able to “see” people’s culture through their reaction to where I am from. (Culture: RR, pg.5 CC,  pg.2) My observation is an example of ethnocentrism (RR, pg.8 CC, pg.5) because the people I met were “believing and feeling that their culture was best”(CC, pg.5) and judging my culture based on their own culture. 

DESCRIPTION:
I have come far from home, to a place so welcoming and so open-minded. I have come from Hawaii, and I have met an overwhelming amount of people in the past two weeks. I hold out my right hand and it is always warmly welcomed by a friendly strangers right hand. The most common question that is then asked is “Where are you from” and I always proudly answer “Hawaii” and smile. Usually this sparks people’s interest; Hawaii is far away and tropical, people want to know more about it. As I looked closer at he questions and statements that fellow students spit back at me about where I’m from, I realized that their answers are shaped by their culture, and their norms. As I was talking and getting to know people, I was able to “see” their culture (lecture week one& two) through their responses. Many people would literally state, “If you are from Hawaii you surf”. This response comes from their personal enculturation experience. Many people would ask me if I do hula (ancient Hawaiian dance), if I can play the ukulele, and if I could speech Hawaiian. I was faced with these “stereotypical” responses nearly every time I introduced myself. In one particular situation at the CVS in Arcata, I was introduced to a friend’s boy friend the conversation went as follows:

Friend: “This is Grace, she went to high school with me in Hawaii"                                                                                   
Me: “Hi”                                                                                                                                                                     

Friend’s Bf: “oh, another one of you?! haha” 

This conversation stood out to me, because immediately after learning where I was from, Someone labeled me as “another one of them” and I was lumped into a group because of the beliefs of another person. I was expected to be the same as everyone he had previously met from Hawaii, and judgment was immediately made based on his particular culture. 



COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: 
Despite the fact that I come from Hawaii, I do not surf. The fact that this was a difficult concept to get through to my peers shows a lot about the image of Hawaii that they have learned through enculturation (the process of learning culture).  They think that living in Hawaii comes with automatic guidelines for personality and type of person. Based on their norms, and beliefs, in Hawaii people surf. It is this generalization that leads to misunderstandings and ethnocentric fallacy (RR, pg.8).