For my multicultural experience I decided to watch the documentary Meet the Patels (2014).

Ravi Patel and his sister, Geeta, worked together on the documentary Meet the Patels, in which Ravi struggles to find a partner both he and his parents love.
Courtesy of Alchemy

Personally, I never heard of this documentary before reading the lessons multicultural recommendations.  After watching the video trailer, I wanted to learn more.  As stated in my “About Me” blog post, I grew up in a very rural town in Pennsylvania, and no one who resided there was Indian.  I did not even know a person with an Indian ethnic background until college, when I met my then girlfriend, now wife’s roommate.

To provide a very brief summary of the documentary, Ravi Patel and his sister Greeta Patel film Ravi’s journey to his “Happy Ever After”.  Ravi, a 30 year old actor and sister Greeta are both unmarried, which I learned is very uncommon at that stage of life in the Indian culture.  Their parents, Vasant (Father) and Champa (Mother) both share an extreme desire to ensure their son marries the perfect girl, and fast.  The documentary discusses the many pressures put on Ravi (and Greeta) to get married, have children, and by not already doing it at this stage in their life is not normal.  The documentary also discusses some of the challenges faced by people who do not keep their marriage strictly in the Indian culture.  I’ll explain the documentary in more detail as I discuss what I learned from it throughout the rest of the post.

As I mentioned, the stage of life timeline Indian culture expects people to be married, was something I learned, but also the way individuals meet and are arranged for marriage is something else I took away from the documentary.  In the Indian culture, families are very involved in the process of who marries who.  For example, families select families that are compatible, meaning they seek out families of same values, religion, and upbringing.  For this region (Gujarat) of India, it was actually preferred that Patels married Patels, which the population in that region consisted of about 90% Patels.  Also, as explained by Ravi’s parents, they families arranged their entire “dating” process.  In Indian culture, however, dating is much different than that of traditional dating that occurs in the United States.  Older traditional Indian culture typically relies on the families to arrange meetings of individuals to see if the man likes the woman.  For example, Ravi’s parents explained that back when they met, they only talked for 10 minutes before deciding that they would be married.  They found instant compatibility, their parents both approved and proceeded with arranging the wedding.  For reference, Champa was the 12th woman that Vasant met with before deciding she was the one.

Ravi, from left, Champa, Geeta (foreground) and Vasant Patel star in the documentary “Meet the Patels.” (Alchemy)

Ravi on the other hand is living a double life.  Historically, he really has not dated much, and the one person, Audrey, he has been with for two years prior to the documentary being filmed has been kept a secret from his family.  During the film it is explained that Ravi breaks up with Audrey, due to commitment issues, pressure of not being with a traditional “perfect Indian woman”, and pressure from his family to get married.  Again, his family does not know that he is dating anyone, they just think he is wasting time and not prioritizing getting married.  The heat is really put on Ravi to get married when they take their family trip to India, where the entire village knows of his situation, (Remember I mentioned family is very involved in the process), and added pressures are put on him to get married.

Here is where I learned even more about the culture.  When seeking out partners for their children, emphasis is put on education, family and family status, and certain physical characteristics.  One of those physical characteristics is skin tone.  In the documentary, it is mentioned that lighter skin tone has its benefits and can be looked at as “better”, which leads to discussions about skin bleaching agents being used in parts of India.  Ravi commented that his skin tone is “wheatish brown”.  The seeking out process begins with the sharing of bio data, a resume like sheet of paper, that is created by the family and then shared with others (including strangers) to connect eligible singles.  Before sending out his bio data sheet Ravi negotiates and gets his parents to agree on seeking out an Indian woman with an American culture.

This leads Ravi back to the United States where he embarks on a year long journey with many failed dates that take place all over North America.  After all the time, energy, money, and even attending a “Patel matrimonial convention”, which looks like a massive speed dating expo, he realizes that his failures are from measuring every single person he meets to one person, Audrey.  Even though they were technically not together, Ravi made time to reconnect with Audrey and he learned that she is someone he really wanted to be with, and all these other women just wouldn’t measure up to her.  He and Greeta discuss this internal struggle with each other, that due to their strong culture even if they do have their parents approval about someone, they are letting other people down if they don’t fit a certain standard.  Soon after the Patel matrimonial convention Ravi finally breaks down and tells his parents about Audrey, after two years of silence.  Vasant took it very well, he just wants Ravi to be happy (and married), while Champa took it much worse.  She took it very badly not because he was in love with a “red head from Connecticut,” it was because Ravi lied for so long.

To conclude the summary, after a year long journey to find love, Ravi re-establishes his relationship with Audrey, introduces her to his parents, where they welcome her with open arms and as the documentary ends they were still together.

Key Takeaways:

The main takeaways from the documentary are just how family-centric this culture is.  It is common for families to have three generations living together under the same roof.  Ravi mentions that about his cousins, and how they are looked at as a great success and they are a model family because they live with their children and parents in the same house.  In addition, I learned just how different the Indian culture is to what I am accustomed too, especially in regards to dating, marriage, and family pressure.  I did not know anything about the bio data sharing, or take into consideration they have an emphasis on skin tone when matching people together.  Furthermore, lightening of the skin to be potentially more desirable was something I never considered as part of their culture.

Regarding the overall importance of marriage to my culture, I do feel that getting married and starting a family is an expectation to a degree, however, I do not feel it is as extreme as Ravi’s situation.  His mother and father relentlessly, and tirelessly bombard him throughout the documentary with bio data on potential women he could marry, they would text him while he was on dates, and his father went as far as to say, “for you to not get married, would make you the biggest loser in my eyes.”

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, watching and learning about the Indian culture.

Please feel free to comment and add to the discussion.

Sincerely,

Stephen Watts

@jaylee4515

#COMM837S19

America Ferrera Gets Real About Being A Latina In Hollywood: ‘My identity is my superpower’

America Ferrera – Copyright Getty Images

This article was written in May of this year by Alejandra Torres, a contributor to HOLA! a weekly Spanish-language magazine.  Alejandra discusses America Ferrera’s story (as seen on her recent TED talk) of fighting Latina stereotypes and overcoming obstacles in her rise to stardom.  As stated by Torres (2019), “America struggled throughout her career, and it was mostly due to the fact that people were pigeonholing her into certain Latina stereotypes.”  In addition, Torres (2019) quotes America, referenced in her TED talk, about the roles she would audition for that went as far to ask her to do a broken English accent to fit the Latina stereotypes, “These were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me.  Someone they looked at as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated.”  Torres continues to reference America’s talk when explaining throughout the article that Hollywood forced America to believe her identity was an obstacle.  America stated, “I worked my hardest to overcome all the things that people said were wrong with me.  I stayed out of the sun so that my skin wouldn’t get too brown, I straightened my curls into submission.  All so that when people looked at me, they wouldn’t see a too fat, too brown, too poor Latina.”

America Ferrera speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us. April 15 – 19, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

Torres (2019) also references America’s concerns about Hollywood’s “system”.  Ferrera is quoted in the article by saying, “I thought sunscreen and straightening irons would bring about change in this deeply entrenched value system, but what I realized in that moment was that I was never actually asked the system to change.  I was asking it to let in, and those aren’t the same thing” (Torres, 2019).  This is an outstanding observation by America Ferrera.  Hollywood has a deeply invested values system that is outdated and extremely biased.  Personally, I believe Hollywood needs to drop the old-timey nonsense, not even from just a moral obligation standpoint, but open their eyes and see the changing demographics of the country.

Finally, Torres concludes her article with one final quote from Ferrera in regards to what she would tell a younger version of herself.  In summary (Torres, 2019), “If I could go back and say anything to that nine-year-old, dancing in the den, dreaming her dreams, I would say, My identity is not my obstacle.  My identity is my superpower because the truth is, I am what the world looks like.  And in order for our systems to reflect that, they don’t have to create a new reality.  They just have to stop resisting the one we already live in.”

I chose this article because it is extremely relevant to the course, not only because we are learning about different cultures, but we also are learning about marketing to a multicultural audience and understanding different biases people of different ethnicities face. Based on the treatment America Ferrera received by Hollywood, it is safe to say Hollywood has an “idea” of what America wants to see but in reality, it is counter-intuitive to the audience watching their content.  As we learned from David Morse in the book Multicultural Intelligence, the United States’ population (especially its youth) is becoming “less white”, “The convergence of two forces, an aging white population and explosive immigration from Latin America and Asia, is leading to what many have called the “browning of America” (p.9).  Morse continues the dialogue with more direct statistics, “The three biggest hyphenated segments, Hispanic-, Asian-, and African-Americans, make up over 30 percent of the U.S. population – 40 percent if you look at just those individuals under 18.  Since younger Americans tend to be brown, it is expected that by about the year 2042, white non-Hispanics will drop to less than half the population” (p. 9).

Hopefully, more stars share America Ferrera’s stance and are willing to speak out about bias and unfair treatment in Hollywood.  Maybe with those shared voices, it will encourage Hollywood to change their value system to one more fitting to the world of today.

Thank you for reading, please check out the link to America’s TED talk in the article and the link to Torres’ article here.

As always, please feel free to comment and add to the discussion!

Sincerely,

Stephen Watts

@jaylee4515

#COMM837S19

In this post I will answer a few questions such as:

When did I first recognize the concept of race and ethnicity?

What did I learn from it?

Did I ever get a sense that the races and ethnicities were different or treated differently in our society, specifically in the media.

Lastly, I defend the need for racial categorizations in our society.  – Hope you enjoy!

When did you first recognize the concept of race and ethnicity? 

I believe that the first time I thought about the concept of race and ethnicity outside of just reading it in a school textbook would be in early high school.  The event that caused me to think of race and ethnicity was when an African-American student and his family moved into the area and he joined our school.  The reason this caused me to think about these concepts was not only because of how he was treated by other people in the school, but also because of the conversations I had with him.  Sadly, he was not treated well by many students in the school.  Our high school consisted 7^th grade through 12^th grade in the same building.  This enabled a lot of bullying to occur, especially toward this student, through stereotypes and slurs being said to him.  In addition to how he was treated by fellow students, conversations I had with him about general interests like music played a role in my understanding.  His music taste was different than mine, however, we both loved baseball.  We grew very close in the years that followed, but tragically his life was cut short due to a car accident.

What did you learn? 

I learned many things through my friendship, including but not limited to, challenges other people can face just for being “different” from the majority, respect for people and their differences, and an understanding of privilege.  A primary challenge that student dealt with was blatant racism.  Sadly, he had to deal with people targeting him due to the color of his skin.  He did not do anything to anyone yet was mistreated and disrespected for being a different race. 

My parents always taught me to do the right thing and treat people with respect and kindness, however, this experience helped put those values into action.  We were able to be very close friends, mostly through shared interests of sports, video games, and tv programming, I didn’t care about our differences. 

The concept of privilege was something else I learned about from our friendship.  I personally felt more privileged than him, in part because I was white in a very rural Caucasian area, but also because I felt I had a more stable home life than he did.  I was raised in a lower to middle class home, but my parents always treated me well.  His home life had much more turmoil.  His father did not live in the same state, his mother was in and out of his life frequently, and he was primarily raised by his grandmother that typically created a hostile environment. 

In my opinion, the privilege that I had was a loving, safe, and positive environment to grow up in, when I did nothing to earn it, while he did nothing to deserve the negative home environment he grew up in.  I define his home environment as “negative” because he did not have his parents involved in his life, he lived in a lower income class home, and his elderly grandmother, as he would describe it, “did not treat him well, either.” 

Did you ever get a sense that the races and ethnicities were different or treated differently in our society, especially in the media? How so? 

I did not get that sense until Barack Obama ran for president, and I believe that it continues today with social movements. During the Presidential Race in 2008 I believe it became much more evident to me about how people were treated differently due to their race or ethnicity.  Of the many examples throughout the campaign of how he was treated differently, I personally enjoy Salim Muwakkil’s (2009) article, “The Post-Racial President.”  In the article he explains Obama’s challenges, biases, and his race-averse campaign.  For example, Muwakkil states, “Obama must walk a narrow tightrope slick with cultural biases. As America’s first black president, he must downplay black Americans’ specific needs or he’ll lose his political balance” (Muwakkil, 2009). This quote stands out to me regarding mistreatment because Obama, due to his race, must down play the needs of a group of people in the United States for fear of political imbalance.  In my opinion, if anyone in the United States is suffering, they should be prioritized, regardless of their race, ethnicity, etc.  In addition, Muwakkil (2009) explains, “Although his campaign was race-averse, his “blackness” added to his allure as a candidate of change. And although his “white” mother and grandparents raised him and he was immersed in “white” society, Obama is classified as black solely because he shares the DNA of his Kenyan father. Our confusion about race has become a routine state of affairs, and it often clouds our social vision.” 

I agree with Muwakkil in his analysis that race often clouds our social vision, and it still does today.  

Today, in addition to traditional media, I believe social media now plans an extremely important role in how race conversations materialize and movements happen, for example, Black Lives Matter.  As found on the Black Lives Matter website, Black Lives Matter, is a “chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”  Though this movement is to bring attention to unnecessary violence inflicted on Black individuals, it was met with resistance.  Per Carney’s (2016) article “All Lives Matter, but so Does Race: Black Lives Matter and the Evolving Role of Social Media,” she explains,

“The #BlackLivesMatter slogan met a great deal of resistance in the wake of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On social media, one of the primary ways in which people resisted the #BlackLivesMatter movement came in the form of using #AllLivesMatter as a counterslogan to undermine the purpose and message of the #BlackLivesMatter call to action. Many social media users deployed #AllLivesMatter as a way to deny the specific and prominent violence against Blacks by appealing to a larger universal. Thus, in the guise of presumably broader politics, it depoliticized and deracialized the specificity of #BlackLivesMatter.”

I believe that Carney’s analysis is very important because it illustrates social media as a powerful media space to bring attention to the movement, while also creating a space for opposition to undermine it. 

Defend or refute the need for the racial categories in our society. If you believe there are any impacts from our racial/ethnic labeling, explain what they are. 

I chose to defend the need for racial categories in our society.  Personally, I believe that this allows us to better identify ourselves.  In addition, I believe that this allows marketers to better target people based on these “labels”.  However, my primary defense will be from a public health benefit standpoint.  Having people defined in racial categories has the potential to benefit medical personnel as they will have the ability to determine potential health risks more efficiently.  As stated in Mays et al. (2013) article, “Classification of Race and Ethnicity: Implications for Public Health,” being able to track these statistics is important for identifying health risks and any significance between races.

“Estimates of vital statistics and the burden of morbidity and mortality in a particular population are of great use to government, in general, and to the field of public health, in particular, for purposes of planning, tracking the needs of citizens, and identifying modifiable health risks.” In addition, “One test of the need for race and ethnicity information in public health measurement is whether race differences are significant after controlling for indicators of social class, including income, education, occupation, and other socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic variables.”

The same analysis also recommends that we move past biologic or genetic perspectives.  “We have an exciting opportunity to explore relationships between racial and ethnic populations and their social and physical environments. Further, we soon will have the opportunity to enlarge our focus to their interactions with genetic influences in predicting health outcomes” (Mays, et. al, 2013). 

In conclusion, I understand and respect the ideals that racial categories can lead to racism and biases, however, I do feel that categorizations can benefit society if used properly. 

References: 

Carney, N. (2016). All Lives Matter, but so Does Race. Humanity & Society, 40(2), 180-199.  

doi:10.1177/0160597616643868

Mays, V. M., et. al, (2013). CLASSIFICATION OF RACE AND ETHNICITY: Implications for Public  

Health. Annual Review of Public Health, 24(1), 83-110. doi:10.1146/annurev.publhealth.24.100901

Muwakkil, S. (2009, August 24). The ‘Post-Racial’ President. Retrieved from  

http://inthesetimes.com/article/4750/the_post-racial_president 

Burger King Has Big Trouble, But It’s Not Mary J. Blige

The article was written in 2012 by David Vinjamuri, a contributor to Forbes, and he discusses Burger King’s decision to pull its commercial starring Mary J. Blige due to racist undertones.  See the commercial here:  According to Vinjamuri (2012), “Burger King and newly agency Mother New York clearly did not anticipate the reaction to the spot (the campaign also features Jay Leno and David Beckham) and quickly pulled it.”  In addition to pulling the commercial, Burger King and Mary J. Blige were not on the same page in their responses to the matter as well.  As explained by Vinjamuri (2012) the reactions seemed rushed, “that looked like a panic move (pulling the commercial) as did the reactions from both Blige and Burger King.”  Blige told TMZ, “if you’re a Mary fan, you have to know I would never allow an unfinished spot like the one you saw go out, Burger King meanwhile claimed licensing issues for the reason to take the commercial off the air.”  The real problem for Burger King as explained by Vinjamuri is, “Burger King’s nervous reaction to the spot points at a deeper truth that will linger long after this incident is forgotten: the chain is in deep trouble.  It failed to meet the challenge of changing consumer tastes as the chains like Subway and Starbucks grew their food business dramatically” (Vinjamuri, 2012).  In addition to not having flexibility in its products and ability to change, Vinjamuri continues explaining other issues, “The real problem for Burger King is that it appears to have no strategy and no unique value proposition” (Vinjamuri, 2012).

Mary J. Blige in the controversial commercial that hit the airwaves in 2012.

The reason I chose this article is that it touches on very important subject matters, especially those covered in the course thus far.  We’ve learned the importance of media and its role in society and that media has the ability to inform, educate, persuade, and entertains us. Also, we have discussed how multicultural marketing as an essential business practice for companies in today’s world in order to connect with audiences that have an extremely larger buying potential than in decades past.  As discussed by David Morse in the book Multicultural Intelligence, “In 2007, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and African Americans made up $2.2 trillion in purchasing power” (p.9).  Pozin (2015) states this total is now almost $3.5 trillion, “In fact, U.S. multicultural buying power is growing at an exponential rate, increasing from $661 billion in 1990 to $3.4 trillion in 2014.”  Companies are attempting to do this by devoting entire departments to engage and communicate directly with the multicultural marketplace.  However, this type of marketing is not easy due in part to brands going about engagement the wrong way.  This Burger King example fits the wrong way to engage an audience model.  Burger King was very tone deaf and very insensitive to stereotypes in their campaign and they heard about it.  One example of the negative feedback comes from a popular and influential website “Madame Noire,” which author Renay Alize wrote an article to Mary J. Blige titled, “An Open Letter to Mary J. Blige Re: Her Buffoonish Burger King Commercial”.  In the letter, she voiced her concerns, “It’s true, most people get down with the poultry, but as a black woman, singing passionately about chicken is not the move!”

I agree that it would have been wise for Mary J. Blige and Burger King to be much more aware and sensitive to stereotypes.  We as a society need to be much more insightful to the changing demographics, especially here in the United States.  As stated in Nielsen’s (2015) research report regarding America’s youth, referenced by Ilya Pozin in his 2015 Forbes article, “Nielsen research suggests marketing to Millennials and younger generations must be driven by multicultural insights, as younger age cohorts are already over 50% multicultural” (Nielsen, 2015).  Another recommendation by Nielsen is to allow people belonging to certain communities to express and maintain their cultures, “Multicultural consumers are expressive and inclusive, which very often allows multicultural consumers to simultaneously maintain their cultural heritage and see themselves as part of the new mainstream, allowing them to mix and match endless choices and products to suit their effortless duality in lifestyles and tastes” (Nielsen, 2015).

Hope you enjoyed reading!

Please feel free to comment and add to the discussion!

Sincerely,

Stephen Watts

@jaylee4515

#COMM837S19

For your enjoyment, here are the links to Vinjamuri’s and Pozin’s articles, the Nielsen Company’s 2015 demographics report, and Alize’s open letter:

Vinjamuri:

Pozin:

Nielsen Company:

https://madamenoire.com/152765/an-open-letter-to-mary-j-blige-re-her-buffoonish-burger-king-commercial/

https://youtu.be/OrMINcTRzTw

About Me and My Culture