Racism.

In this post I'm going to tackle the difficult topic of racism. The basis of this post is that I was caught unaware of what constituted as racism in the US. As my ethnicity, nationality, sex, religion or sexuality has never prevented me from doing things I want to do, I might not approach the topic with the same sensitivity that someone with these experiences might.

Travelling the world makes it obvious that people behave differently in different countries, have different customs and cultures, and also look different. This can lead to stereotyping people, which often is a source of common humour ("An Englishman, a Scot and a Irishman walk into a bar..."). Stereotypes can sometimes help you to interact with people (e.g. because of the stereotype of Brits talking about the weather you know that it's quite ok to talk about the weather to a Brit), but occasionally, they lead to negative assumptions about different groups of people. And that's where the problem lies - no one wants to be unfairly judged because of their ethnicity / nationality / gender / religion / sexuality.

Although the First Amendment grants the right to even extreme opinion and religion here in the US (e.g. Ku Klux Klan and Westboro Baptist Church), the workplace remains extremely politically correct and racist comments can lead to immediate firing. At the university, I have seen numerous posters stating that we work in a "Hate-free environment", which is a sentiment I fully agree with. But what I was surprised about was what actually is perceived as racism or even "hate"?

Friendly jokes that point out differences between people are racist. Even if you told a joke about Mexicans to a Mexican person and he found it so funny that he went on to tell it to all of his Mexican friends who also loved the joke... you would still be racist.

Acknowledging differences is racism. Being different might mean that you are not equal. Reminding someone about the fact that their family is not originally from the US might make them feel like second class citizens. (I would not want people to think I was from the US. Also, if you look far back enough, the white Americans are not originally from the US either.)

Anything hinting at a difference is racism. Asking a Chinese-origin San Francisco-born person if they had a recipe for fortune cookies is racism. (Fortune cookies were originally invented in SF anyway!)

Hence, it seems, curiosity is racism. How do you ever learn about other people's customs and culture if it's racist to imply they are somehow different? I would definitely feel that people were being ignorant and unfriendly if I came from a different background to everyone else, and no one ever asked me about my culture.

And then the obvious follow-up question: What is not racism?

Ignorance seems to be the key to not being racist. They call it "colour-blindness", pretending that there are no differences. I find this quite problematic, because cultural differences do exist, and in my opinion, acknowledging them makes it easier to communicate and work together. Why can't we be different but still equal?

Also, positive discrimination is not racism. If everything is so much about ignoring the differences that might make people unequal, why are there grants for different ethnic minorities and women? Why do success of bigger NSF grants depend on having members of minorities being funded with the money? (Why could they not offer equal schooling for everyone so they actually would have equal opportunities?)

I find all of this very confusing. I believe in equality and equal opportunities, but ignoring the differences is difficult for me. I understand that there are people who do not actively choose the role of being different (e.g. travel) and people who have been teased or even bullied about being different. But still, acknowledging that we are all different is not hateful. I hadn't considered it racist before - for me racism is about attaching a value judgement to the difference, the most common of them being "people of my group are superior to others".

But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. At the workplace I will try and avoid trouble by avoiding saying things considered racist or hateful by the American scale. Because at home, it's my constitutional right to write these blog posts with my opinions on Americans and hint that they might be different to Europeans!