Today’s post builds on my earlier posts about discrimination. If you haven’t read them, this will be new for you. If you have, you may hear echoes from the other posts. Regardless, I hope it offers more insight to another point of view on discrimination.
There have been more than a few times when I spoke to someone on the phone, and – when they met me – they were surprised to find that I was not English, but Indian. At one point, I was asked, “Ok, you’re Indian? Dot or feather?”
When I think about my responses in these situations, I noticed others felt more offended than I did. As I usually land up doing, I found myself wondering why I didn’t feel as offended as others did.
That is when it occurred to me…I have always believed that words are ambiguous. In these situations, I had thought the responses could have been because of ignorance, or a lack of knowledge about what people from another culture would find offensive.
There is a difference between ignorance and adamance. Ignorance, according to the Webster dictionary, refers to “lack of knowledge, education or awareness”. Likewise, adamance is defined as “unshakable or insistent especially in maintaining a position or opinion”. Taken without emotional or social assumptions, in their pure meaning, the former may be unintentional while the latter is decidedly intentional.
In the situations above, I took the opportunity to correct their responses. In the first, I asked if it made a difference; in the latter, I clarified I was East Indian, but not all East Indians had the dot, just as American Indians don’t always wear the feather. In addition, I made it clear that such generalizations were inaccurate, and could be offensive to many.
Fortunately, there had been a change in their subsequent reactions to others and to myself; they used new information to change their responses to individuals from other cultures. This confirmed my belief that their responses were because of a lack of knowledge…ignorance.
There have been situations, however, where I took offense.
As a therapist, I was preparing to take my licensure exam. As I expressed my concerns regarding my performance, my colleagues stated, “Well, you’re Indian, so I’m sure the language barrier must be difficult”. As is my mien, I clarified to her that I had grown up in British-occupied Hong Kong, and English was – in fact – the first language I had ever learnt. The response?
“Yes, but still, you ARE Indian”.
From my perspective, this was a clear instance of adamance – new knowledge was not influencing her response, and it remained as it was despite my clarification. In fact, the earlier situations, if the individuals either defended their responses or no behavior change was seen, that too could be interpreted as adamance.
The threat of prejudice is a perceived one. Since perceptions are not concrete, it behooves us to utilize our executive functioning (our ability to process information we receive) to clarify them. Responding emotionally bypasses our refined skills of processing information. We do not think of what the true meaning was behind what an individual says and we do not use our own knowledge to educate the individual in front of us. We do not consider that they DON’T know better.
What follows is a rapidly deteriorating relationship. We non-verbally – and sometimes verbally – show our emotionally charged disapproval of the individual, and not just their behavior. We avoid the person, put them on the defensive (an automatic response to being attacked emotionally). We fight or avoid them, they fight or avoid us.
I should clarify, our initial indignant – and angry – emotional responses are not wrong. Our emotions are, after all, our evolutionary safeguards to threats. Prejudice and discrimination are real, and an adamant person could well be a threat to us. To deny our original defensive responses to a threat to our cultural identities is impossible. In fact, it would be unhealthy – and dangerous – to do so.
However, we have the advanced skills of executive functioning which we essentially bypass when we only follow our basic emotions. We do not take the time to think – we do not consider that the individual in front of us may not have ever had their original thought process questioned or corrected. We do not consider that, perhaps, they grew up in a culture where those responses were considered ‘normal’.
In the end, then, our response becomes no different than that of the person in front of us; we assume they are a threat, just as they assume they know everything about us based on one aspect of our culture. Meanwhile, there is no new knowledge passed to them, a lost opportunity to advocate for cultural change. We, too, make the assumption that people should, or do, know better.
Not using our executive functioning skills, we may assume that all individuals who give us these amibiguous responses are adamant. If they were ignorant, however, we miss the chance to teach them new information about different cultures. We may lose the chance to interact with someone who could be a culturally competent individual given new knowledge.
Take the time. Educate the person in front of you before reacting. Who knows, we may be able to break the fortress of discrimination from within it instead of from without.
Think Again 