Soccer- The International Language

My core group of friends in college were the “Internacionáls,” ten soccer-loving, visa-carrying aliens from countries around the world such as Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Switzerland and Bulgaria. It was an eclectic bunch, with personalities ranging from the super-loquacious to the super-shy, from the star athlete to the computer nerd, but somehow together, they were a family away from home. Most of them spoke at least three languages fluently and were able to converse with each other without anyone on the outside understanding a thing, much to my ever-growing dismay. My Spanish abilities peaked at “Adondé es el baño” and I spent countless hours listening to Portuguese and Spanish and not knowing which was which. They were very popular and well-liked by the rest of the student body, but were almost in a world of their own, a world that made those not included feel left out and jealous.

Every Sunday afternoon, community soccer teams from around Nashville would get together at a public field and compete in tournaments. My friends formed the aptly-named “Internacionál” team, comprised of footballers from at least eight different countries, while their competitors were almost all exclusively Mexican, with maybe a couple of Puerto Ricans thrown in for good measure. I didn’t think that this would cause such uproar amongst the Mexican-Nashvillians, figuring that “we all speak Spanish so we’ll all surely get along!” Well, soccer is a dirty game, especially when the pride of your country is on the line and even though these were supposed to be friendly, Sunday-afternoon matches, things quickly got ugly.

Fights broke out. Curse words in Spanish that even my professors had never heard were flung across the field. And then, the clincher. A supporter of the Mexican team shouted out from the bleachers, in Spanish, “Call the INS!” Team Internacionál were stunned. I didn’t know whether to laugh or run to my car. Call INS? Coming from a Mexican? Surely this was a joke. But it wasn’t. They were serious and the game was forfeited as Internacionál left the field muttering, confused and angry. There was no Spanish familia atmosphere here, only a hierarchy of the green-cards versus the visas, the permanent residents and first generation immigrants versus the University-sponsored squatters. As a white American citizen, I thought they were all loco.

In Nashville, where the Mexican population is 25,774 and growing steadily, almost more than half of that is thought to be from illegal immigration, so to hear someone of Mexican heritage jeer, ‘call Immigration and Naturalization Services’, was something of a new phenomenon. I realized then that even the people who are thought to be the lowest on the food chain, the ones that all others scorn and call racist names, will still find a way to feel superior and better about themselves when opportunity strikes. Or maybe it’s just low self-esteem and fatigue from constant prejudice and spite from a good portion of the population. Whatever it was, it made me think about ethnocentricity by other members of society and helped me relate my own viewpoints on cultural norms and behavior to what others might think.

Ethnocentrism is “the point of view that one’s own way of life is to be preferred to all others” (Herskovits, p. 21). At this point in my life, I wasn’t sure what my future plans would be. I was a journalism major interested in international politics and hung around with a diverse group of friends, but my eyes weren’t completely opened to a lot of domestic issues. I was raised liberally, but safe-guarded. After getting to see some of the more cultural sides of Nashville and traveling to some other countries, I realized that although people are very much the same in many aspects of our lives, (we laugh, love, enjoy music and beauty and like baby animals) we are still very different and if you don’t understand or at least respect these differences, you’re going to live a very closed-off, self-centered existence.

In make sure this doesn’t happen, we need to employ cultural relativity in our lives, meaning that we need to put ourselves in the other’s shoes and see things from another perspective before we pass judgment (Rosado, p. 3). What is acceptable in one culture may be scorned in another. This doesn’t mean that every little wacky thing another group may do is appropriate behavior; it just means that you need to take that behavior and look at it from the structures of the culture and not your own. We are born into a certain society that expects certain things and so we grow up believing that those are the only right ways to live. When we come in to contact with someone who lives differently, we look at them as weird or sometimes evil. As Rosado always states, “where you stand determines what you see” (Rosado, p. 4). But, there are certain norms in life that are universal across all societies and this includes morality- knowing right from wrong.

Americans are often seen as conceited and ignorant, believing that “the American way is the only way” and that this country is better than everyone else. This viewpoint has caused a lot of negative sentiments towards the United States and what infuriates other nations even more is that we just don’t seem to care. But Rosado points out that not all cultural values are valid or of equal worth (Rosado, p. 6) but “that which works is better than that which doesn’t work.” Because the United States have a lot of power in most aspects, Americans are lead to believe that everything we do is superior. But, when judging other’s history and mistakes, we must realize that we too have made wrong choices in our past. The best way to stop stereotypes and misunderstandings is if we encourage a multicultural education for our children.

In today’s cities, different cultures and ethnicities are all around you, wherever you go. Author Eric H.F. Law writes in The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb, that the pain of living in a multicultural community is that there is a danger of offending people by trying to be inclusive. Putting different groups of people together with different personalities, opinions and ways of life is always a risky thing because you never know how they’ll get along. You don’t want to make a fool of yourself by trying to act like someone you’re not and imitate another. It’s always safer to stay with your own kind. But what fun is that?

The best way to take advantage of all that others have to offer us is to be culturally sensitive and recognize the values in ourselves and in others (Law, p. 7). It’s not always a comfortable thing to be taken from our culture and thrown into the midst of another. But when put in those awkward situations, you quickly learn how to adapt and try to fit in, while trying not losing your own values. As Law states on page ten, Christians are often called to go against what is normal and safe. Christ reached out to all people and made it known that God does not play favorites. So why should we minister to people who are just the same as us? We need to be able to talk to anyone, regardless of color or religion or financial background and be sensitive to their beliefs while getting our message across.

So that day on the soccer field when my friends and I walked away from a glorious win for the honor of our eight countries, I realized several things. I realized first of all that Mexicans are really sick of being lumped together as illegal aliens and that they look at themselves as more American than a bunch of foreign exchange students will ever be. I also realized that I never really liked soccer all that much anyway and that I was just trying to fit in with my international friends. My ethnocentricity tells me that football is better anyway. And I also realized that the new America will be one where it is a necessity to know how to converse with all types of people, no matter what language they’re speaking or what they look like. Because even an Arabic-speaking French Indonesian living in Utah will be a more typical American than the 1950’s black and white television show version of an all-white family with two kids, a station wagon and a dog named Sparky.