THE COLOURS OF THE SOUL

Recently  the biological parents of a prominent civil rights activist in Washington state have claimed that she has been misrepresenting herself as a black woman when her heritage is white. This is a grave matter because it borders on deception of the masses.

As onlookers, we wonder why anyone would do that because technically, we are born white, black, yellow, red or brown or a mixture of different colours . However, it gets more complicated when we talk about our cultural identities.

Granted, most of us think and feel according to how we have been brought up within our cultural boundaries. However, there are some who gravitate towards cultures that we have not been born into. I’m thinking of the Anglophile, the Weeabo, the Wapanese or the Koreaboo - strange terms that we use to make sense of conditions that we find hard to explain.

An anglophile is a non-English person who greatly likes and admires England and the things, people, places and culture of England. The Weeabo or Wapanese are non-Japanese who admire the Japanese culture  and they may even  dress or have their hair done like anime characters and go to anime events. The Koreaboo are non-Koreans who identify with all things Korean.

Some sociologists call this cultural identity.

This  is the identity or feeling of belonging to a certain nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation or even locality. Factors that influence one’s cultural identity include education, exposure, media and social groups.

Many of us who were fed a good diet of nursery rhymes during our formative years become all excited when we see London bridge or eat Christmas pie for the first time – thanks to images of the iconic London bridge falling down and Little Jack Horner who sat in a corner.

When I step into a traditional sweet store, my eyes quickly search for the humbug made famous by Enid Blyton. In my mind’s eye, the humbug is some kind of sweet that is made-in-heaven and I never knew that it is a boiled sweet, usually with black and white stripes and flavoured with peppermint.

When I fell in love with gardening, I finally saw Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils, the Cos lettuces that Benjamin Bunny nibbled on and the gooseberry bush where Peter Rabbit got caught in a net as he tried to escape from Mr. McGregor.

We enjoy British humour and try to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. We follow the lives of the Crawley family and its servants in the family's classic Georgian country house in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey.  It is such a joy to hear clearly articulated sentence structures spoken in Standard or BBC English.

We think in English, we feel in English and we even dream in English.

Then there is this younger set that is totally overwhelmed by all things Japanese or Korean – be it the food, the pop idols or the drama series.

 I know of many who spend many waking hours watching such dramas, with a good box of tissues beside them. It comes as no surprise when Korea and Japan top the list of the countries that they would like to visit.  Korean and Japanese men or women would also be their choice of an ideal spouse.

It is good to embark on a cultural identity search – to know who we are and what our propensities are. If we find ourselves similar to every other person around us in thought and behaviour , that is well and good.

But if we find ourselves different from the norm, that is good too as long as we are not trying to deceive others.

The colours of the soul reflect the fact that we are unique and that we are wonderfully and beautifully made.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY NEW STRAITS TIMES 27 SEPTEMBER 2015

http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/colours-soul

http://digital.nstp.com.my/nst/books/150927nstnews/index.html#/23/