America-Culture Shock

By Ian C. Dawkins Moore

Informative and enlightening April 25, 2007
By Reader Views
Format:Paperback
Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (3/07)

Ian Moore is a well-traveled and exceptional individual. Born in London, England to Jamaican and English parents; Ian received his own culture shock as a young man. As a way to deal with it, he traveled Europe, the Middle East and West Africa. After extensively traveling the world, Mr. Moore elected to settle in Oakland, California in 1981 where he presently resides.

Ian Moore produces a weekly cable show (coincidentally called, "Culture Shock News") and broadcasts a weekly radio program of the same name.

In "America: Culture Shock," Ian Moore has summoned all his memories of past adventures in travel -- memories from the days of a young man exploring the world to his return to America. Ian speaks to us of world diversity that spans the globe. He explains the price of greed and in poetic form; the land once possessed.

One of the many unique parts of the book was the "Culture Shock Interviews." They were transcripts of a 1993 news show the author did. He interviewed eight people from different lands and cultures. In this interview he gets their reaction to their culture shock experiences in America.

From a Puerto Rican writer to an Afro-American journalist, each voices their thoughts.
According to Ian, culture shock has many symptoms and five stages. He explains this in Part III, "The ABC's of Culture Shock." Along with this he also goes into such things as "Surviving Culture Shock" and "Cultural Training."

Part IV deals with "Cultural Adjustment in the USA" and the last part, part V, is an ironic description of "The Benefits of Culture Shock."

"America: Culture Shock" is an interesting and diversified volume of poetry and prose.
It is written with many contributions from existing work which the author has blended into a melting pot of experience. He takes all things from all people and gives the reader a view from their perspective. "America: Culture Shock" is interesting and easy to read. It is worth looking at from the standpoint of outside opinion. How the rest of the world perceives us in the grand scheme of things. I considered "America: Culture Shock" worth the time and gave it a B+. Not something I would go out of my way for, but the book is informative and enlightening.

Review of Ian c. Dawkins Moore's America: Culture Shock October 21, 2006
By James H. Quina
Format:Paperback
Through his travel in Israel, Jamaica, London, Africa, India and China, Ian Dawkins Moore demonstrates in his America: Culture Shock that "culture joins and separates people, not color or race." Moore's non-linear prose style challenges the reader with mixtures of poetry from Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Moore's own sonnets and excerpts from Alex de Tocqueville, Vance Packard, Baudelaire and Thomas Sewell. In Part Four: Cultural Adjustments in America, Moore offers practical advice for those entering American Culture--advice on money management, health care and job search. Moore's rhapsodic delivery surprises, amuses and delights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian C. Dawkins Moore
• Release date: Dec 25, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452308944

Ian C. Dawkins Moore

Ian C. Dawkins Moore was born under the sign of Aries in the year of the Tiger. He survived a British boarding school, the jock world of football hooliganism, hitch-hiking across the Sahara desert, and the two-tone culture of American racism. He is the published author of over 20 books, and he can still see the funny side of life- Be Well & Enjoy!

Book preview

America – Culture Shock

A Handbook for Cultural Survival in America

by

Ian C. Dawkins Moore

©Copyright 2009 Ian C. Dawkins Moore

Smashwords Edition

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/icmoore.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is available in print

From

I. C. Moore

2311-7th Avenue, Oakland, CA 94606

For information call

510-465-7487

Email: [e-mail]

PLEASE REVIEW

Thank you,

for taking the time to read America-Culture Shock; I'm encouraged every time I speak to readers who have questions about the historical process. My work is not only an attempt to put my thoughts and ideas out into the public domain, but also to encourage all my readers to do the same.

Be well; I. C. Moore

Table of Content:

Prologue:

Part I – THE SHOCK OF THE NEW WORLD

1-The Culture of the Immigrant

The Arrival

Coming to America

Observations from Visitors

Democracy in America

The Culture of Change

The Heaven of Hope

2- A Culture Shock Journey

Love is a perfect imperfection

Jamaica – No Problem

Do you know what it means to be Free?

China: 6,000 years in 6 days

See London and Die

My Fate

The Road to Ramadam

Walking on Air

Nice Chap

The Promised Land

America – Cry Freedom

Fortune Favors the Brave

3- Culture Shock Stereotypes

The Thinking American’s guide to being an American

Racism

Interracial Culture

Would you have me forget?

Another Country

4- The Culture of Assimilation

The Culture of History

The Culture of Inclusion

The Culture of Politics

The Culture of Acceptance

Let America be America Again

Part II – THE SHOCK OF CULTURES COMING TOGETHER

Ethnic America-A History

Culture Shock Interviews

The Color of Jazz

The Culture of Language

Poverty of Plenty

Market Cultures

The Culture of Waste

The Ice Age

The Culture of War

After a War

The Culture of the Future

Running hard for Freedom?

Part III – THE ABC OF CULTURE SHOCK

1-The phenomenon of culture shock

2-The stages of culture shock:

Arrival and honeymoon

Crises in daily life

Enjoying the new

The good and the bad

Re-entry shock

3-Surviving culture shock

Overcoming culture shock

Cross cultural diversity (humor)

4-Cultural training:

Part IV – CULTURAL ADJUSTMENT IN THE USA

Cultural Adjustment in the USA

Coping With Culture Shock

Cultural Diversity

Rights and Responsibilities of Refugees:

US Laws That May Differ from Laws in Your country

Legal Status and Citizenship

Pre-Arrival Processing

Pre-Departure Interview

Resettlement Agency

Role of the Resettlement Agency

Community Service

Managing Your Money

Health

Housing

Employment

Day Care

Education

Part v - The Benefits of Culture Shock

The New face of America

Walk the talk

Discover the world around you

Meet people not stereotypes

Question your assumptions

Ask about family

Practice patience

Read and travel to other lands

Resist prejudice

Value a person’s worth

Keep an open mind

Dedications:

I would like to thank Joe Shakarchi, who was the first to encourage my writing. To Seth ‘Tank’ Edwards, my first teacher who inspired me to realize that I could be free by educating myself. To Jonathan Smythe esq., who turned from his life of privileged to encourage a poor wretch like me to appreciate my purpose in life. To Sam & Norma Smith, my real parents, who taught me to live and live life. To my Aunt Sissy and Dennie, who got married on the day of my birth and who always believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. To my wife Bridgette and daughter Jazmine who are a constant inspiration.

To Joe Shakarchi, George Aguilar, Mel Vapour, Reginald Lockett and Reese Minshew for reviewing the text, editing and proof-reading.

I’m solely responsible for all the articles, opinions and borrowings in this work.

I’m a part of all that I have met,

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untraveled world whose margins

Fade, forever and forever when I move.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Keep knocking and the joy inside

Will eventually open a window

And look out to see who’s there.

Rumi

Prologue:

Culture shock is about the shock of cultures coming together in our world today. Culture shock represents the change that is thrust on someone before they’ve had time to fully absorb it and adjust. Culture shock is about being confronted by someone or something that challenges your assumptions about who you think you are!

Culture shock is a very real emotional experience, which affects everyone, at one level or another. The feelings may include: stress, fatigue, irritability, a sudden act of weeping, and a general sense of disconnection and discomfort. Sometimes, after a longer stay in a new environment, it can create a sense of paranoia, an increased need to be aggressive, and an overly romantic opinion about one’s former home.

But culture shock can also represent a new sense of freedom, an opportunity to start again. A more focused perspective on one’s skills and talents, and a chance to be appreciated for qualities you never realized you had in the ‘old country’.

As Alvin Toffler reflected in his book, ‘Future Shock’, The culture shock phenomenon accounts for much of the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation that plagues [peoples] in their dealings with other societies [and cultures]. It causes a breakdown in communications, a misreading of reality, [and] an inability to cope.

Culture shock relates not only to the experiences of change by people coming from another country and culture, but also to those, who, within a particular country, are confronted by issues of significant cultural differences. For example, someone moving from Mississippi to California can experience a discomfort with attitudes and customs that can be just as unsettling or liberating as someone coming from Thailand to America.

Culture shock, is the experience of people who share at least one thing in common? They are all people who have left their native confines, by choice or coercion, and taken up the challenge of another environment. In this respect globalization has become a culture shock environment. This is in many ways a good thing, because as people interact across artificially created national and regional boundaries, we are all able to experience each other as the human beings we really are, not just the cultural or economic category we are judged to belong to. This process enables us all to be less influenced by national political considerations. Having once experienced the humanity of another global citizen, it is less likely that we will see them as demons.

A culture shock consciousness could produce an immediate change in the mentality of mankind, by providing an opportunity for peoples of the world to exchange their environments with each other. For example, starting with the war-torn lands of the world, a Palestinian could switch places with an Israeli; a Turk with a Kurd; a Russian with a Georgian; A Hutu with a Tutsi; a Vietnamese with a Chinese, a Mexican with a Columbian, and an African-American with a White Anglo Saxon Protestant. This real-life reality exchange could provide meaningful experiences of contrary lifestyles. All would have the opportunity to live in another’s shoes. All would have the opportunity to face the prejudices and discrimination that are experienced by others solely because of their ethnic birth. All would have an opportunity to learn sometime about themselves as human beings that is hidden to them in their present cultural identity.

Come back!

We never left the silence of tomorrows.

Come back!

The yesteryears bounce forward

always striding, bullying the future.

It was on a gray, drizzly, London morning that culture shock first took its bite of my consciousness. Spiteful and depressed, I squeezed out from the rain and came face-to-face with my lost past.

It was here, in the crumbling ruins

of Strawberry Hill—

a name that conjures up a time of

indulgent privilege and ‘noblesse oblige’—

where the good citizens would

interview prospective homeowners

into their select band of bigots.

Here, surrounded by the overgrown moss layering the once-petite nearby railway station, I heard my first call to culture shock. On a return journey to my school of yesteryear; looking down the track, I realized that no longer would guilt-ridden parents be riding this route to see their abandoned kids detained at the pleasure of the Lord Shaftsbury’s orphanage. This endowment of charity, spewed from the loins of culpable British nineteenth-century politicians, was defunct. The haunt from which the emotions

of my early manhood had rebelled, and fled. The place I cursed despised

and battled hard to forget. This curse of impregnated cultural denial that had

formed a steel net of fear, and self-doubt around my bursting aspirations all

looked so small now.

It’s difficult to conceive how these same bricks, walls and pathways could have inspired in me such awe, such trepidation! I felt I could now crush the whole place in my hands, like some discarded pulp mail.

The elegant Georgian mansion stood

aloof. The central clock still kept its

immaculate time. The broad sweep of

the giant fir tree still dominated a

beautifully manicured lawn mowed

with military precision.

But the school buildings were gone. The sound of trenchant orders and the smell of burnt oatmeal were buried beneath new housing tracts. The old soccer field had been replaced by rows of kitchenettes, by living rooms overflowing with easy chairs. On that now cemented field I had led soccer teams, blending blood and sweat together through ice and snow, heat and rains—frequently forcing a grudging respect for this school of lost souls on the opposing players. All the hopes of my youth had been turned under the sod, like the desecration of Carthage. Nothing remained of this spirit but the salt in the wounds.

Yet the maturity of my consciousness

was still hidden in shadows, in the limbo

of aloneness. I hungered to be born

again on that gray morning of purpose.

The insipid drizzle was my baptism to

a new faith!

A faith in myself as a worthy human being, despite my illegitimate beginnings wrapped in the skin of many cultures; a faith that reconciled color with history and the pursuit of happiness.

The culture shock spirit was a vibrating rhythm of resonating sensation, that preached the message of Sankofa, the understanding that "One can only move forward if one has understood the past.’

Part I - THE SHOCK OF THE NEW WORLD

1-The Culture of the Immigrant

The Arrival

And I came - naked -

free!

Burned by destiny’s

anthem

yet cloistered by the fire of

my desire spitting

hopes out towards the horizons

that shrunk away

from my tremendous commitment

to suck up all my

disappointments

and mistakes and imbibe them

with the pregnancy

of a new birthing!

Come then

into this fire of

cleansing power,

burn away the

warts of transgressions

and fears. Embrace

this silent hour

of our arrival –

here brother,

sip cool waters.

Coming to America

Ships coming from a distance carry everyone’s dreams ashore. For some they slip in with the eddies of the tides. For others, they crash against the rocks of poor fortune. Each brings their new song of freedom, coming to America.

When I first visited New York and stumbled over the stacks of garbage on the corners of Fifth Avenue, I was amazed by such poverty side-by-side with such wealth. I later discovered that the city was going broke; and that New Yorkers were betting on the city’s demise. Years later, when I flew into San Francisco, I was greeted by quite the opposite spectacle. My wife’s sister picked us up in her 500 SL Mercedes, and ferried us through a kaleidoscope of dazzling billboards advertising everything from gambling in sun-baked Reno, to giving humanitarian aid to Dafur. I was deposited, after a ride across the elegant Bay Bridge, at Lake Merritt, the pride of Oakland’s American-Africans bourgeoisie. I had to pinch myself to believe the opulence was real.

It was real. The American-Africans community of Oakland, California, is probably one of the richest Black communities in the world. The skyline houses that look down from the redwood hills of the East Bay are not the exclusive preserves of whites, as is often the case in many neo-colonial lands. The sun-drenched Mediterranean climate is host to one of the most diverse communities in America. Yet beyond the mortar and bricks of their homes, American-Africans own very little of the wealth of this fertile region.

On my arrival in Oakland, California, I learned how the city was scorned by San Francisco, the city across the bay. Oakland’s population used to be over 60% American-Africans, but it has now shrunk to below 35%. Yet the racial tag has stuck, and Oakland continues to be subjected to insinuations of second-class citizenship. This abuse only serves to highlight the cruel irony of history; Oakland was the celebrated start of the Trans-Continental railway, which was built to bring Easterners to the gold of the Sierra Mountains. But the fame of the whoring town of ‘Frisco had spread too wide for the truth to be known—that San Francisco was just a stop-over place for far more rewarding adventures.

It was not, however, until I began to work with Americans that I got to see the people behind their veils. Stripped of a reason to care, people often don’t. Settled people become addicted to their immediate gratifications, and their interest in others becomes disturbingly absent. The public persona of Americans being the embodiment of the perfect lifestyle is a veneer which fools nobody, least of all someone new to the country eager to dig beneath the surface with every question. American lifestyles are so tied to credit and debit—and an obsession with crime—that to come to America is to feast on dreams of fabled opportunities and harsh, demoralizing realities.

My first encounter with Americana came after I pounded the streets for a month, looking for a position comparable to that of an Engineer, which I’d been in London. I was told by an agency interviewer, in no uncertain terms, that as a Black man I could not hope to get a position that would allow for vertical mobility. I could only hope for lateral movement.

American racism strikes foreigners with such bold frankness that, on first impression, it comes as a relief from the hypocrisy of the British class system. Yet the acceptance of conflicts between racial groups in America is so prevalent, and reveals an attitude of such bitterness, that it chokes every fiber of the nation’s structure. All sides tug, push, and pull for a louder voice with which to express their mutual detachment. Short of a nation undergoing a civil war, nowhere in the world is bitterness for one’s fellow citizens such a basic part of the psyche of the nation. Most startlingly, it is a bitterness that believes it’s the most victimized in the world. Trying to explain the 1000 year-old war between the Scottish and the English to an American-African is to be reduced to absurdity. American-Africans pride themselves on being history’s biggest victims, as if no other group—Black or white—could possibly have suffered so much!

I was finally saved from the grip of this consuming form of racism by the guiding hand of patronage; in the land of the brave and the free it’s not what you know but who you know! A cousin of my wife just happened to be on the local school board. He found me a job as a janitor at a junior college where I eventually worked for four years. In the course of my apprenticeship, I was exposed to American supervisors who took more than 2 years to summon the verve to have a conversation with me beyond, What’s ‘appen’? It took me sometime to realize that, as a Black Englishman, I frustrated the majority of Americans who I met because I didn’t fit into a neat box, i.e., White, Black, Asian, Hispanic or Other. It reminded me of when I first filled out a visa form to come to the USA; I had to grapple with questions that asked me what my grandparent’s ancestry and religion were. And whether I, or any of my distant relatives, had committed a crime for which we weren’t convicted. And finally, what was my race? I resisted this attempt to be made into a racist as long as I could, but I was encouraged and indeed impelled by the attitudes of American’s bureaucracy to view myself in this one-dimensional manner.

Try as I might, however, my accent set me apart, and my attitude really seemed to upset my supervisors so much so that they were always finding ways to mess with me. In social interactions too, my accent drew attention. As a result I was subjected to a wide range of responses—from people staring at me, mouths opened in disbelief, who then stormed out of the room muttering, Who is that nigger? to women approaching me and asking me to, Just say som’thang. The former I lost no sleep over. The latter I learned to live with.

After these teething-times of acculturation, a process that everyone goes through in learning another culture, I was swept up by the vibrancy of American-African life in Oakland. The bubbly familiarity of American-Africans is an intoxicant to the newcomer, particularly when that newcomer has come from a European tradition that considers any display of emotions to be ‘uncivilized.’ For a Black man who had lived in isolation and cultural persecution in England, America represented a land flowing with milk and honey. Seeing prosperous Black people strolling the streets was enough to get my heart pumping with feelings of pride and self-worth. The daily acknowledgment of American-Africans for each other in the streets, introduced me to a brotherhood I’d not known before. The encouraging expressions of warmth in the language instilled an emotional bond that resurrected my wounded soul. It seems to me that the American-African world of the East Bay was just a kiss away from paradise.

Yet as a Black individual who had also traveled and lived in Africa, my assimilation into American-African culture was difficult. Firstly, because it seems to me that America binds all people of color to its knee-jerk fight for survival, without necessarily knowing what is in the best interest of a given individual; and, secondly, because American-Africans are blind to a global consciousness and alternative solutions to individual liberation. For example, throughout the world, people of color understand that they are the victims of myriad discriminations. It is understood that those who do the discriminating (The Man, The whites, Them, etc.) are themselves robbed of the one thing they seek to take from us—humanity. When American-Africans play their game of hate and bitterness, they deliver up to they oppressors that which they seek, and ensure their own slavery. Thus, when American-Africans use derogatory words to describe each other, they are not inventing a unique cultural language; rather they are propagating the language of slavery. Nothing disgusts a cultural African more than to hear an American-African refer to himself and his kinsmen as a ‘nigga.’ This is no solution. Rather it is a papering over of the pain of humiliation, a sublimated denial