Living with Our Global Sisters: Embracing and Resisting Change

— Text of focus talk given on 3rd May 2019 by Susan Nulsen
Bio: Susan was born and educated in Australia. During her childhood the family moved around the country and she attended eight different schools before she went to university. Shortly after she married she went to England where she stayed for about nine years from the late 70s to the mid 80s and then also spent another year there in two different stretches during the 90s. She has now spent about fifteen years in the US.

As you can see from my bio, I moved around a lot as a child, and not quite as much as an adult. Every time I moved I had to leave my friends behind and start all over again. I heartily resisted that change! Now I am here to talk about the interactions of immigrants with the society they are coming into. I can speak both from the point of view of an immigrant myself and as a member of a society welcoming immigrants.

My Journey

The first case of welcoming an immigrant came when I was eleven living in Mt Isa, a small remote copper mining town in Queensland. At that time a new Finnish girl came into my class at school. She could not speak a word of English and none of us spoke Finnish, but she was welcomed with open arms by the girls in the class. It was my first encounter with someone who could not speak my language. We were eager to learn all we could about this exotic girl and spent a lot of time trading words with her. The handful of Finnish words I vaguely remember come from that time, “mitta” meaning “what” being her most common utterance. I left Mt Isa shortly after that but visited about six months later when I discovered her speaking fluent English. It was stunning.

When I moved to Alice Springs, in the central desert of Australia, I discovered that it was really I who was the immigrant. The Australian aborigines have the oldest continuous culture on earth, around 50 thousand years old (older than can be determined easily with carbon dating). When the aborigines entered the uninhabited land, as all peoples do, they changed the landscape. They managed the flora by regular burning and, probably, brought about the extinction off the large land animals, such as the diprotodon a giant wombat. However, by the time European settlers arrived it appears that they had reached a steady population and lived a sustainable nomadic lifestyle. They had no wars, although crimes still took place incurring punishments such as ritual spearing and in extreme cases “pointing the bone” which amounted to a death sentence. As late as the 60s there were still tribes in the central desert who had not encountered Europeans. The British declared Australia “terra nullius” which means it was owned by no-one so they were free take what they like! And that they did. In fact the aborigines didn't own the land; the land owned them. Naturally enough the aborigines resisted the British and did take farm animals. The consequences were a number of massacres by the British. These shameful events are not what we learnt about in school when I was young. 

My class contained a number of aboriginal and part-aboriginal children. Again I was eager to learn about another culture, but these kids were not quick to embrace a stranger. However a few of the girls, my sisters on this globe, would talk to me. They would hide their broad smiles behind their hands and regarded it as very important to avoid shame. Aborigines are very generous with their belongings and do not see the need to seek praise for their achievements. Even though the original people are now only an extremely small percent of the total population I see echos of their culture amongst Australians in general. I think it is partially (though only partially because I blame the British too! More about that later) responsible for Australia's “cultural cringe” – anything or anyone from overseas should be regarded more highly than the local product. An example of this was when my husband Paul said he was going to the UK to do a PhD in astrophysics. His father asked him what he thought he could do that someone else hadn't already done. Even in the physics department at the time, promising students were always advised to spend time overseas. Also Australians subscribe to what is known as the “tall poppy syndrome” – Australians like to cut down the tall poppies, those who put on airs and regard themselves as better than others because of their accomplishments. It is not that Australians don't strive for everyone to achieve as much as they can. Our (relatively) egalitarian society has ensured that Australia achieves more than its population would suggest on the global stage. I would like to think we make full use of all our people. I needed to experience other cultures before I came to the realization that the tall poppy syndrome was another example of society at large incorporating elements of the indigenous culture, without even being aware of what is happening. I attribute much of the difference in culture between Australia and its sister nation New Zealand to the differences between the indigenous aboriginal and the Polynesian Maori cultures. The Maoris, by the way, had only been in New Zealand about five or six hundred years when the Europeans settled there (1840). By that stage the Maori were facing ecological disaster. I believe this is one of the reasons that the Maori are much more warlike than the aborigines. (The British had to win a war to gain control of New Zealand.)

Grade 7,  Ross Park Primary School,  Alice Springs

In Alice Springs I had friends who were Italian, British and Chinese. And when I think back to the places I lived as a child my friends included people with many different national backgrounds (mainly European) but mostly we just didn't think about it at the time. Yet even so there was certainly an amount of cultural exchange taking place. I even had an American friend when I lived in Darwin. 

The United States prides itself on being a melting pot, but it is not the only one. Now 13.7% of the US population is foreign born. This compares with Canada which has close to one and a half times as many at 20.6% while Australia has 28.6% foreign born, more than twice as many as the US per capita. Almost one third of Australians are born overseas and less than half would have both parents born in Australia. One difference that stands out starkly is how readily many Americans relate to their ancestral nationality whereas most Australians who were brought up in Australia, certainly those that were born there, don't regard themselves as anything other than Australian. My mother's mother was English and her father a Welsh speaking Welshman but my mother would be puzzled and horrified if anyone referred to her as an English Australian or a Welsh Australian. Those were adjectives that could only appropriately be applied to her parents.

After I was married I moved to England with my husband. We lived in the cosy academic environment of Cambridge (the one on the River Cam) where we made friends with people of many nations and many cultures. For example, it was there that I first met a couple with an arranged marriage and came to appreciate how well such an arrangement could work and create just as loving a relationship as the love matches that I took for granted.

However after several years I began to notice a dark side to the British culture – the extreme classism with which it is afflicted. I should say that this classism is mitigated by the sense of “noblesse oblige” of the British upper classes. They feel that they have a duty to ensure the welfare of the lower classes. Nevertheless there is a definite social rank and Australians are at the very bottom, the most uncultured of all. Australia was, after all, founded as a penal colony when the American Revolution meant that no more convicts could be sent to the plantations of Virginia. This was brought home to me when I pointed out a good job opportunity in Melbourne to a physicist friend. His wife was a scholar of British literature and his immediate response to me was, “But what would Cathy do?” My jaw dropped. Now you can see why I place a large part of the blame for Australia's cultural cringe on the British. We decided that we did not want to bring up children in such a culture – one where your accent and the school you went to mark you for life. We returned to Australia before our daughter was one.

We did go back briefly for a couple of sabbaticals so our children had a chance to experience the British culture briefly for themselves. We also came here, to the US, for six months when the x-ray satellite Chandra was launched in 1999. As a result of that visit Paul was later offered a job at the Center for Astrophysics. We left our university-student children behind sharing a house in Sydney and I arrived at the end of 2003.

I found that a very difficult transition. I had been working as a research fellow in the engineering department at the University of Wollongong but now I was no longer allowed to work. I was unsuccessful in finding any group of Harvard spouses that met. I did do a couple of things. One was to take some art classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Another was to come along to the Theological Opportunities Program. It took Ann Wiseman, who was also my art teacher, quite some persuasion to convince me that I wasn't going to a religious meeting. TOP was of course WomenExplore and I enjoyed Liz Dodson Gray's process of planning the lectures. I was able to make myself useful because I could google. I was able to find suggestions for speakers and often I could get contact information for speakers others suggested. And most importantly I also made friends with all of you! 

Ten years ago TOP wanted to reach out to other groups of women, so I searched once again and found that there was now a group of Harvard spouses known as HSSPA [pronounced “Hespa” ]. H.S.S.P.A. stands for Harvard Students' Spouses and Partners Association and was mainly made up of the wives of post-docs but also included wives of PhD students and visitors to the university in a variety of positions, plus the occasional husband. They did not prove to be a great source of participants for TOP/WomenExplore. However I found another home with this group. Although I was older than most, but not all of them, I was another foreigner displaced from life in her own country, community and family and unable to work. Without HSSPA most of these young women would have been extremely isolated.

I did not realize at the time that there was deep connection between HSSPA and TOP/WE.

In 1896 Anna Parker Lowell, the wife of a Harvard professor, started a group called the Society of Harvard Dames. This group was open to the mothers, sisters and wives of Harvard students who were only temporarily resident in the area. These were women who had come to look after the young men while they were studying at Harvard. The Harvard Dames met on Thursday afternoons for a talk followed by afternoon tea. The group lasted into the 30's and probably longer before it petered out. Maybe the war interrupted it. In the late 50's the Dean of the Harvard Divinity School decided to resurrect the Society of Harvard Dames as Ladies' Lectures for the wives of HDS students. In 1973 Brita Stendahl with a small advisory committee reformulated these lectures as the Theological Opportunities Program. Like the Ladies Lectures they weren't just open to wives but to any women who were interested. TOP/WomenExplore only became the organization we know when Elizabeth Dodson Gray became coordinator in 1978. She opened the Advisory Committee up to all who attended, developing our unique method of devising a lecture series through the topics that are on our minds. She then introduced the idea of an existential focus to ground the topic of the day in the experiences of one of the women who attended. These two features are what distinguish WE from the myriad of other lectures that are available to us.

Meanwhile some time after I had arrived, another woman turned up looking for a Harvard spouse group. She wasn't happy to find nothing and with the help of the Harvard International Office discovered the Society of Harvard Dames and resurrected it for the second time, this time as HSSPA.

It was a culture shock for me arriving here. I think foreigners feel they know what the US is like from the bombardment of American culture that we receive, but it is never what anyone expects.

I was incredibly shocked the first time I came to Boston to see beggars on the street! In the richest country in the world! It was additionally amazing to see that numbers of them are military veterans. I had NEVER seen a beggar in Wollongong! 

I find that I resist some American traits such as: 

Kowtowing to the boss

Rugged individualism

The belief that everyone is capable of achieving the American dream if it weren't for their own failures.

Philanthropy, which equals giving back a small fraction of what you stole to salve your conscience

The poor state of the democratic system, the democratic system which once led the world.

Tipping at restaurants

The lack of a living wage – tantamount to slavery. If the government needs to support your workers it is subsidizing your business.

It is a very sad fact that America is an extremely unequal society and it is only becoming more unequal, despite the efforts of many good people.

On the other hand there are other characteristics I seek to embrace such as:

The willingness to give praise

The real generosity of many individuals.

Thank you.

                   ---------------------------------------------------------

The main lecture was given by Roslyn Negrón, socio-cultural anthropologist from UMass, Boston, author of Ethnic Identification Among Urban Latinos: Language and Flexibility.

The Myths and Realities of How Americans See Themselves

This is the text of a talk given by Susan Nulsen on 26^th September 2013 following Timothy Patrick McCarthy on the same topic.

Bio: Susan was born and educated in Australia. Shortly after she married she went to England where she stayed for about nine years from the late 70s to the mid 80s and then also spent another year there in two different stretches during the 90s. She has now spent a similar length of time in the US.

Talk:

I always look forward to hearing Tim McCarthy speak. He has such insightful things to say. But I quite had the wind taken out of my sails when I heard he needed to leave early and I had to speak after him. He is a very hard act to follow!

As you can see from my bio, I have no qualifications to speak on how Americans see themselves. Almost every one of you is better qualified than me!

So I will start by describing my earliest interactions with Americans, and then tell you some of the myths I learned about America and how my experiences have led me to judge these.

My mother and an Australian friend

The first people I could identify as American were a couple of young women my mother was friends with when we lived in Mount Isa, a small remote copper mining town in Queensland. As a ten year old I had very little interaction with them. However they stood out because they dressed strangely; to my mind they seemed very elegant but very old-fashioned. They wore dresses that stood out stiffly over big petticoats. My mother and her other friends often went around in shorts which were much more suited to the tropical climate.

Some stockmen

Around this time, although there was no television in the town, my family would gather around the radio on Tuesday evenings to listen to a couple of radio shows which often included American westerns. Since Mt Isa was in the middle of cattle country the westerns seemed very appropriate. (I should say that we didn't have “cowboys” or six-shooters; instead the people who strode around in high-heeled riding boots and rounded up the cattle were known as “stockmen”.) So I was already getting a dose of American culture.

The Pine Gap Facility

The first time I met Americans of my own age was when we moved to Alice Springs. These were the children of people working at the “secret” American communications base at Pine Gap. It wasn't very secret, in that everyone in the town knew of its existence, but not even the Australian government knew what information was gathered or relayed from there. The most notable thing about these children was their contagious American accents. It was impossible to talk to them for very long without starting to sound like them yourself.

Also when we lived in Alice Springs my family spent a lot of time going bush on camping trips. On these adventures we seemed to meet a lot of retired Americans travelling around the country in camper vans. Many of these described themselves as “rock hounds” – they collected interesting, often semi-precious, stones. My sister and I were told we could be “pebble pups”. On one of our camping trips we took Bea, an American journalist from Cleveland, with us to see some of the spectacular scenery in the ranges out of Alice Springs. I have no idea how she got in touch with my family – maybe my father had given his contact details to some of the American tourists we had met previously. So it is very possible that my family, through Bea's writing, influenced how some Americans saw Australia.

When I was fourteen I used to wait at the school bus stop with a girl who was absolutely furious with her parents because they had refused to allow a couple of these American tourists to adopt her and take her back home with them! I still don't understand how she couldn't see her parents point of view. Around this time I also made friends with an American girl who lived in a fantasy world. Both her parents worked, which was unusual at that time, and each afternoon she was responsible for caring for her younger siblings. Her thirteen year old sister did nothing to help take care of the two little boys who ran wild! Janice told me all about the exciting life she led on the French Riviera where she had her own speed boat.

I met a few more Americans in high school and at university. As you can see, I had had contact with only a handful of Americans. However I was still exposed to American culture through films, books, cartoons and comic books.

It was when we went to Cambridge in the UK for my husband, Paul, to do his PhD that we met a large number of Americans and became good friends with some. Because of our common language I would also often end up spending time with the American wives at conferences at various places in Europe.

My first visit to the US was when Paul was visiting the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland as a student. We stayed with an exceedingly generous American couple who put us up for a whole six weeks. During that time I remember being at a barbecue where one person was describing loudly, in graphic detail and at great length his bout of amoebic dysentery. I had never experienced the like. Australians or British would not air their medical problems so publicly.

And the first time I lived in the US was for six months when Paul came for the launch of the Chandra satellite in 1999. We spent six weeks living right in Harvard Square, above the Harvard Book Store and the rest of the time in Newton where my daughter Alix went to high school and my son Luke to the middle school. Girls she met told Alix that she spoke “very good English.”

Finally after I came here in December 2003 I met a large array of Americans, including all of you. I have learnt that the only thing I can say with certainty about Americans is that they are a widely varied group of people and it is impossible to make any generalizations.

Now here are half a dozen myths that I have encountered.

Myth 1: Britain was NOT democratic at the time of the Declaration of Independence. (1776) The UK had been a constitutional monarchy since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – when James II was replaced by William and Mary – around a hundred years before. It was ruled by an elected Parliament with roots stretching back to the Magna Carta in 1215. At the time of the Revolution, the trouble from the American point of view was that the Americans did not have a vote. Yet I continually hear Americans talking as if Britain had been an absolute monarchy.

Myth 2: America is the most democratic country in the world. Now America certainly set an example to the world with its constitution in the 18^th century. However constitutions written since then have been able to draw on others experience. I would like to point out two features of the Australian electoral system that promote a more democratic government. You may have heard me say this before. Preferential voting, which is the equivalent of running multiple run-off elections, eliminating the candidates one by one, provides a much fairer way of voting. Secondly making voting, and registering to vote, compulsory ensures that the outcome of an election is more fair. Just think of all the work that goes into getting out the vote here, and in Britain too.

Furthermore, far from upholding democracy around the world, the US has a history of overthrowing, or working against other countries' democratically elected governments with which it doesn't agree. Think of the Allende government in Chile.

Myth 3: One man, one vote. It is now not “one man, one vote” but “one dollar, one vote”. I know that many of you will agree whole-heartedly with me here. The electoral system has been distorted by the inordinate amounts of money needed to win an election. Politicians are chosen by their ability to raise money and spend too much of their time fund raising.

Also the control of media by wealthy media barons deprives the ordinary person of the tools to make informed choices. This is no better in Australia. Rupert Murdoch is openly boasting that he put Tony Abbot, the new Liberal (what you would call conservative) prime minister into power.

Myth 4: America is God's Own Country. I don't think I need to say anything about this!

But I would like to throw in

Myth 5: Atheists are immoral. As a non-religious person I find this statement very insulting. I have heard this or something which implies this many times – statements such as “I couldn't believe he could do something so evil, he regularly attended church.” If he hadn't attended church then it would have been believable that he could have been evil!

Myth 6: America is the land of opportunity. Anyone by their own hard work can make it rich. Anyone born a citizen can aspire to be president. This is a very dangerous myth. In fact everyone is dependent on the society they have been bought up in, their families, schools the local infrastructure. Many poor people cling to this myth as hope for their own future. If you are poor it can only be because you are lazy or made bad choices. People at the top are being rewarded for merit. Luck plays no part in your fate. If you vote for anything which penalizes the wealthy you might be penalizing yourself in the future. This myth pacifies an underclass and persuades the poor to vote against their own best interests.

I was incredibly shocked the first time I came to Boston to see beggars on the street! In the richest country in the world! It was additionally amazing to see that the numbers of them are military veterans.

Until I left Australia I never dreamt of tipping a waiter at a restaurant. I had been one myself and knew that waiters earned a reasonable wage and the price of the food covered that. I would love it if some restaurants here banned tipping and paid their staff appropriately!

Businesses feel it is in their interests to have a large pool of cheap labor with poor working conditions. So-called “illegal” immigrants provide even cheaper labor. It seems that this whole economy is dependent on these underclasses of people for cheap food, cheap goods and cheap services. A business that depends on a labor force earning less than a living wage should not be a viable business. Government support of low paid people is just another way the government is subsidizing business.

It is a very sad fact that America is an extremely unequal society and it is only becoming more unequal, despite the efforts of many good people.

The final myth I just have to mention is

Myth 7: Americans don't have an accent. Of course the only people who don't have accents are those whose who don't speak! Yet this is something I constantly hear Americans say.

I also find it strange that the accents spoken by the locals along the east coast, the areas that have been longest settled, are looked down upon by speakers of standard American. Recently a Belgian friend and her husband, who have only been here about a year, were asked for directions by an American tourist. After they had told him the way the tourist commented on their “rough Boston accents”!

I should end by saying that although I have tried to point out the fallacies in these myths there is an element of truth in many of them. America is a great country with many resources. Unfortunately it is not fully utilizing its greatest resource, its people. It has an opportunity to set a shining example to the rest of the world and I think it would be a wonderful thing if it did.

—Susan Nulsen