Tuesday, April 14, 1998
GREEN CARD FOR SALE
PERSPECTIVE: America needs a collective enema, shouts graduating
senior
Unlike many of UCLA’s international students who arrive here
with the express purpose of getting a degree, and often return to
their country of origin upon completing their studies, I came to
America – and subsequently to UCLA – to dodge the draft in my
native Bosnia, knowing that the States would probably be my home
for quite a while.
In the five or so years I’ve spent in America, I’ve acquired
permanent residency and tried to attain some degree of feeling like
I belong here. You’d think that my story would make a cute weekend
blurb in the Metro section of the L.A. Times: "Bosnian Refugee Dons
Blue and Gold." It doesn’t. For all the talk of how wonderful,
"user-friendly," liberal and, above all, free, a country America
is, I have regretfully come to feel like it’s all just a bunch of
crap.
Now, those of you who are still reading this probably think that
I’m a pompous little white boy from Europe who has no clue about
life. But please try to understand that when I critique the States,
I do it from the perspective of an insider, who’s been here long
enough to understand America well beyond the level of understanding
of a foreign student on a quest to get a degree – this is my only
home, damn it! I have probably become more Americanized (whatever
that means) than I would even admit to myself.
Here is a little – however non-all-inclusive – list of my
grievances, just to give you a rough idea what I’m yapping
about:
For example, I still don’t understand how a UCLA student (or any
other student, for that matter) can go abroad for a year on the EAP
program, and come back without even a working knowledge of the
visited country’s language, let alone its culture (I do actually
know such people); I interpret such attitudes as signs of
arrogance, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. Nor do I understand why
America still suffers from a case of acute Plymouth Rock Burden,
such that one can’t even say shit, fuck, cunt, dick and the like on
network television, as if saying those words would harm
someone.
I don’t understand why you have to be 21 to buy alcohol, but
only 16 to drive a car – surely a far more challenging task. I also
don’t understand why in the "land of the free," there are so many
citizen groups which, through legislative influence, try to dictate
(and sometimes do so with great success!) what others can watch and
say on TV, what they may do with their ovaries, with whom they may
have sex and whom they can marry.
On a personal note: Charges against me were filed with the
university by a fellow student when I discovered how frail and
vulnerable his ego was in a non-confrontational student meeting
hosted by a faculty member. Those charges were eventually
dismissed, but you get the picture.
I don’t know about you, but I came to UCLA to challenge myself,
to learn from others and to let them learn from me; I arrived here
to become better-learned, not to watch my mouth, fearing the
assault of the PC police.
And I definitely didn’t get here to be banned from showing a
music video in my German class – a video that aired regularly on
MTV Europe last summer, and was deemed by the rest of the world as
a piece of art.But the powers that be in the Germanic Languages
department thought it was inappropriate due to its sex-themed
content.
America must be such a sex-negative country when a group of
20-plus-year-olds is shielded from seeing some menstrual blood in
an overflowing sink and hearing a woman scream that her boyfriend
cums too fast, all in a song she wrote herself. You’d think we’re
retreating back to the ’50s, not marching toward the year 2000. The
"oh-my-God-I’m-gonna-faint" attitude toward sex is all the more
difficult to understand when one realizes that the image America
projects to the world abroad is one of a sexually ultra-liberated
country. Go figure!
When I first got here, I was quite a happy camper. Physically
safe at last, with no immediate danger looming above my head
(actually, I’ll take that back – I was carjacked at gunpoint in
1994!), I was thankful for being allowed to flee Bosnia, and I
wanted to make most of the many opportunities that present
themselves to anyone with a bit of ambition.
Many of my friends would probably beg to differ with my rather
objective assessment of my achievements: I’m graduating in June
with a degree from one of the smallest and most competitive
departments on campus. I speak English with a barely detectable
accent that no one can place. I actually have quite a decent
resume, and probably wouldn’t have a hard time landing a
well-paying job immediately upon graduating. My friends would
probably describe me as a guy who is fun to be around (at least
most of the time).
Yet all I can think of is how I will flee Los Angeles and the
States at the speed of light the moment I toss my cap into the air
– if I even bother walking at all. At times, I’d rather sell
oranges at intersections in Tijuana than stay here. I’ll try to
explain why.
UCLA is an excellent school with great faculty members and
facilities. On paper, Los Angeles sounds great: it is a huge city
with innumerable theaters, museums, clubs, great shopping and
restaurants. But I am wrapping up my B.A. feeling I could’ve spent
my early 20s elsewhere, and much more productively at that.
Despite the valuable education I received at UCLA, this
university engraved itself in my memory as an institution where a
great many students turn in their ability to think critically at
freshmen orientation. Los Angeles is but a huge suburb pretending
to be a city, mediocre at best.
Just pause and think: how many ding-dongy,
devoid-of-any-trace-of-personality guys and girls do you know on
campus? Do you ever walk down Bruin Walk and wonder (as you listen
to the unavoidable, "Um, that’s, like, totally rad! You look, like,
soooo cute!"), how did some of these people get into UCLA? I do. I
stopped counting the times when I thought many of my fellow
classmates should be sent back to high school to catch up with some
elementary history and geography, not to mention math and
English.
The venom of my words is, sadly enough, backed by some cruel
statistics: U.S. high school graduates’ academic performance places
them at the very bottom of the list, topped by their peers from
other industrialized nations of Western Europe, South America and
Asia.
The problem is partly addressed by affirmative action, which
tries to mend something that should be getting fixed in
kindergarten and elementary school. For that reason it is a failure
despite its noble goal; waiting until people are 17 or 18 to give
them a chance to properly educate themselves is a bit too late. But
in case you are about to brand me a racist, be advised that most of
those ding-dongy people I was talking about are actually sheltered,
dull-as-dish-water, middle-class W.A.S.P.s.
Here is a cute, however disturbing, anecdote: Once, a woman in
my class asked me where I was from. When Bosnia didn’t ring any
bells, I said, "You know, the former Yugoslavia." To that she
replied, "So how come you, like, don’t speak Spanish?" When the
perplexed look in my eyes told of utmost confusion, she said –
almost self-righteously – "Well, isn’t Yugoslavia right next to
Bolivia?"
No comment.
The world we live in is getting increasingly smaller. The advent
of cheaper air travel and happenings such as the emergence of the
European Union, with its blurring of international borders and
substantial population shifts, are just a few of the markers of
where the world is headed as we approach the new millennium. But it
seems like someone forgot to let the Americans in on that one.
The saddest thing is that very few people around here even feel
like there is something wrong with the way the things are. Due to
the almost complete monopoly that American-made TV programming has
on our screens, and due to a historical isolation from the
experience of other peoples on the planet, most Americans are
blissfully oblivious to the fact that the world at large is
laughing at us (and I do include myself in the "us," because I
presently have no other home but this one).
They are laughing at us because most of the issues which are
tearing America apart – abortion, content of TV programming, sex
education, the emergence of the religious right, what to do with
the gays in the military – are almost non-issues in the rest of the
industrialized world. I’ve tried long and hard to transplant myself
here, to make a difference, and it simply didn’t amount to anything
meaningful.
That’s why I say to all of you foreign students out there:
Anyone want a green card?