Excuse Me, but Your Ignorance Is Showing

So my usually easy-going son comes home in a huff today from his last class at the university.  Gives me a peck on the cheek and then pulls out a textbook and says, “Mom, what do you think of this?”

He begins to read it to me (I’m including the article here so you too can judge for yourself):  Here goes…

“You’ve been invited to a community awards ceremony at a local church of Pacific Island immigrants that is to honor students from your school. You gladly accept, arrive a few minutes early, and are ushered to a seat of honor on the stage.  After an uncomfortable (to you) wait of over an hour, the ceremony begins, and the students proudly file to the stage to receive their awards.”

I’m about to tell my son that this disregard for punctuality is one of those things that I find absolutely infuriating, that as far as I’m concerned, operating on so called “Samoan-time” is just downright rude and shows no class whatsoever, etc etc.  But apparently that isn’t the offending paragraph.  So I hold my tongue while my son continues reading.

“…The children all go back and sit down in the audience again, and the meeting continues with several more items on the agenda.  The kids are fine for a while, but get bored and start to fidget.  Fidgeting and whispering turn into poking, prodding, and open chatting.  You become a little anxious at the disruption, but none of the other adults appear to even notice, so you ignore it too.  Soon several of the children are up and out of their seats, strolling about the back and sides of the auditorium.  All adult faces continue looking serenely up at the speaker on the stage. Then the kids start playing tag, running circles around the seating area, and yelling gleefully. No adult response-you are amazed, and struggle to resist the urge to quiet the children.  Then some of the kids get up onto the stage, run around the speaker, flick the lights on and off, and open and close the curtain! Still nothing from Islander parents who seem either unaware or unconcerned about the children’s behavior!  You are caught in the middle of a conflict of cultures-yours and the Pacific Islanders’…What do you do in this situation?”

Well, I immediately see why my son had smoke coming out of his ears, I too was now practically foaming at the mouth!  But I’ll get to my reaction in a little bit. 

Back to my son – he goes on to tell me that he felt so angry as he was listening to this being read in class.  He was about to say something when behind him, he heard a girl say in response to the question, “Well, obviously I’m going to go talk to the parents because apparently they don’t know how to raise their kids right.”  (Dang, I wish I’d been in that class during that discussion).  Ok, ok, back to my son.

He turned around and said, “Excuse me, you have no idea what you’re talking about.  I’m Samoan, and I can tell you that there isn’t a Samoan parent, or another Pacific Islander parent that would let their child behave in such a manner.   I can tell you that my parents raised me to be respectful and to behave and I can also tell you that knowing what I know of Pacific Islanders because I am one, there is no Pacific Islander parent under the face of the sun that would tolerate these kinds of behaviors from their kids.  If anything, that kind of behavior would have been nipped immediately either by the parent giving them “the look” or even a smack right then and there if they don’t get the message.”

Of course I was glad he spoke up, and oh how my hands itched to smack that stupid stupid girl.  The nerve, the absolute gall, the total ignorance of some people completely amazes me!

We talked for a little while longer.  I told my son that I completely agree with what he said in class.  We don’t let our kids get out of hand, if anything we err too much the other way.  I can’t picture a Samoan or Pacific Islander parent that lets their kid behave like a hooligan during such an event.  It’s not Samoan kids or Pacific Islander kids that throw tantrums and fits, it’s not Pacific Islander kids that tell their parents to “shut, the f*** up.  It’s not Pacific Islander parents that let their children walk all over them.  It’s not Pacific Islander parents that let their children do as they please.  No sirreeee!

By the way, according to the references in the text, the above excerpt was adapted from Winitzky, 1994 who states that the invitation and the events (described above) actually happened to one educator.

Since my son has already given this clueless girl a piece of his mind, I’ll direct this towards Winitzky.  Winitzky, your scenario is crap.  Check your sources because there is no way that a Pacific Islander parent would fail to act in the kind of situation you described.  No Pacific Islander parent would continue to just sit back “looking serenely up at the speaker on the stage” while their children are wreaking havoc during an important ceremony.  Unlike some cultures, Pacific Islanders do know what it means to have respect.  We come out of the womb breathing respect, for crying out loud.  A conflict of cultures?  That’s a good one.  I guess the western culture (for lack of a better term) is known for respect and decorum.  Now that I think about it, why respect is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of western culture, NOT!  What a joke!  Something is not right in this picture, and one of you (you or your source) isn’t telling the whole story.  The only thing that this excerpt show is an ignorance on your part to the true essence of Pacific Islander culture.  If you are going to write about another culture, please make sure you really do understand it first.  And you call yourself an educator? Shame, shame, shame on you!