Giving Thanks for the American Spirit: When People Talk, Barriers of Culture and Race Slip Away

Nov. 24, 2004

I had a unique and lasting experience involving the students of my advanced organic chemistry class back in college that encapsulates my thankfulness for Thanksgiving.
The class was very time-consuming. Lab started at 8 a.m., five days a week, and on a good day we could leave by 2 p.m. For those who didn’t brown bag it, the others would watch your experiments for you while you went to eat or to another class.
By the second day of class, we had become a close-knit group. That experience dramatically increased the bonds of the group.
The class was evenly divided between male, female, white, non-white, foreign and domestic.
All of the foreign students were from wealthy families. There was a a girl from Germany and a boy from China whose family had escaped to Hong Kong. One girl from Columbia was from a very wealthy family.
Even so, all were aware of the inequities of their own societies. Every one of the foreign students wanted to stay in the U.S.; not one wanted go home except to hear their native tongue spoken. All spoke beautiful English, not American; we could understand them, but they had difficulty understanding us because we use too many idioms.
I learned more about the world, the U.S., our role in the world, how the rest of the world viewed the U.S., male chauvinism, discrimination, language, sex, etc. during that course than during the rest of my life combined.
Of the 12 in the class, six were foreign students. Six of us decided to go to the student union for lunch. Among us were two girls -- one from Sweden, she was as blond as she could be -- the other from Columbia. Four guys included one from Nigeria (he was blacker than the ace of spades), one from South Africa (a chocolate colored black), myself, and another white from the U.S.
As we approached the student union, a group of blacks tried to encourage the Nigerian and the South African to join a black advocate group. They walked alongside our group giving them a number of reasons why they should join, including the fact that there is discrimination in our country.
Finally, the black student from South Africa had had enough. He stopped and said in a loud voice, “You niggers don’t know what discrimination is.” The girl from Colombia said, “You Americans don’t know how lucky you are, you’re healthy and well fed. In my country, you either have a maid or you are one.”
After the encounter, the girl from Colombia cried all the way to the student union. She found the lack of opportunity for her countrymen so intolerable. I can’t remember her exact words, but it was something like, “I would rather be a maid in your country than a queen in mine.”
Then as I was paying for my food, the man behind me said, “Isn’t that awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at that,” and he pointed to a large round table where the girl from Sweden and the Nigerian were having an animated discussion.
What could I say? I was at a loss for words, I simply turned and walked away. I often wondered what the man thought when he saw me and the South African join them.
The other students in the room began to gather around listening to our discussion of life in the world, and America. The two hot button topics back then were racial discrimination and who should control nuclear weapons. The South African and the Nigerian told personal stories about the more vulgar forms of discrimination they had suffered in their countries. When we finished eating, we had to fight our way through the crowd.
The animated discussion between the girl from Sweden and the Nigerian became a never-ending discussion. The discussion was not continuous, but it didn’t conclude until the wake we held in the lab after finals, complete with chem lab cocktails. There was not a dry face in the group, but we were never to meet again.
Our discussions were no holds barred and no topic was prohibited. The class was time consuming as I have said, but the discussions were captivating; no one wanted to leave. Many times we stayed even after we had finished our experiments. 99% of our people cannot even begin to comprehend the power Americans have -- our influence on other people. We don’t have to flex our military might or spend billions of dollars. We just have to be ourselves. We have an esprit de corps that is more powerful than anything known to mankind. It is this spirit that I want to keep alive. It is this spirit for which I’m most thankful.
Like the girl from Colombia said, we don’t know how lucky we are.

Richard Riker is a writer from
Mackinaw City.