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An Immigration journey

Reflecting on your origins has never been an easy exercise, especially now that globalization has made its way to all of our homes. Our generation and the generations to be are exposed to a variety of interconnected cultures that makes it hard for any of us to identify.

I was born and raised in Morocco, a developing country in North Africa; our culture is complicated, as there is no single way of describing it, it hangs between liberalism and extremism, half of the population believes in freedom and the other half believes in blindly following the rules.

We suffer an extreme case of bipolarity caused mainly by globalization and the intrusion of western values to our homes. We were not quite ready for change, and yet it was imposed to us.

To have a better understanding of the diversity of Moroccan culture, I will take a brief step back. For the longest time, Moroccans were influenced by the European culture as we were a French and Spanish colony for over sixty years, as a matter of fact, most of our current infrastructure is a result of those colonial years.

Growing up, I remember my grandparents talking proudly about how the former King of Morocco Mohammed V gained independence and chased the French away.

The next generation, on the other hand, thought that independence was the worst thing that happened to the country as they believe that the French did us a favor, by making our economy and education better. It was my their way of saying that our corrupted government is not up to its duties. You could sense the skepticism in their voices while answering my questions; it was a mixture of regrets and fear of revealing too much over the phone, as it is never safe to talk about politics where I come from. This phone incident reminded our privacy is no longer a matter of choice.

Not to deviate from the main subject, I agreed with the stated opinion, the transition of power did indeed hurt our economy, corruption and dishonesty took over, and to this day keep pulling us back from moving forward. We have been a developing country for over a century, that sometimes I wonder if we will ever be able to develop.

The rise of inequalities and the absence of fairness and freedom are the main sources of the distaste that my generation has towards the government and the country. The common belief in Morocco among the young generation is that we are where we are because we act in a way that will never allow us to move forward.

The increase of corruption, inequality, and lack of freedom pushes those who are lucky enough to get an education to leave our homeland. In my interviews, many of my friends who live abroad expressed little to no interest in going back. The financial incentives offered by our government for qualified individuals are not enough in their opinion, as one cannot put a price on freedom.

I am one of those who left; I had the chance to get an education which through the years helped raised awareness of my surroundings. I decided that in order for me to remain psychologically sane, I would have to go. I am afraid I will lack the ability to express the joy I felt when I bought a one-way ticket to the land of the free, as the words won’t do it favor enough. Half way across the Atlantic fear started to take over my excitement; since I was about to embark on a new adventure alone. I have visited the United States before, as a tourist I loved and still love every bit of it, but this time I was no longer a tourist I became part of it and needed to fit in. The beginnings were like trying to put a piece of a puzzle in the wrong place.

I have to admit that technology has helped ease my loneliness during the first months, it was a perfect illustration of the ‘’ Alone together’’ piece by Turkle.

Unfortunately, the virtual comes to a point where it is no longer sufficient. I HAD to fit in the puzzle, I could no longer escape the real world.

I have never questioned my origins until I moved here and was asked to check an ethnicity box. Coming from a country that is smaller than the state of Virginia, the question of ethnicity never crossed my mind. I looked at those cases like a student who did not study for his finals, and for the first time of my life, I did not know ‘’what’’ I was.

I had to do some research about races to find out that Northern-Africans can check the Caucasians box, looking at my reflections and skin shades, it just seemed wrong. I am not white enough to be Caucasian and not dark enough to be African-American, after a lengthy discussion with myself, I checked the case ‘’Other’’ and that simple check mark might be insignificant, but it sure did make me wonder for quite some time.

I was new to the country and did not belong to a case. Along with being homesick, the non-belonging was hard, it made me question who I was and why wasn’t I able to simply check the box, what does ‘’other’’ mean? And who are they?

I have then thought that ‘’Other’’ is going to be the new majority, we are the generation that does not belong to a particular part of the world, we are the product of globalization, and citizens of the world. Dealing with that kind of questions was my first cultural shock. The image that I had of the ‘’United’’ States began to fade away slowly; I started to realize after a couple of months that the country is not as United as it claims to be.

I will tell you the story of how I came down to the conclusion of a Non-United States of America.

A couple of weeks has passed in the land of the free, and I was on the hunt for a job. Freshly graduated from what at the time perceived as the greatest schools of all in Morocco; I thought I had it all.

Unfortunately, my lack of experience and my third-world degree were not the assets needed in the job market of the District of Columbia, it was very hard to compete with local graduates and native speakers, so I ended up underemployed like many of other immigrants.

I was a hostess at an upscale restaurant in Georgetown, and for the first time of my life on the other side of the curtains, as I was part of the staff. Not to go into the details of my blue-collar experience, I will summarize my findings.

Most of my co-workers were young college kids serving part-time, the rules were as follow, my host-stand served as the customs and the restaurant was an airport. I had to sit people based on their race, which made me feel like a minimum wage officer. The fate of those guests was up to me. Apparently, each ethnicity had a standard way of tipping their waiters.

Now, this might appear trivial, but it taught me how racial profiling and stereotyping works, and from there it added a variety of traits to my personality. That is something that I would have never experienced in Morocco, or France, not necessarily because we are great people, but because there are things we cannot do or say.

To add to that, recently I have realized that three years ago I was color blind; and only started seeing colors when living in the greatest nation of all, and it ironically all hit me at a stop light. There was a young “white” lady holding a homeless sign, and that somehow caught my attention, I was thinking ‘’Why would this poor girl be outside, she does not appear like trouble,” I rolled my window and handed her whatever change I had. This does not appear like a racist act by any means, does it? It was. I was stereotyping by default, as I came to realize that I didn’t give her money because she was homeless, but because she was white AND homeless and somewhere along the way I learned that this combination shouldn’t or cannot exist. You have to be another shade of skin to deserve the streets, without catching anyone’s attention.

Where I come from no one talks about race, we do not check boxes before engaging in activities; we believe that we are all equal in the eyes of God. So how come a country that is so diverse be so divided? I think that Alexander’s piece ‘’The New Jim Crew’’ was the perfect answer to my question, it claimed that racism did not disappear, but instead just took another form, which is accurate. Discrimination in the United States is a fact, and it is becoming more evident than ever.

It appears that the more diverse a country is, the more discriminatory it becomes. I also came to this conclusion while talking to some of my foreign friends who mentioned that the attachment to their cultures became critical after they moved further away from their homes.

A statement that I could relate to, even though I do not socialize with people from my culture, but I identify as one of them to the public. We started realizing that the necessity of belonging to a particular circle of people that we can call ‘’our people’’ was a surviving tool.

I have noticed that one of the first questions people ask in the United States is ‘’Where are you from?’’ which to me is a verbal version of the check your ethnicity box problem.

In order to answer the ‘’Where are you from?’’ we need to have a little knowledge of our origins. Therefore, we need to belong. It made us not only immigrants but ambassadors of our cultures and countries. Here is an entertaining example of my statement; After I had become familiar with the trending stereotypes, I tend to always tip generously every time I go out, even upon receiving a bad service. My action happens to be nothing more than a repetitive attempt to break a stereotype.

Along with diversity technology have contributed to this division, for instance, social media and the internet made physical interaction almost unnecessary, we do not feel the need to have a one on one conversation with one another anymore, we can hide behind our black mirrors and have a meaningless abbreviated, auto-corrected ‘’chat.’’

This type of technology discourages interaction with people who are different from us and encourages the clustering ethnicities phenomenon.

Morocco, on the other hand, is a smaller, less diverse country, besides a minority of a Jewish population, the rest publicly share the same values. It is a socially united culture, where you would not get judged based on your physical appearance. You will instead be judged on the way you dress, talk, and even on the way you think. The difference between discrimination in Morocco and the United States is the fact that Moroccans are not civil about it, -Although, there is nothing civil about discrimination- For instance many people are now in prison simply for converting to a religion that is not Islam.

To understand the difference in the tolerance level between the United States and Morocco, I used the World Value Survey website to make some comparisons; the findings were a bit misleading. Seventy-seven percent of Moroccans Vs. Ninety-Nine percent in the United States view tolerance as an important virtue, and yet the U.S last elections just proved this results wrong.

Our culture is such a given that we often fail to reflect on it; it is part of who we are so we think of it as a trait of character. The unwritten rules of life, which are often misinterpreted with ethics, shape our personalities and dictate our fates. Each one of us grew up with a notion of right and wrong. And as we grew older, we got to know that what’s wrong for us is right for others, that the rules vary geographically as there is no standard set of values.

I wondered what my family and friends in Morocco would think if I ask them about culture, so I asked two different generations about their thoughts. The first generation was my parents’ generation, and the other generation was mostly people I went to college with.

During my interviews, many of the elder generations replied with pride; it was heartwarming to see how proud they are of their origins, the passion by which my mom spoke about her culture was inspiring. Please note that they might not approve of the current government, but unlike the younger generation, they think that the high level of corruption and inequality is a result of letting go of our culture and religion, and not the other way around. I have to admit that I was surprised that they happen to think so highly of our culture, so I started pointing out the negatives, to see if their answers would remain the same. They indeed did not change; all I could get from them was that we all have flaws and that some things are better left unsaid. Upon the conversation with my parents who are both educated people with successful careers. I thought that their reactions were symptoms of a Stockholm syndrome case. In this context, the government has exercised years of oppression on his people, so they developed this weird sense of gratitude and attachment towards their oppressor.

The pride of belonging and love of the culture is not shared by the younger generations. We all think that our culture is dysfunctional and complicated and refuse to adapt to what one of my friends who currently lives in Spain called ‘’normalized cultural standards.’’

During the last couple of years, globalization and technology started making its way to our homes, later than the rest of the world but soon enough for us to get to know that there is something else beyond the borders, people could date, eat pork, drink wine, and choose their leaders, without being punished for it. The notion of freedom made its way to our hearts and became this fantasy that everyone wanted to achieve.

Manjoo Farhad in his article Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power” mentioned the role that social media played in the rise of populism in the middle east during the Arab uprisings.

I do not believe that the social media technology could ever start a revolution in Morocco as the government keeps a close eye on each and every one of our activities which suppress our ability to express our discontent .The absence of liberties and the awareness of their existence elsewhere pushed most of us to leave. I think that one of the most noticeable impacts of globalization on my culture was that, the younger generation started to look beyond religion.

To verify my findings, I looked at the data on the World Value Survey; I noticed that the importance of worship and beliefs in Morocco is decreasing, it went from ninety-nine to eighty-eight percent, in the last five years, which confirms that the population is starting to lean more towards liberalism. Along with the World Value Survey, many of my interviewees while answering the culture question seemed to talk about religion, as it was culture itself, they were not able to make a distinction between the two.

Speaking of religion, it happened that one of my friends, was an Arab Muslim from Saudi Arabia, meaning that we both have the same religion, but while comparing notes, we realized that our practices were entirely different from one another.

Besides very few similarities we had nothing in common, Morocco was this liberal version of a Muslim country in comparison to Saudi Arabia, even before globalization.

It seems to me that religion like technology adapts to culture, which made perfect sense because after all, we are creatures of habits.

I have always thought that people in Morocco were more worried about each other than God, we have this tendency of fearing God’s creatures more than God himself, and that makes all of us less religious than we claim to be, and makes religion, nothing more than a social practice. And that is why practices in the Arab Muslim communities are nothing alike.

Finally, I might have been too harsh on Moroccans and Arabs while describing their cultures. But that is because we tend to criticize the things we love harder than the things we do not care about.

Regardless of all its flaws, Morocco remains part of me, Its complex and diverse culture contributed to building my personality. And for that I would always remain grateful.

I would say that the bitterness of my generation towards Morocco comes from the fact that we think we can do and be better if we tackle our current issues properly.

But at the end, It remains Home, and I miss every bit of it. I miss its warmth; its streets, the people loitering, and the people with no teeth it almost sounds poetic, I can see how it inspires some and despise the others. I miss the traffic, and the sound of horns at a red light, I miss the old women dressed the same, putting uniforms of loss of hope. I miss how cheap everything and everyone is.

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