Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, co-chairwoman of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and first Muslim to be a cabinet minister, said last week during a speech at the University of Leicester that “Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table test.”
This idea is not new, but the expression Warsi used defines a pernicious characteristic of prejudice in Western society. It embeds itself in daily life and entails a false, noxious attitude toward certain groups.
Yes, the rank smell of prejudice still stinks in common places everywhere, but don’t feel bad. I say “everywhere” meaning prejudice is a worldwide social device for avoiding “the others,” so it is not an American privilege.
But I do feel bad, and it’s not because I suffered prejudice recently, or because my status as an international student makes me avoidable — or exotic, for that matter. It’s because I have also committed prejudice.
Forgive me, for I have sinned.
I realize now I was biased toward Americans, and the payback happens when I go back to Brazil, where I get evil eyes from friends and acquaintances.
I sold out. I joined the cattle run that is U.S. academia, and after a couple of years I am acquiring detestable “American habits,” so they say.
God knows what that means.
There are always two sides of prejudice. And let me tell you, they are both ignorant and short-minded.
Bias is a mechanism of thought that is hard to control. When biased considerations take over language and become criteria, all kinds of misjudgments and consequences can occur.
I would bore you (and myself) if I started to talk about the annoyingly insistent types of prejudice we know so well — those related to race, social class, religion, nationality, political view, color of shoes and so on.
If I want to bury any interest you have in finishing this column, I would start vomiting statistics showing how years of segregation and ignorance were built and still endure b(i)as on the notion that different is bad.
So, to paraphrase something my fellow columnists have been saying frequently in these pages, I will be blunt: Prejudice starts with you and I.
For example, I know in Brazil people generally are much more relaxed about schedules — or should I say Brazilians are less responsible when it comes to getting to places and appointments on time. It’s a cultural thing, for better or worse.
But if I say: “He’s Brazilian, so he’ll be late,” I’m using nationality as a criteria for judgment of behavior.
It would be the same if I said: “She’s not going to hug you, she’s American.” Although Americans are less physical in first contacts than in Latin cultures, saying that would imply I think all Americans act alike in such a situation, which is ignorant, to say the least.
There are many other subtle types of communication that are instant generators of prejudice.
I recently watched a video on the New York Times’ website called “Brazilian tradition of eating ants,” which shows a small town in Brazil where people eat a specific species of ant. That’s exotic, I guess. But how misleading is the title of the video?
Because this reporter found this little town in Brazil with an unusual eating habit, I’m now waiting for the next encounter with someone who will ask: “So, you eat ants in Brazil, huh?”
Of course, different people and different regions of the planet have diverse culture and habits, but defining and judging actions or behaviors based on those differences is a disease very much present in the daily life of our fragile society.
Fighting prejudice is not easy, but unlike some decades ago, it doesn’t require big revolutions and civil rights movements anymore.
We just need to battle our own ignorance.
Marcelo Vieira is a 33-year-old jazz cello graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on
Twitter @TDR_MVieira.