When You’re Used to Being Centered, Everything Else Feels Political

I’ve spent time traveling outside the United States - through countries we call “developed” and countries we still insist on labeling “Third World.” And one of the most formative lessons I learned wasn’t about geography or culture or currency. It was about centering.

Travel taught me how deeply Americans - especially white Americans - are accustomed to being the default. The assumed audience. The assumed language. The assumed experience.

It taught me how rarely we are asked to adapt.

So when I woke up today and heard people debating last night’s Super Bowl halftime performance - complaining that they “couldn’t understand what he was saying,” that it “didn’t feel American,” that it “felt political,” that it “didn’t belong” - I didn’t hear confusion.

I heard something else.

When they say, “I couldn’t understand what he was saying,” what I hear is: I only respect language when it’s English.

Which is remarkable, considering the United States has no official language - and yet English is treated as a moral requirement rather than a convenience.

When they say, “That didn’t feel American,” what I hear is: I only recognize Americanness when it looks and sounds like me.

As if America hasn’t always been multilingual. As if culture didn’t exist here long before English did. As if citizenship is something you perform correctly instead of something you live into.

When they say, “That didn’t belong at the Super Bowl,” what I hear is: Spaces of celebration and prestige should remain reserved for people like us.

As if belonging is something granted upward instead of something shared outward.

And when they say, “It felt political,” what I hear is: Seeing other cultures centered makes me uncomfortable - and I’ve been taught to interpret discomfort as threat.

Travel dismantled that reflex for me.

When you’re abroad, English stops being a given. Your expectations stop mattering. You are the one who adapts - or you don’t function. You are the one reading menus with Google Translate. You are the one missing jokes. You are the one realizing that confusion is not an injustice - it’s a temporary state.

No one stops their culture because you’re unfamiliar with it.

No one apologizes for not centering you.

And what I learned is this: being decentered is not harm. It’s humility.

In many places I traveled, people were gracious, patient, welcoming. But they did not rearrange themselves to make me feel powerful. And I didn’t expect them to. I understood instinctively what so many Americans seem unable - or unwilling - to grasp: my comfort was not the organizing principle of their world.

That’s the part we struggle with here.

In the U.S., whiteness and English have been so thoroughly centered that they’ve become invisible. They’re labeled “normal,” “neutral,” “just how things are.” Everything else is treated as an interruption. A statement. A provocation.

But culture is not political just because it isn’t familiar to you.

Language is not a threat just because you don’t understand it.

And celebration is not exclusion just because you aren’t centered.

The problem was never that people couldn’t understand the performance.

The problem is how rarely they’re asked to try.

We have confused inconvenience with oppression. Discomfort with danger. Decentering with erasure.

And so when a culture other than our own takes up space - especially in a place we’ve mentally marked as “ours” - we call it inappropriate instead of interrogating why our sense of ownership feels so fragile.

America is not diminished by making room.

It is revealed.

And maybe the real question isn’t whether that performance belonged on the Super Bowl stage - but why so many people believe the stage was theirs alone in the first place.