revized cultural autobiography

WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. On the surface, this term, usually a pejorative, fairly well describes me. I am white, descended from immigrants from the British Isles, and my family on both sides has been protestant as far back as anyone now alive knows. To make maters worse I had the misfortune of being born with both an X and an Y chromosome, genetically predestining me to belong to one of the last remaining groups of true villains out there, white males. However, this term WASP, as with slurs in general, obscures more than it uncovers. Reality complicates stereotype.

Culturally and ethnically I know most about my fathers side of the family tree. As recently as my granddad’s generation the family was dirt-poor subsistence farmers from the remote regions of Alabama. Essentially “white niggers” the McWhirters fought on the “wrong” side in the war from the southern viewpoint. I recall also finding a reference to my great-grandmother’s side of the family, Beasely, in an exhibit about southerners in the Union army in a civil war memorial site in Georgia. Ironically this was a source of embarrassment for some later generations, who, steeped in the racist mindset of post-reconstruction Alabama, didn’t talk very loudly about their family’s involvement in the Union army. In my own time this heritage has been generally (though sometimes ambiguously) celebrated. My great-grandmother was mostly proud of it but a little reserved, later generations are far less reserved.

Growing up I was exposed to a lot of bluegrass, Appalachian and folk music, and have come to find these genres are a part of my culture and cultural self-perception. Songs about sharecroppers, coal miners, racial tensions and the people, good and bad, of the south were made a little more poignant knowing that my granddad more or less lived in the world of these songs. A lot of songs that have since become well known and popularized are ones that my great-grandmother, my granddad and great-aunts and uncles grew up with. For example, a few years ago I was playing the song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (a.k.a. In the Pines; brought to the MTV generation via Nirvana’s “Unplugged in New York” album) on my guitar. When I had finished the song my granddad remarked, “where’d you learn that song, Daniel? That song’s older than me.” I have grown up hearing, singing and playing such songs not merely as interesting relics or just “good music,” but as living stories, things that I myself am caught up in however distantly. Coal mining and lynching, wayfaring stranger’s traveling through a weary land; I’m mixed up in it all, and often see myself and the present facing me as a continuation of this past.

Songs are also an apt marker of my involvement in the church. Both my mother and father are musically inclined and have been involved in leading worship for the entirety of my existence. When I moved out and began college I quickly found myself also involved in leading worship. It has surprised me, since I have never felt called to music ministry and consider myself very much a dilettante in this area. Retrospecting, perhaps it is not that surprising—my mother and father before me valued music, hymns and instruments and that has rubbed of on me. As I have developed as a worship leader I find myself gravitating to the songs and melodies of my cultural history—“I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger”, “In the morning when I die, give me Jesus”, “Come thou fount of every blessing”, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul?” These are the words I have learned to worship in and the melodies my soul resonates with—Spirituals, Appalachian and Southern hymnody. Thus leading worship has made me more aware of my own cultural history.

Music has helped give me a sense of cultural grounding and depth; it has helped me be aware that I have a distinct culture as a genericly white, middling North American, and a cultural history goes deeper than the recent post-war, consumerist/capitalist sub-urban culture of immediate memory. Music is also one of the most basic ways a culture tells its story and records history and a look at the songs of my culture demonstrates its sketchy and soiled history. From the south come laments of slaves and stories of lynchings as well as of freedom and simple faith. Thus awareness of my ethnic history is bitter-sweet.

I have also been made more aware of my culture through interactions with people from different cultures. My parents are very hospitable, and growing up we had people in our house from literally all over the world. Some were missionaries and others were colleagues of my father who was a professor of Physics for the better half of my growing up years. I particularly remember some interactions with his Russian friend Eugene and his wife, Olga. When they first moved to the states my family helped them find a place to live and begin to make sense of North American life. I particularly remember Olga being utterly exasperated at the grocery stores here. In our “more is better” culture we have five brands for everything, and multiple varieties of everything, e.g. reduced fat, single-serving, extra-pulp, no-pulp, and so on. Olga exclaimed in frustration “I just want yogurt!” The variety of consumer-culture was overwhelming to her practical, Slavic mind, and her reaction helped open my families eyes to our own cultural reality.

Spending a week living with a family in former East Germany was similarly revealing. Many people are less than thrilled with the change from soviet-style communism to western consumerist capitalism. My host-mother remarked “vor der Wende war unsere Welt sicher, aber klein”—“before reunification our world was safe/certain, though small.” All dissidents and nonconformists are unspeakably happy with the change, but for those who were content to toe the party line and not make a fuss the change has been unsettling, even traumatic.

One can also become aware of one’s culture when one inadvertently transgresses against it or attempts to live against its grain. I most distinctly felt this form of learning when I mentioned to my father than my wife and I were thinking of moving to live with or near some close friends of ours when we are done at Fuller. The four of us did almost everything together in college and have all felt that it would be silly to not continue that relationship. My father simply couldn’t understand why we would try to hold onto a friendship like that. In his mind, beyond the nuclear family, you just have to be practical and move wherever life takes you. Since the chances of “life” taking both couples to the same city or even the same state are slim, to try to continue living together would be impractical. Furthermore, in his mind, this would likely interfere with “God’s plans.” My father didn’t advise us against it, but he simply couldn’t comprehend our reasons for thinking about it. My culture values the nuclear family, but also values mobility and a lack of social obligations. The nuclear family provides people with just the amount of social stability that most people need to stay sane while at the same time allowing for a reasonably mobile and transient population.

Such experiences have helped me begin to see myself and my situation. Without these experiences I would be at a loss to see myself—like a man without a mirror I could never see my face. Some of what I see concerns me: the consumerism, the pragmatic emphasis on mobility and nuclear family over all other claims, and so on. With the help of this mirror I am trying to transgress these boundaries, to begin to think (and more importantly, live) differently, and to some extent I am succeeding. Other aspects of my cultural heritage I have found new respect for by looking at them in this mirror. To return to a musical example, I find the theme of “wayfaring stranger” or “pilgrim” imagery in American folk music and folk hymns quite powerful. It reminds me that longing can be a good thing, not merely something to be sated through consumerist consumption. It also humbles me, reminding me that I need something beyond myself and my world.