V ~ Variety

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on the Adventures in America!

Variety is the spice of life they say, and I wholeheartedly agree. However, the variety of ethnic and cultural differences I observed my first year as an American was quite the change for me.  My school had African-American kids, Asian kids, Hispanic kids, handicapped kids in wheel chairs, kids with behavioral and or mental disorders, speech impediments, anger issues, and some spoke NO English at all.

They joke that all Swedes are blond haired and blue eyed, but there's a reason for the joke. Most are, or at least were in 1974. Now Sweden is more of a melting pot, with lots of immigration, and adoption. 

I remember though when a friend of The Nutritionist  from nursing school was going to visit. Mom took me aside to say, “She has different color of skin. It's black, not white like ours. But she's just a normal person like us, with a different color on her skin.” Made perfect sense to me.

However, when I got to America, not everyone had that opinion. I heard plenty about how certain people with certain physical features were to be avoided because they all behaved in a certain way. That seemed very wrong to me. How could a different color of skin cause a behavior change? Different eye colors didn't make us act differently, so why would skin?

My elementary school was what I now, as a teacher, know to be a magnet school for ESL (English as a Second Language) students. I, the Swedish chick, who spoke English, was put in with two tables of kids from at least four different cultures, and it wasn't long before Mrs. Lonigan (not her name) moved me to a regular desk. “You'll be just fine.” I was.

However, to this day, as an adult, though I can better understand why some stereotypes of race/culture/origin exist, as a child, it made no sense, and I didn't understand why the other kids' parents hadn't explained about how the outside of a person doesn't change the inside.

(free multicultural images from google)

I think this is something some adults need to learn, too...each person is an individual and should be treated as such. We walk around in these “costumes” we've been given, but who we are is NOT the costume, it's the soul/spirit/heart WEARING the costume who is the real person.