So Where Does the Faulty Perception Shit Begin, huh?

This is just a follow-up to last nite's post. I'd sent a few thoughts about Pam's article to her per mail, and she was kind enough to send a thoughtful reply. Which surprised me, because she is a very busy woman, and her post stirred up some controversy, so she has a lot of mail to answer. I hadn't expected it.

What I have been musing about, dwelling on in my head lately stems from an encounter I had a few weeks ago. When I first came to my adopted country, there were no people of color. (Ok, a few, maybe but nation-wide you couldn't fill up all the fingers of both hands that I knew of, anyway...) So you would think that people would have no preconceptions about people of other races. And that would be wrong. Over the last several years, we have many refugees from Afrika. Nigeria and Mali, mostly. Some Somalians and so on. Where I live, you go out on the street and it's a rainbow of skin color. Pretty.

We have federal police who come in and check our hotel guest books daily, looking for wanted criminals. And time and again, I hear this shit from them about how hard it is to catch the African ones, (a minority of Nigerians deal in drugs, and make it quadruprally hard for the good ones) 'because they all look alike.' I have never understood that. WHY? Because they do not want to SEE the person behind the skin color? Where the hell does that shit COME from? And it isn't even racist, they really are incapable of distinguishing features. (This extends to asians as well, btw. They all look alike!) And EVERY time I hear that, I get really roiled. And a few times I have really exploded with some of the dumber ones, and snapped, 'Well then, I guess you aren't looking, are you?'

With some very choice expletives in my head that would turn this blog quickly to a triple x rated one..... and gotten me in a bit of trouble....

Several weeks ago, I was very late and had to take a taxi to the assisted living home. The driver was an African man, unusual, because most of the refugees can't get a work permit, but I was in a hurry, pre-occupied, and never really looked at him. Happened again a few days ago, and so I said, 'Didn't you drive me down there two weeks ago?' And he laughed and said, 'No, I know we all look alike to you.' Which was mortifying.... And added: 'When I first came here, you all looked alike to me, too. It took me a long time to tell the differences.'

Now THAT fucking floored me. Because I thought that that 'they all look alike' meme was solely a stupid moronic stubborn being oh-so-superior WHITE thing. And the guy was being perfectly honest. We quickly had a very intensive conversation, very friendly, and it was a revelation.

So where does this shit come from? How do we build in barriers into our perceptions so we learn not to Look at anyone who is different from ourselves, unless they are acting crazy? When does that begin? When does the perception of 'otherness' suddenly become some vaguely threatening factor in our lives? When do we begin feeling so careful not to be hurtful or get hurt, or not politcally correct that we shut out any chance of getting to know one another and enriching our lives by learning from one another and think distance is good? When does the distance turn to resentment or even animosity?

For myself, from childhood onward, faces were always unique landscapes, every one different, interesting, but one of a kind, so I have never understood the mechanism of this, ever. They build up a barrier which prevents human beings from really encountering people outside their own little group. Is it something genetic? Clannish? Whatever it is, that is very sad in my opinion. I am so grateful to have encountered so many people in this world, sometimes very intimately, who did not look like me, or belong to my ethnic group, and they enriched my life immensely.

So I am stymied by all that. Pam Spaulding is a very brave lady, that is for sure. Trying to get an honest conversation going about race issues, especially now, when things are only getting worse world-wide.

So.... anyone have any ideas? I always thought no one ever ever looks at this blog, one of millions in a vast sea of people just having this need to voice their thoughts and frustrations, and so on. Three days ago I finally figured out how to install Sitemeter. So it seems some people 'out there' stumble across what I ramble on about. So leave a comment, hey.

Just sayin', I'm not made of glass and I don't break.

Update: Just about at the second-last paragraph, I ran out of snigarettes. My neighbors were out in the stair-well smoking with a friend of theirs. They are all 26 or so. Jeff introduced me, and said, 'this is our neighbor, and he is sooooo coooool.' If you are pushing sixty, that is quite a compliment.... So we ended up there till four am. They asked me what I was doing up. They are nearly finished getting their master's degree in biology. So I told them. They both maintain that it is genetic, and humans are 'animals', we run in packs, and we only perceive 'our own'. Well, that is a rational explanation, I guess, if very depressing.... But it was interesting. And VERY depressing.

They feel they need to go and get some credits with some Uni in the US. I said, 'The way things are going, it won't help, it will discredit you. You'd come back thinking the world is only 2000 years old, and people used to ride tamed dinosaurs. NO.' Their little friend LOOKED at me. 'You're kinda cool, you know?' he said. Somebody just shoot me. In my youth, when it counted, I was the nerd. Go figure.