What an African-American, and South Korean, and a Canadian can teach us about global honour-shame dynamics

'Louder with Crowder', is a program where Steven Crowder goes into the public space (often in a University context) and sets up a table to welcome a 'civil conversation' with passers-by on controversial topics.

One that I recently came across was outside a University in Texas (Posted on YouTube on March 6th 2018) on the topic of 'Male Privilege'. But after chatting with a couple of girls on the topic, two young men (one African-American and one South Korean) from the crowd that had gathered, made a couple of comments and Steven Crowder welcomed them to the table to sit down to chat further. (at about the 41 minute mark if you want to click on the link and watch it)

It led to a conversation about cultural differences that helped further in my quest to find an answer to a question I have asked myself in relation to our honour-shame research:

Why if Asia is 'honour-shame' oriented, and Africa, as we have now learnt is also so 'honour-shame' oriented, are the two cultures so vastly different in regards to societal development?

As these guys talked they mentioned some very interesting facts:

That for an Asian, the father is very 'present' in his family and the family unit is very strong. It is culturally expected that you will perform high in academic excellence, otherwise you are not showing your worth to your family and you'll be 'disowned', as the whole 'shaming your family' thing is strong. He mentioned that the suicide rate for Japanese and South Korean young people is extremely high - in fact the highest in the world, and it spikes in South Korea just after the results of a certain high school 'placement test'  comes out that basically determines what career path you will be able to take for the rest of your life. 

But for the African-American guy who came from a single-parent family, raised by his mum as is so common in African-American contexts,  the family unit is not so strong, but there is a very strong cultural community pressure to 'not be a nerd' (to use his words) or else you will get 'beat up'. Academic excellence is 'shunned upon' especially in the gangs. You 'can't like things that are not stereotypical for the culture'. It's not 'cool' to stay behind at school and do extra classes, but it is 'cool' to cut classes.

They spoke about how that the top ethnicities in highest income earners in the US are Asians - Japanese, Indian, Thai, but the bottom are African-American and Hispanics. But these guys were saying and affirming that they don't believe this has anything to do with 'systematic racism'…but that its all about culture.

Here we have a conversation in a multi-ethnic American setting that reveals something about my above question.

While both the Asian and the African-American are 'honour-shame' and directed by community/family pressures of what is expected and 'accepted' - ie honourable, what is considered honourable is entirely opposite. One honours those who strive hard to stand out above the crowd, the other honours those who stay within the crowd. One honours what the other shames.

Interestingly as the discussion drew to a close, Steven Crowder made the comment that in contrast to what these two guys were saying about their culture, in his 'white American culture', neither of those pressures are an issue for the white American male, but that the biggest thing was what he had experienced in the first part of the discussion with the other two girls - that the biggest "pressurised eco-system for white people is a pressure to feel guilty "… about having this or that opinion or belief.

(note that although the West is increasing in honour-shame dynamics is still highly guilt oriented and the shame to a great degree is in 'being guilty' of something (so shamed for being guilty), whereas for the Asian and African-American it is the opposite - the problem is bringing shame and if you do, you have done wrong - thus you are guilty ( - so its guilt for shame))

Without even realising it, this conversation so clearly identified the different emphases between guilt-innocence oriented Western culture, and honour-shame oriented African and Asian cultures but how the differences of what is considered as honourable and shameful sets a direction for those within that culture.

There is a lot we can learn just from civil polite conversations with people, that helps us understand our world, why we do what we do, and thus learn some pointers to help us think rightly about what the issues are that need to be addressed if we want to see change in our societies…..and a lot of it stems back to cultural dynamics of honour-shame and guilt-innocence!

Let's remember that ultimately, only God has the answers to all these cultural issues, but if we want to help people find God's answers, they have to first rightly understand the problems and we need to have good conversations with people.

If you are interested in reading more on some of these issues, the book 'Culture Matters' is a great place to start.

I have also just finished reading a book called 'Why Africa is Poor' by Choolwe Mbetwa (a Zambian), which also goes into some great 'reveals' about how culture is so instrumental in determining 'destiny'.