Youth culture: 'Born in the USA'

I am acutely aware that much of the evolving cultural identity of our home-grown and much maligned “Lebanese” youth is indeed “made in the USA”. Anyone who spends time with the youth in question would immediately recognise the influence of the American hip-hop culture: phrases such as “Yo bro” and “Give me five” are direct imports from the cultural West not the (Middle) East. Their attire also resembles their hip-hop heroes, with their baggy jeans, Fila jackets, Adidas athletic shoes, Nike baseball caps (or beanies) and goatees.

Hip-hop was developed primarily by African and Hispanic Americans in socially and economically oppressed areas of New York in the late 1970s, especially the Bronx and Harlem. Rap music addresses issues of zero tolerance policing, economic disadvantage, victimisation, oppression, social disadvantage and defiance. With the global “war on terror”, some in Sydney’s south-west over-identified with their non-white brothers in the American ghettos.

The youth in question have hybrid and hyphenated identities spanning three dynamic cultures - Australian (local), American (global) and ancestral. Some of this tri-partite fusion has been packaged and marketed in the Fat Pizza cult, where phrases such as “fully sick bro” epitomise their code language for this identity.

We cannot choose our ethnicity but we can choose our social sub-culture.

Youth identity is not always defined or indeed restricted by some linear formula or boundary. Indeed, many identities defiantly transcend national boundaries, especially for those who are living in a Diaspora. Communities dispossessed of their homeland reconstruct their land in cyberspace. For some of these groups, the virtual world created on the Internet is becoming a reality.

Many civilisations that were once dominant empires have become persecuted minorities under a new empire. For example, the Assyrians stem from Mesopotamia and Babylon, a region now covered by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. This Christian population speaks Aramaic and Syriac, a derivation of the language spoken by Jesus Christ. Today, more than 50 web sites provide a new Assyrian landscape complete with libraries, schools, entertainment, language, social clubs, art, sport and history. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Assyrians have a (virtual) homeland that they can visit regularly, and salvage their once endangered identity in a protected environment.

Many other Diasporas share this experience: Kurds have more than 60 sites and Palestinians have more than 100.

The profound meaning derived from daily visits to these virtual homelands does not imply that the Australian identity is eroded or undermined. One can fulfil all the obligations of national citizenship while belonging to an international community.

This opens up new doors for youth in these groups to not only inherit their ancestry by name, but rebuild it by deeds. For example, they can surpass their parents by posting family trees on the Internet. Rather than arguing that they have descended from the Phoenicians, some Lebanese can educate each other about the world’s first alphabet, its vocabulary and meanings. They can evolve from oral folk-lore passed down from generations to digitally mapping out their culture on a living and updated web-site that is constantly under construction. This is where the digital revolution intersects with the organic evolution.