"Liberal", "moderate", "conservative": Those are the choices I got to pick for my political views on a dating app. Sure, many people know exactly where they stand. While I have absolutely no problem picking my sexual orientation, this one was harder. That got me thinking. Immediately, I had an explanation for the confusion. We are born with one; the other one is a result of upbringing, background, or nurture, you could say. The generational divide in politics is a testament to that being true. All the baby boomers and grandmas voting for Brexit were not "born this way", they just formed their opinions in a different environment than the majority of my generation. So I was raised to be a gay-loving, refugee-accepting feminist, it seems. But was I?
Of the three choices I had on the app, I went with "liberal". I definitely identify with many, many moderate and some conservative ideas, but since these are labels, I picked one. I was imagining three groups of people, each standing under a banner that spelled out each word. I asked myself which of these groups I would rather stand with, and the liberals often are the most diverse group which, to me, is an attractive feature. They are, like me, seldom the product of a wealthy upbringing and seem to emphasize people over profits. At 16, I had not seen this yet. I asked my best friend's father, a former US military man, what the difference is between "Democrats" and "Republicans". "Sina", he said, "do you believe that you should be able to harvest the fruits of your own labor yourself?" I said yes! "Then you are a Republican", he answered. I believed that for a good while.
Unlike my sexual orientation I was born with, what group I saw myself standing with was obviously a very fluid decision. Political views can be easily swayed and influenced and for a long time, I believed my strong faith would automatically mean I need to be conservative. So when did I become "liberal"? Was it a time that I realized that my friend's father had fed me a very narrow-minded idea of Conservatism? No. Was it my four years studying politics at university that taught me what ends there are in the political spectrum? No. Was it evaluating what history had taught me and that one direction was worse than the other? No. Looking back, I am almost confident it started with my mother.
I have very few memories of my childhood, but I do remember kindergarten. I grew up in a village in Germany, most of the kids were white. At around age 5, a black family from Nigeria moved in next door. They were loud and had a lot of children. Their skin color was not the only thing that was different from all the other families in the street. But my mother never commented on that. They were just another family. That is normal, you could argue, but unfortunately, it is not. When the mother of the children next door was calling them for dinner, she was walking outside calling out their names loudly, almost crying like the kid was gone for good. None of the white parents did anything similar. Instead of complaining, my mother laughed. She found it amusing, not annoying. Other mothers would possibly have made a noise complaint. Instead, my mother celebrated we had someone different living next door.
Although I didn't want to, my mother made me play with the kids. I do not believe my mother did that to teach me to play with black kids. I do believe, however, that my mother taught me to accept everyone, even if they are perceived as different. I was 5 so I probably didn't even know that the color of a skin could even be considered a difference between people, yet as I grew older that is what I witnessed: kids not wanting to play with someone different-looking. My mother also celebrated Freddie Mercury, giving me my very first CD: "Living on my own", saying how exceptional and talented this man on the CD was. I also recall that it was in this context I first heard about homosexuality. The lesson my mother told me about loving people of the same sex must have worked as I do not remember fearing it, like many. A few years later, I chose to go to an all-girls Catholic private school that had a reputation for "creating lesbians" which was made fun of a lot. My judgment of homosexuality came much later, age 16, when I was taking my father's friends advice and thought my pastor had the answer.
It wasn't until I went to uni that I was actually living the life of those who, today, cross out the box "liberal". There I was, in a classroom in Scotland, one of not too many white girls with classmates from countries I never heard of. My roommate and best friend was from Angola, my Volleyball team used chants in a number of languages. Exchange with people from other countries doesn't make one "liberal" but it sure as hell broadens the horizon. I did not start believing in government subsidies because I talked to Chinese exchange students but because I realized how similar all these different people were. I was living the EU dream, having my government with all their "liberal" programmes pay for my education which would never have been possible without them. I was able to get information about things from people who knew about them, not from TV or Facebook. It was an education you do not need books for...
As a result, I consider myself liberal today because I am a liberal success story. My life has been a testament that one cannot "go it alone"; this principle works for both life in general and politics. I looked for good examples of conservatives sharing my belief for years, without success. My personal beliefs of needing to help each other out, making sacrifices for those less fortunate and accepting everybody the way they are flow seamlessly into my political views. Of course, there are limits to the feasibility of these ideas. But the reason us young, educated millennials are often liberals is probably that we lived a different life from the elders; we already saw different, it doesn't scare us anymore. We can no longer do things alone, we have to cooperate. And we have had enough privilege to know there is enough for the many, not the few. It's a different nurture, but it will one day become nature.
Of the three choices I had on the app, I went with "liberal". I definitely identify with many, many moderate and some conservative ideas, but since these are labels, I picked one. I was imagining three groups of people, each standing under a banner that spelled out each word. I asked myself which of these groups I would rather stand with, and the liberals often are the most diverse group which, to me, is an attractive feature. They are, like me, seldom the product of a wealthy upbringing and seem to emphasize people over profits. At 16, I had not seen this yet. I asked my best friend's father, a former US military man, what the difference is between "Democrats" and "Republicans". "Sina", he said, "do you believe that you should be able to harvest the fruits of your own labor yourself?" I said yes! "Then you are a Republican", he answered. I believed that for a good while.
Unlike my sexual orientation I was born with, what group I saw myself standing with was obviously a very fluid decision. Political views can be easily swayed and influenced and for a long time, I believed my strong faith would automatically mean I need to be conservative. So when did I become "liberal"? Was it a time that I realized that my friend's father had fed me a very narrow-minded idea of Conservatism? No. Was it my four years studying politics at university that taught me what ends there are in the political spectrum? No. Was it evaluating what history had taught me and that one direction was worse than the other? No. Looking back, I am almost confident it started with my mother.
I have very few memories of my childhood, but I do remember kindergarten. I grew up in a village in Germany, most of the kids were white. At around age 5, a black family from Nigeria moved in next door. They were loud and had a lot of children. Their skin color was not the only thing that was different from all the other families in the street. But my mother never commented on that. They were just another family. That is normal, you could argue, but unfortunately, it is not. When the mother of the children next door was calling them for dinner, she was walking outside calling out their names loudly, almost crying like the kid was gone for good. None of the white parents did anything similar. Instead of complaining, my mother laughed. She found it amusing, not annoying. Other mothers would possibly have made a noise complaint. Instead, my mother celebrated we had someone different living next door.
Although I didn't want to, my mother made me play with the kids. I do not believe my mother did that to teach me to play with black kids. I do believe, however, that my mother taught me to accept everyone, even if they are perceived as different. I was 5 so I probably didn't even know that the color of a skin could even be considered a difference between people, yet as I grew older that is what I witnessed: kids not wanting to play with someone different-looking. My mother also celebrated Freddie Mercury, giving me my very first CD: "Living on my own", saying how exceptional and talented this man on the CD was. I also recall that it was in this context I first heard about homosexuality. The lesson my mother told me about loving people of the same sex must have worked as I do not remember fearing it, like many. A few years later, I chose to go to an all-girls Catholic private school that had a reputation for "creating lesbians" which was made fun of a lot. My judgment of homosexuality came much later, age 16, when I was taking my father's friends advice and thought my pastor had the answer.
It wasn't until I went to uni that I was actually living the life of those who, today, cross out the box "liberal". There I was, in a classroom in Scotland, one of not too many white girls with classmates from countries I never heard of. My roommate and best friend was from Angola, my Volleyball team used chants in a number of languages. Exchange with people from other countries doesn't make one "liberal" but it sure as hell broadens the horizon. I did not start believing in government subsidies because I talked to Chinese exchange students but because I realized how similar all these different people were. I was living the EU dream, having my government with all their "liberal" programmes pay for my education which would never have been possible without them. I was able to get information about things from people who knew about them, not from TV or Facebook. It was an education you do not need books for...
As a result, I consider myself liberal today because I am a liberal success story. My life has been a testament that one cannot "go it alone"; this principle works for both life in general and politics. I looked for good examples of conservatives sharing my belief for years, without success. My personal beliefs of needing to help each other out, making sacrifices for those less fortunate and accepting everybody the way they are flow seamlessly into my political views. Of course, there are limits to the feasibility of these ideas. But the reason us young, educated millennials are often liberals is probably that we lived a different life from the elders; we already saw different, it doesn't scare us anymore. We can no longer do things alone, we have to cooperate. And we have had enough privilege to know there is enough for the many, not the few. It's a different nurture, but it will one day become nature.
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