vision magazine, CA
June 2 2006
Global Culture for a Globalized World
by Michael DeGuzman Nobleza
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The recent images flashing on LA’s KCAL-9 News have been stunning.
The heated debate around illegal immigration in the U.S. has led to
thousands of people on the streets of downtown L.A., young and old,
waving American, Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadorian flags. Korean
immigrants, dressed in traditional garb, marched in solidarity with
other immigrant groups. In the Crenshaw community, African-American
pro-immigrant advocates waving the red, black and green Black
Nationalist flag faced off against the `stars and stripes’ of a group
concerned about the impact of illegal immigration on the
employability of low-income African-Americans. The flag of Armenia
proudly flew around Hollywood on April 24th to commemorate the
Armenian genocide. On the anniversary of the start of the war in
Iraq, Muslim American mothers, donning headscarves, made a fervent
call for peace. On the surface, such symbolism might reflect an
increasingly fractured multicultural society. However, a deeper
reflection of these images helps us realize that Los Angeles-home to
188 distinct immigrant communities and innumerable cultural and
linguistic communities-represents a Global Culture that resonates
with a globalizing world.
It takes culture time to catch up with political and economic
changes. We can legislate new policy and enforce new taxes in short
order, but it takes time to change how we look at the world and how
we act based on that worldview. For years, international relations
scholars and economists have bemoaned the effects of globalization.
They’ve criticized the spread of McDonalds and Starbucks to the
world’s farthest flung locales and shown concern over the
instantaneity of information flashed across the bottom of CNN’s
regular reporting. What these academics have yet to account for is
the lived experience of diversity in major metropolises, like LA, San
Francisco, San Diego and New York, not as some bicoastal phenomenon
but as the cultural reality of the 21st century.
What, then, is `Global Culture’? What values does it have that speak
to today’s world affairs? Ten years ago, `global’ in the context of
Los Angeles would’ve meant efforts to make everyone speak English in
the workplace, while making sure Cinco de Mayo and Chinese New Year
were somehow celebrated. Global used to mean `universal’, that the
same ideas and values applied to everyone. Nowadays, the only real
thing that applies universally is the idea that nothing is universal;
the world for which today’s Global Culture exists is characterized by
the diversity of its ideas. In a world saturated by information and
communications technology, it is virtually impossible to not be able
to find at least ten different perspectives on any given issue.
Global Culture is embracing multiplicity. It’s about a Latino mayor
speaking to L.A.’s Jewish-American community about the Holocaust.
It’s about Scottish and Irish citizens marching together with
Nicaraguan day laborers.
It’s about affluent adults in the San Fernando Valley serving as
literacy volunteers to struggling and poor students. Culture used to
mean distinguishing yourself from `the others’ who were different
from you. In contrast, Global Culture has meant intentionally
blurring the lines in the name of connection and unity.
Global Culture is the re-imagining of community. That Sudanese `lost
boys’ who have resettled in California can reach out to and maintain
strong bonds with family and friends still in Africa proves that
Global Culture is no respecter of geography. Christmas posadas in
east L.A. and various cultural festivals throughout the city
exemplify the idea that we can find home in many places at the same
time: in the local communities in which we physically find ourselves
and in the more abstracted homelands overseas from which our parents
came. Global Culture means being comfortable with being part of
different communities simultaneously.
Global Culture also means choice. A recent study conducted by ReBoot
of Jewish-American generational perspectives on the Jewish faith
found that the so-called `iPod Generation’ valued the ability to be
selective about which parts of their faith and other faiths they
wished to practice. Global Culture is about having the opportunity to
visit the Baha’i Center, the Hare Krishna Community, or First AME
Church and taking knowledge from each to create a spirituality that
encompasses your entire world.
Finally, Global Culture is about doing what is right. From Nepal to
Liberia, to the debate around mayoral control of L.A.’s behemoth
school district, people around the world are hoisting up protest
signs and banners to show their support for the suffering on our very
streets and thousands of miles away. Global Culture is about taking
the American democratic experiment to the next level, in every
district, ward and borough. It is taking a few dollars at the end of
each pay period and donating to Doctors Without Borders’ work to
eradicate tropical diseases in the sub-Sahara. It’s about
transparency and accountability, about morality. It’s about enough
really being enough.
The cynics in Los Angeles’ media community can lament the city’s
political corruption, race relations and drug trade. But I’ll side
with those who see hope in the Global Culture emerging in Los
Angeles, a culture that fits the world we live in now; one that draws
strength from differences, that imagines community in broader terms,
a culture that is in sync with the world today.
Michael DeGuzman Nobleza is a writer and life coach based in Los
Angeles and author of the book, To Love and Grow in Love: A
Meditation, tentatively scheduled to be self-published in the next
year ().