By Gregg Ramshaw
 |
Gregg Ramshaw is a retired television news and
documentary video producer living in Pittsburgh.
For many years he was an editor and writer of
the PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C. |
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood of
bungalows, two-flat apartment buildings, and three-story walk-ups. Everyone we knew was white; the only
differences among them were second-generation ethnic groups: Irish, Italians, Polish, some Germans, and
some English. Some of the grandparents
still spoke their native languages or pidgin English, but the kids my age
playing on the streets, parks and vacant lots spoke unaccented English.
I did not have the opportunity to join a program like
Luminari’s when I was growing up.
Fortunately, my parents and grandparents set good examples for me to
follow in their relations with relatives, friends, neighbors and strangers. They and I had little chance to meet people
of other nations. We could not afford to
vacation overseas. On rare occasions, my
father would bring home to dinner someone who was visiting his company on
business. I remember being painfully shy
on those occasions, not knowing what to make of someone from another country who
looked and spoke differently.
Eventually, when I went to college, I was exposed to a
larger world than my neighborhood elementary and high schools. But even then, the student body at the
university I attended was homogeneous. In
the 1960s, there were few international students in my field of study –
journalism.
I was 15 years into my career in television news before I
had a chance to have some foreign assignments.
My first was to Japan where I worked with a Japanese anchorman who spoke
English fluently. My job was to cover
the American President’s visit to Japan from the vantage point of the Japanese. The Japanese journalist agreed to narrate my
video report.
Upon my arrival, I made the cultural faux pas of not
bringing gifts for the people I would be working with. That was an important Japanese custom I was
unaware of. It was pointed out to me in
a friendly way, and it was a lesson I never forgot. On subsequent trips to Japan, I always
remembered to bring an extra suitcase full of small, nicely wrapped gifts. The gifts didn’t have to be lavish or
extravagant; it truly was the thoughtfulness that counted.
I developed a lasting friendship with that Japanese
anchorman, so much so that he asked me to publish the English language version
of a book he wrote. It contained
excerpts from his sister’s diary entries made during World War II, when
American bombers were decimating Tokyo.
The diary conveyed the innermost thoughts of a teenaged girl
who had begun life in the US and had to return home to Japan just before the
war broke out. In a way, it was a gift
he gave me -- to observe the privately guarded life of his family at a terrible
time in history. It was something he
might not have freely shared with someone who had not established trust and
rapport with him.
On another international trip, I bought a hand-woven
oriental rug on a working visit to Doha, Qatar, during the second war in
Iraq. I remembered to politely drink tea
with the merchant whose store I was visiting.
I listened patiently as he outlined for me some of the teachings of the
Koran, the holy scriptures of Islam.
After buying a large carpet for our living room, he threw in two
beautiful prayer rugs as a bonus. I
attributed it to my being a good listener!!
Also on that trip, I was waiting for a hotel elevator. When it opened, it was filled with
conservative Qatari women, all wearing abayas and veils. Given the separation of men and women in that
culture, I declined to board the elevator and waited for the next one. I felt it might be impolite for a Western man
to impose himself into a cluster of Arab women.
On a documentary trip to China, we had to be accompanied
everywhere by a “minder” – a guide who also kept a watchful eye on our
activities and reported them to his headquarters at the Ministry of
Information. China was a much less open
country at the time, and Westerners were regarded with suspicion. We tried to maintain our professionalism as
journalists while also being respectful of our Chinese hosts’ wishes and
guidelines. In time, our crew won the
trust and respect of our “minders.” Bit
by bit, they let their guard down, and we were able to gain access to more
places and information than we had originally expected.
A year or two later, the President of China at the time,
Ziang Zemin, made his first formal visit to the United States. Shortly before he arrived, the Chinese
Embassy called me to say that the President would give my news organization an
exclusive broadcast interview, the only one he gave during his visit. I attribute that to the respect we showed in
the television news documentary we produced.
Now, you might question whether we pressed hard enough to report on the
more controversial human rights problems China had then and still does now.
We were able to do that reporting outside China and produce
stories about human rights and the government’s sometimes cruel, one-child-per-family
law. But inside China, we played by the
rules, wandering off only a couple of times to do things we were not supposed
to do when our “minder” wasn’t looking.
Hiring childcare givers who had been born and raised in
other countries provided me, my wife and two daughters a range of intercultural
experiences. We had “nannies” from the
Philippines, Ethiopia, Central America, China, and Jamaica. Although they had become “Americanized” in
many ways, they nevertheless taught us about their customs, governments,
cultures, dress and especially their food, since they often cooked us dishes
from native recipes with ingredients we were not used to tasting. And by living in the Washington, D.C., area we
encountered many embassy-employed parents and their children through the public
schools our daughters attended.
It was a way of life we loved. When we moved to Pittsburgh 11 years ago, we returned
to a population more homogeneous than Washington’s. But Pittsburgh is evolving into a more
cosmopolitan city each year. Our new
next door neighbor is a native of Lebanon who is a child and adolescent
psychiatrist. His sister and her doctor
husband live across the street. Another
doctor, a cardiologist who is also Lebanese, lives two houses down from
us. Another neighbor is an Orthodox
Jewish rabbi, who has taught us a great deal about his faith and customs. This enriches our lives and makes us feel
like citizens of the world, not just of one city or one state or one
nation. I’ve discovered so much more to
life just beyond the horizon, but, if you look for it, sometimes it’s just
beyond the fence of your own backyard.
(Gregg Ramshaw is a
retired television news and documentary video producer living in Pittsburgh. For many years he was an editor and writer of
the PBS NewsHour in Washington,
D.C.)
