Do you discriminate?
When you first meet a person, do you make an opinion about them based on their ethnicity? Are you interested in knowing where someone is from before dealing with them? Do you judge people by the color of their skin?
In my case, I don’t do any of that. When I deal with someone, I try to know more about the person by spending time with him. In most cases I don’t even know where that person is from even after several interactions. To me it doesn’t matter. If I ever ask where someone is from it is mainly to find a way to connect with them and find something in common, and maybe learn a thing or two about that place, but not to assume or generalize that person’s character based on his place of origin.
On the other hand, I have been asked countless times about my origin, both from my international friends as well as friends from my country. On many occasions I have been asked exactly where I am from in Pakistan and after they know the city they want to know which neighborhood of that city is my home in, even if they have never set foot into my home town, as if this knowledge would magically reveal secret information about me. Not that I care, I don’t give a damn, and I am not ashamed of telling where I am from down to the street and house number of my town. It’s just that I find myself telling this to other people more often then I hear it from them.
If I knew every language in the world, I would have asked people where they are from to talk with them in their language. I love languages but I don’t think I will ever know all the languages so this information is totally useless for me.
I have also experienced that when someone introduces a person to me, they tell me their name and their country of origin, as if this would somehow save them from telling more details about the person being introduced and I would understand everything that needs to be understood about that person from that single piece of information. I find it really funny because it tells me nothing. To me, every person is unique. I am not saying I am always 100% unbiased but mostly I don’t prejudge. Or maybe this is how the world works and I am a misfit because I fail to stereotype.
image: Portrait of business colleagues standing in a group from Yuri Arcurs Website