Your tribe is the new segregation: integration may not be an improvement

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in American culture,ANASTASIA ASHMAN,culture,Expat Harem concept,global niche,identity,self-image,society,taboo

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By ANASTASIA ASHMAN

All this talk about finding your tribe. It’s so rewarding to connect to people with similar world views. True peers.

As we seek our global niche, we’re integrating across all sorts of out-moded boundaries. You could also say we’re segregating along the lines of our true selves.

Perusing a Berkeley Grade School Photos group at Facebook, I marvel at the sea of white faces in the hill school districts in the ’40s to early ’60s — all those boys in their khaki Cub Scout regalia, an aggressive club requirement on picture day.  Although the town’s schools were segregated simply by neighborhood, socioeconomic class lines also cut along race so Berkeley voluntarily desegregated itself, one of the first mid-sized American cities to do so. The integration program is reflected in a sudden appearance of multiracial group portraits.

Around the same time, the local government voted to rename its schools, exchanging African American civil rights leaders for the nation’s founding fathers. In a major gilding of the lily, Lincoln became Malcolm X.

At 9, I was bussed to the flatlands to an institution still bearing the name of a gentle Yankee poet. Its yard littered in glass, a burned out car lodged in a stairwell on a Monday morning. A hardcore new learning environment, and new peers!

Perhaps my parents skewed the fuller lesson in ethnic and socioeconomic diversity by signing me up for the academically competitive Asian Cluster classes, which confined me to rooms where Japanese, Filipino and Chinese students gathered. Integration has its casualties too.

What casualties of integration — or segregation — litter the path to finding your tribe?
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Anastasia Ashman is a California-born writer/producer of neoculture entertainment based in Istanbul. This series covers what’s crossing the mind and desk of expat+HAREM’s founder.
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Tagged as: Abraham Lincoln, African American, Asian Cluster classes, authenticity, Berkeley, Berkeley Unified School District, bussing, Caucasian, Chinese, civil rights, Cub Scouts, Daily Om, desegration, ethnic diversity, expat+HAREM founder, expat+HAREM founder series, Facebook, Filipino, finding your tribe, founding fathers, fourth grade, global niche, grade school class photo, integration, Japanese, Longfellow, Malcolm X, multiracial, peer group, race, school district, seeking our global niche, segregation, socio-economic class, socioeconomic class, tribe, true self, voluntary desegregation, voluntary integration, world view

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  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    Thanks for the highlight Ethan and the summary! Integration/tribalism: it’s such a double-edged issue.

    I just remembered I also spent two afternoons a week at the High Potential program (later called Mentally Gifted Minors), taking me away from my classmates into an even smaller group. Those students later were my scholastic peers in a huge high school….

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    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      Thanks for the highlight Ethan and the summary! Integration/tribalism: it’s such a double-edged issue.

      I just remembered I also spent two afternoons a week at the High Potential program (later called Mentally Gifted Minors), taking me away from my classmates into an even smaller group. Those students later were my scholastic peers in a huge high school….

  • http://www.speakingofchina.com Jocelyn

    I like how you say “segregating along the lines of our true selves” — but it is true that sometimes we miss something when we find our own.

    Still, I guess it is human nature and, at least for me, I cannot help but turn to those who are supportive and like myself. The people of “my tribe” are often the encouragement I need to move forward in a world that can make me feel like such a misfit. ;-)

    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      True, Jocelyn. I would think the smaller (or more distant/spread out) your tribe the more likely you face feelings of being a misfit in the general population.

  • http://www.speakingofchina.com Jocelyn

    I like how you say “segregating along the lines of our true selves” — but it is true that sometimes we miss something when we find our own.

    Still, I guess it is human nature and, at least for me, I cannot help but turn to those who are supportive and like myself. The people of “my tribe” are often the encouragement I need to move forward in a world that can make me feel like such a misfit. ;-)

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      True, Jocelyn. I would think the smaller (or more distant/spread out) your tribe the more likely you face feelings of being a misfit in the general population.

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