I always ask these questions, why does someone’s skin color or ethnicity automatically determine how he or she should be treated? what makes one person think he or she is or should be superior to another?
I know that to the prejudice, you have a good reason or at least you think it is a good reason for being so inhumane to people but the only reason I can think of is ignorance. Ignorance from lack of knowledge and understanding or ignorance because we somehow have refused to know better, we know there is better but we would rather not.
Ethnocentrism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own ethnic group or culture is something we all consciously or unconsciously have which if not controlled can be very dangerous, ethnocentrism simply means I judge you using my beliefs,culture and values as a standard, do you see how unfair that is? we both grew up being thought two different sets of values, I grew up in Nigeria and you grew up in Europe but I automatically think your beliefs, your values and way of life is inferior to mine and vice versa.
I believe that the only way you can truly say you understand a person is to empathize, take time to talk to that classmate or colleague that is a Muslim, take time to talk to that European or the Asian and you will be surprised at how much you will learn, mostly because you would see we are not that different.
The 3 metaphors of culture, is a concept I find very interesting, they are the iceberg, fish in the sea and the glasses. My favorite is the iceberg model, what you see when you look at an iceberg is nothing in size compared to the rest of the iceberg buried under the sea, basically there is more to what meets the eyes.
Now think of this concept in relation to the people we meet in our daily lives, we are quick to judge people’s actions or reasons for their actions, talk them down or up with just one look, but what we do not see is what is buried beneath all that our eyes can see.
Take a good look at the picture above, behaviors, language,race, actions are what we can see from a distance. Look at the many more important things we miss out on when we fail to look beneath sea, culture,religion, life experiences,age, physical abilities,thoughts and perceptions,values… it goes to show that our prejudice is simply from ignorance and the unwillingness to take time to know and understand each other, give each other a chance to be who we really are instead of boxing each other into a stereotypical cage based on what we read, heard or saw on the TV. Somehow we now learn everything from programmed information outlets,we have let the media tell us how our fellow human being should be treated or viewed. I dare you to put off the TV and actually educate yourself.
Maybe if you do that you will get to see for yourself that just because i am from Nigeria, it does not make me a fraud. That just because he is from south Africa it does not mean he wakes up to a zebra at his door step. Maybe you will see that she is in fact European but that does not mean she has no morals or is easy or disrespectful.
He is a Muslim but that does not mean he is going to bomb you in the next 5 minutes, she is a refugee running from war but before the war she was an English professor and her husband was a doctor.
The way I see it I have no right to say your way of life is the wrong way of life. To think that is a different thing but to go as far as force my beliefs down your throat is selfish and unfair, our lives will be so much easier we would just respect each other’s choices.
The struggle should not be to prove who is better, it should be to accept that we are all equal and deserve just as much respect and love as the other…
xoxo
Ritso..
Ritso Yipsa 