Stuff you notice during reverse culture shock PART II

Shop in my village in Indonesia

This is a second part to a post about reverse culture shock.

1.       Where do I fit in society?

I was talking recently with someone about Tinder and about the different dates she had gone on with different men since breaking up with her boyfriend a few months ago.

This is what the hip millennials are using, right? Someone told me this wasn't cool anymore!Am I not hip? Am I not a millennial? Help! I've been on the other side of the planet for years! 

We both agreed that although it is weird, and silly, when we meet someone new, we have a tendency to try to categorize them as a certain type of person (i.e. if I met this person in high school, what kind of person would they be?). It doesn’t make any sense that we do that because, considering there weren’t really many kids in my high school (~180 in my grade and less than 700 total), there were plenty of kinds of people that never were in my high school, and people change, of course. But old habits die hard. And, I guess, when you grow up being closer to the bottom of the social totem pole, you do subconsciously get defensive and try to categorize someone before you open up to them, so they can’t hurt you.  

There's a reason why this is so popular with the young folk

There are physical moments we remember for the rest of our lives. And then there are internal realizations that are deep culminations of series of moments. Perhaps it was in my second year of college. I’m going to seem incredibly naive. Let me preface this by saying that I had met people I’d consider “bad” before this point in my life. I had met people heavily into drugs, selfish people, liars, etc. But this situation felt a bit different.

On the next episode, the middle daughter learns a valuable lesson about life.
Photo from IMDB.com

My friend had been dating this guy who was in his late twenties and who lived in our college town. One time she told me nonchalantly that he had been so mad at one of his previous girlfriends that he pulled over the car he was driving, pulled the girl out of the car, took off his belt, and began beating her with it. I don’t know how hard he beat her or for how long. But I did know that I was dating this man’s “best friend” and my closest friend in college was dating him. I remember feeling so deeply disturbed by this information. A man who would beat a woman was not a good person, part of me kept repeating. Why am I dating his friend? How could I be dating someone who could forgive that? How could my friend be dating him? Shouldn’t I just walk away from this situation and not look back? But what if I was judging to harshly? I wasn’t there. Maybe he changed. This is just a story. It’s not my boyfriend’s fault if his friend is bad.

A huge part of growing up is learning that it’s very hard to make moral judgments. Forgiveness is a virtue and all, but sometimes what we’re really doing is making excuses for someone because it’s too difficult to cut him or her out of our lives.

What does this have to do with culture shock? If it’s hard to know how to judge and assess people even when entering college, it’s even harder in a completely new culture. It’s so much harder to judge if someone is being strange or offensive, if what they’re doing is normal, or they’re just excited or awkward around someone new and foreign. This leads to weird misunderstandings, both somewhat benign and more disturbing.

A month or so after I met one of the people I eventually became closest to at my village, he took one of my pictures on my Facebook without my permission, edited in Photoshop, and re-posted it. I reacted, not well, and didn’t talk to him for a month, thinking the whole thing was weird and creepy. But then I asked someone else their opinion, and they reminded me that people use social media differently in Indonesia, and he may just not know how to talk to me. He ended being one of my closest friends in my village, despite the fact that a different friend of mine in my village didn’t like him because of how he acted in middle school.

Holding grudges from childhood seems like a pretty universal experience
Photo by Flikr user Michael Robinson

I think regardless of culture clash or not, peoples actions (especially when men or women try to talk to members of the opposite sex, whether they have romantic intentions or not) get misinterpreted. Furthermore, even within your own culture, if you meet someone as an adult, you have a different impression than you would have if you had grown up with them. When you move between two very different cultures, the secretly-hasn’t-changed-much-since-high-school schema for judging people you have hiding in your subconscious gets even more stressed and tested. Sometimes you have to totally rewrite your norms and boundaries.

Rewriting your norms and boundaries is normal, but doing so can make you really question yourself and cause you to feel hypocritical. I’ve never been a particularly affectionate person, and when I meet friends or relatives, I often have mild anxiety about greeting people, especially if I know they will want to hug me or kiss me.  And yet, in Indonesia and in Korea, people can be more touchy-feely, especially older people. They aren’t necessarily physically affectionate during greetings, but friends are more likely to rub your arm, lean on you, or grab you. I also worked with a lot of children, who don't have the same physical boundaries as adults. I feel so weird because I still get anxiety when I have to greet or say goodbye to people in America, but I wasn’t often anxious if someone in Asia was affectionate to me in ways Americans normally aren’t. I always ask myself why. It doesn’t make sense. It feels like taking several steps forward and taking more back.

In my previous post about reverse culture shock, I mentioned meeting some men in Indonesia that married young teenagers when they were adults. I wouldn’t say this is common, but it’s not super rare either. The man who worked as a driver for my host mother told me one day without shame that when he was 24, he married his wife, who at the time was only 12 years old. When I asked other Indonesians about this, they were also a bit shocked, but not nearly as much as an American might be. Although people gossip about it, sometimes adult teachers in Indonesia marry their high school students (usually they wait until the girl graduates). How am I supposed to accept this? Do I hate that driver? Do I make excuses for him (i.e. well he seems to really love her, it’s more normal here)?

He seemed to a little less crazy than her mom, sometimes, I guess?
Photo form Wikipedia

Adults marrying teenagers is more normal in Indonesia than America. Accepting that fact doesn’t mean you approve of the practice. But if I met an American teacher who was dating his student, I probably would call the police and think he was a scumbag. If I meet an Indonesian doing the same, I don’t have to like his actions or him, but I probably wouldn’t judge him as harshly. Does that make me a hypocrite? Most Indonesians in my village don’t drink. And the people who do drink are seen as pretty deviant. However, if an Indonesian moved to South Korea, where binge drinking several nights a week is a normal practice for many men, should they view the average Korean man who drinks three nights a week as deviant or untrustworthy? Or should he just accept him as normal? The answers for these questions are never easy, and sometimes they leave you questioning who you are as a person and what you stand for. These questions haven't gone away now. They've only gotten more numerous. Now that I’ve come back from the Peace Corps, is it my job or duty to react to every Islamophobic comment I hear? Isn’t it better to let it go sometimes? Doesn’t that mean I’m failing at my job?

Some of the other identity issues can go even deeper. How do I talk to people? How do I deal with the fact that people aren’t interested in me everywhere I go like they were in Indonesia? Is it true I wasn’t interesting? Did people only talk to me or spend time with me because I was foreign? How much of a person or object was I to the people around me? How much of an anomaly am I right now?

Are you there, God? My body is changing. I’m  feeling hormonal and developing a beer gut, stress wrinkles, and gray hair. Photo from Wikipedia

A common thing that a lot of women (including myself) are guilty of is insisting that we aren’t like other women. I've realized how silly and shortsighted this is. That there is no such thing as a typical woman, and you don’t need to throw other women under the bus for male attention. I think it’s an understandable thing for women who have felt ostracized and been treated badly and bullied to feel, especially in combination with internalized misogyny that insists that there’s something inherently wrong or less good about femininity. It’s hard to reach this realization unless you’ve gone out of your comfort zone and looked at yourself in a different way. Growing up and going to college and meeting people that didn’t grow up with you and see you differently that people from your childhood can sometimes bring on realizations like this. Perhaps you were at the bottom of some social hierarchy, but so were a lot of women. And sometimes the wielder of the most power, or mystique can change. Sometimes an ugly boy or girl grows up to be a very attractive adult, or a very shy child becomes a full blown entertainer.

Sometimes an average woman in America goes to another country and becomes a mini-celebrity. She becomes the exotic thing. She gets more attention than she deserves. She is overwhelmed and guilty, but then there’s moments in which nobody cares that she’s there, and she is suddenly a little disappointed. And when she comes back, she's afraid of being labeled or defined simply by the fact that she has just returned home from an exotic country. But when no one cares or wants to ask about it, she's also disappointed.

photo by Flikr user alison

In some ways being the only foreigner in a village is a very clear role. You feel like you are playing a role for over two years. Sometimes this is extremely taxing, but other times it’s comforting. Although it’s not always clear what you should be doing as a Peace Corps volunteer, you kind of get a feel for how the people around you want you to be, and you play into that. When you come back home, you come back with and into more baggage. You don’t know what people what you to be. A lot of people don’t even know what Peace Corps is, don’t care, or they have some impression of you as a waste of tax payer’s money, stupid, strange, or some kind of saint.

How some people see me.
Whether you venerate her or find her extremely problematic, both  versions are apt comparisons for how people think of Peace Corps volunteers.
Photo form Wikipedia.

The author of this article makes an interesting point. He says that he doesn’t want his five year experience in Korea to be reduced to the same significance as someone’s week long vacation. It is very hard to decide how to talk about your experiences. Do you bore people constantly by starting every sentence with “In Asia...” or do you have nothing to say? Living in another country for years is different than just visiting. Even sitting around the table with relatives last week, as I listened to people talk about stories traveling or in airports, part of me wanted to yell out: I’ve been in airports all the time. I’ve had that experience and worse, or more interesting. But you don’t even know where to start. And it’s also not fair to monopolize the conversation or to seem like you’re trying to act better than the people around you. Still, a big part of you wants to make people understand that what you did wasn’t a vacation for years. It was your whole life.

On the other hand, you sometimes get too much attention that seems like empty flattery. I always find it interesting if people call me brave. It really makes me wonder. I feel as though some people are like me. They’re always going to do things like join the Peace Corps, or teach English in Asia. They are always going to move someplace new or go halfway around the world because it’s simply in our natures. Is it really brave to do something we have an urge to do? Some studies have reported that there is a gene that makes people want to travel.

Am I really brave for doing something possibly rooted in my DNA? What about how I cried in middle school during a musical audition? About how often during my life I’ve had feelings, positive and negative, about someone but never been able to express them outright? How I couldn’t bring myself to do rock climbing in tenth grade? How I quit dance class in third grade because I was scared of being made fun of? How I never applied to a better school out of undergrad because I was afraid of being rejected? There are so many things I have been scared of doing in my life.

 At the risk of sounding like a whiny, privileged, jerk, I sometimes find the weight of trying to follow the path most people I grew up with took, of getting a job near my hometown of fitting in with relatives and people I grew up with incredibly exhausting and scary, even when I know logically that the other side of the world is also boring, tiring, frustrating, stressful, and completely imperfect. I see people who have become lawyers, or doctors, or just have learned how to cook, have started a family, or have acquired really good office and other practical skills. They’ve learned how to code computer, to fix a pipe, or a car. They can make pivot tables in Excel and are pretty good at doing taxes. I really admire people who are good at things like that. I wish I could be as good as them.

I’ve always been really good at wandering off somewhere, physically and mentally. I’ve always been relaxed, patient, and curious, and logical. I’ve always wanted to entertain other people or make them laugh or think. I’ve always connected to people younger than me, and I’m fascinated by bugs and animals. I get a rush from explaining things and seeming as though I have some kind of authority. How brave is it really, to do the things I’ve always naturally gravitated towards? I didn’t have to have a strict schedule or do lots of things other adults did because I had the excuse of being foreign or different. I could use homesickness as a reason for my moodiness and desire for alone time. Being where I was played up many of my strong points and played down or masked my flaws.’

It feels something like a left handed person who suddenly has to do a lot of difficult cutting, but they finally get to cut with a pair of left-handed pair of scissors for the first time
Photo from Amazon,com

. 

I don’t mean to say doing the Peace Corps or moving to South Korea or traveling around Asia was easy, I experienced plenty of bad things that I may or may not have experienced if I never left America. I’ve been horribly lonely, outcast, objectified, confused to the point of tears, mentally exhausted from language barriers, and unable to express myself.  I’ve been very hot, harassed, groped, assaulted, lost, shouted, sat on planes endlessly, been bullied, been trapped in a room, had stuff stolen, stuck in traffic for hours of my life, bitten by so many bugs, spent time in lots of unclean places, suffered from countless stomach problems, had to eat food that made me sick, apologize for offenses I didn’t know I committed, walked through floods and thunderstorms, drank way too much, made a terrible fool of myself so many times, and been too hot, freezing, itchy, or anxious to sleep on so many nights. I've been judged, had my heart broken, had to say goodbye to so many people, had to make new friends over and over again, have hurt lots of people’s feelings, witness things I find morally offensive, and pretend to like things I find morally offensive. I can count plenty of new bruises and scars. With all that said, I know who I am as a person, and I realize that most of my life choices over the past seven years haven’t been brave, they’ve simply been in line with who I am. 

Perhaps the bravest thing I could do, while acknowledging that brave does not always mean smart or good, is to stop leaving and start becoming a more typical, practical adult.

2.       Nostalgia is tricky and seductive

You may be wondering why I ever came back. From where I’m sitting now in my air conditioned, comfortable bedroom in America, I can tell myself that I was good at being in the Peace Corps and good at traveling. And I miss it every day. When I was gone from home I would get so painfully homesick, but now, I sometimes get so restless to be traveling and to not be home that it almost physically hurts. I realize how ridiculous and entitled it sounds, but once you go somewhere new it feels as though you cut out a little piece of your heart and leave it there. As wiser people have said before me, when you leave a place you don’t just leave the place behind, but you leave the person you were there, and you can never quite go back to being that person.

GOODBYE, INNER INDONESIAN DISNEY
 PRINCESS ME. THE CATS WILL MISS YOU

Even now, just 2.5 months after coming back, I can find myself forgetting Indonesian words. I’m finally feeling hotter and less like I want to wear long sleeves while everyone else is wearing shorts and t-shirts. I am shedding that person that I spent years building. Even if I wasn’t always happy with who that person was, it’s sad to think she’s going away.

Nostalgia can be a wonderful, rich, and encapsulating feeling, but it’s also dishonest. In the above section nostalgia influenced me to say that I was doing what I supposed to be doing in Indonesia. It makes it easy to forget the times I felt restless there and the feelings that made me ready to move onto other things. Nostalgia and home sickness together can lead to very bitter, annoying people. In Korea, I met so many foreigners who used to make ridiculous claims about their home countries. One Canadian woman, frustrated with the Korean students she was teaching, told me that Canadian children NEVER spoke when the teacher was talking.

I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was what Canadian classrooms looked like.
Photo from IMDB.com

The intense heartache of nostalgia makes it so easy to lie to ourselves. If I yearn for this place or part of my life so much, says this feeling, it must have been perfect, right? But how incredibly terrible would you feel if you continued to grow up and your life and habits didn’t change whatsoever? And just because something was good for you at one point in your life, it doesn’t mean it will always be good. And if something was good for you, it doesn’t mean that it was good for everyone, whether or not you realize it.

Every election cycle, at least one candidate plays on the public’s sense of nostalgia to win votes. This season, Donald Trump promises to make America great again and some portion of the public imagines a past that was somehow better and more pure than the one that exists now, even though most of history was pretty bad for anyone who wasn’t a healthy, white, wealthy, Christian male with conventional interests. When people are confused, it’s easy to convince them that things were better in the past. In South Korea, nostalgia sometimes manifests in a weird fetishization of North Korean things and people, who are more “pure” Korean. North Korean women are paraded onto talk shows in which they talk about their lives and are made objects of the viewing public. Though slightly different from nostalgia, in Indonesia you can see a growing attachment to Arabic culture as a push back to growing Western influence. Some of the recent homophobia in Indonesia seems similar to the reactionary right in America as somehow certain Indonesian groups have forgotten that there has always been a fairly prominent queer culture in most parts of Indonesia long before the modern age and colonization.

The more you travel and see different types of nostalgia manifest on the personal and the societal level, the more you realize how much of a defense, a psychological tick it is. Nostalgia becomes virulent, passionate, and dangerous when people start to feel especially unstable. It insists that everything will be perfect and okay because at some point in the past it already was perfect and you were perfectly happy. It ignores the fact that people are always going to feel disgruntled about something. It is an anchor onto which some people need to cling when they can’t imagine the future has a place for them.

Nostalgia always insists as well that somehow the person feeling nostalgic was more innocent, more blameless in that past place and time. If you are overwhelmed with guilt or feelings of inadequacy, it’s easier to remember a past time. I didn’t have to care about all the things I care about today because I didn’t know about them. People always look at children as so stress free and relaxed. But try talking to some kids sometimes. They are often incredibly stressed about school, their friendships, their parents, their siblings, their pets, their growing sense of freedom and restlessness. I don’t mean to say that to a degree children aren’t more innocent or less stressed. Most children are, but not to extent we’d like to imagine them. Sometimes it is true that our lives or our countries were better in the past, but usually never to extreme that people like to think they were.

My village in Indonesia

On more than one occasion, I spoke to a friend of mine in my village in Indonesia about how ever so slowly more factories and malls and housing complexes are being built as Jakarta continues to expand outward. The area I stayed in is still visited by college students from bigger cities like Jakarta, Bogor, and Depok because it is the closest and last “traditional” Sundanese agricultural village to Jakarta. Maybe ten years from now, if I visit Cariu, it will be factories and malls and those electric green fields hiding bats and snakes, and other strange little animals will be paved over. There will be no chickens on the road or goats screaming outside the window. There won’t be any bamboo houses, and maybe more cars and fewer motorcycles. The farmers will have retired. The young people will be drivers, or mechanics, or welders, or office workers or laborers. There might be more Indomarets and Alfamarts and less coconut stands.

Mechanic shop in my village

It will be easy then, to painfully miss the dewy mornings, the rainbow sunsets, the slow, hot pace of life. But in missing those times, I might forget, the people of Cariu might forget, that their village on the outskirts of modernization was just a much a product of history as Jakarta; from the garbage clogging the sewers, the badly paved roads, the hazy air, the tourists from the city, the shortening life spans and growing waistlines as people smoked more, walked less, and ate cheap, greasy food, the confused young people knowing they can’t work as their parents have for generations, the disappointed old people, the desire for electricity, and internet but lack of a reliable network, and the rising temperature because of all the pollution being produced in every direction around that valley in the mountains. Cariu is going to change and should change for good reasons. To hold it in some kind of time capsule wouldn’t be practical or fair to its people, even if some things will be lost.

As much as you want to tell yourself and those around you to follow their hearts, it’s important to not be a slave to nostalgia. Maybe eventually I will come to the conclusion that I should travel again back to someplace I’ve lived before or that I should go someplace new. But that realization should come knowing not just logically but emotionally that it won’t be the same experience I’ve already had. I will have to learn plenty of new lessons. I will face different challenges, and I have to try to things better than I did before. Time does not move backwards.

 “WELL ACTUALLY THIS NEWLY DISCOVERED PHYSICS PARTICLE—“
“SHUT UP, YOU”RE RUINING MY ENDING”
Photo by Flikr user Andres Vilas

Stuff You Notice During Reverse Culture Shock PART I

I’ve gone through reverse culture shock at least twice in my life; once coming back from South Korea, and again right now, after two months back from Indonesia.  Arguably, coming home from college was another culture shock before that. When you first arrive in a new place, you notice everything, and your mind is hyper aware. When you come back home from a really different culture, you have that hyper aware feeling while also dealing with the mundane and familiar and whatever expectations you have about what life is like in your hometown. Eventually you are left with a paranoid, jaded, bored feeling that’s something like teenage angst.

I think I’ve been making excuses for still having teenage angst for the entirety of my 20's 
(Photo by Flikr user .sarahwynne.)

Anyway, I’ve decided to outline some of the feelings/realizations I’ve come to during my 2-3 months of reverse culture shock since I've returned home. This is the first part of a longer post. I will write and post the rest later.

1.       





Formality, accents, and the repetitive expressions people use are weird.

When you first move to a new country and barely understand the language, you feel intensely curious. What are those people saying, exactly? And slowly, ever so surely, time passes, and you start to understand people. You start hearing the same words over and over again…and again…and again…and again. Eventually you totally understand those common expressions, and not only do you understand them, but you’re intensely irritated by them. Do you have to ask me where I’m going all the time, or if I’ve eaten, or taken a shower? Why do Indonesians (or insert any nationality here) keep asking about such stupid, pointless things?  Why do they have to use the same expression over and over again? Why is that silly song about where that kid’s dad is so “funny”?

Because you’re hyper aware, you start to pick out the expressions and tones people use to sound tougher, sadder, to get pity, to flirt, to fake humility, etc. Because you actively have to learn how to do these things in a new culture, it’s almost like watching people put on and take off masks because you are trying to learn how to do what is they’re doing.

Or I’m just saying that because I wanted to reference this book and sound cultured 
(photo from Wikipedia)

Silly things start to annoy you even if you know that logically you shouldn’t be annoyed. Why do people keep using religious words? Why do they keep talking about God? Why do Korean girls put on that weird whiny accent all the time?

When I try to explain to someone what reverse culture shock feels like in the simplest way I can, I usually retell this anecdote: I went to a local diner in Westchester County, NY a few days after I got back from Korea. As I was sitting there, the room seemed so loud. More than one person who’s lived abroad for long periods of time in an non-English speaking country has agreed with me that when you come back home, sometimes it feels like everyone is talking to you. You can finally totally understand everyone around you, but you’ve just spent a long time getting used to people using English only when they want to talk to you. This feeling was stronger when I returned from Korea than now, after returning from Indonesia. It’s possibly because I speak Indonesian more fluently and more Indonesians would speak to me in their native tongue than Koreans would. 

Number of People of Asian Descent in America (not including mixed race) [From Wikipedia]

Group	Population 2000	Population 2010	Percent change
Indonesian	44,186	101,270	58.6%
Korean	1,099,422	1,463,474	33.1%

(And yet, just going by these numbers knowing Korean better would have opened a lot more opportunities for looking cool in Asian neighborhoods in America…)

What also struck me in this diner was just how strong everyone’s accent was. The English speaking foreigners I had been around were not from Westchester, New York. And there I was, suddenly hearing aw’s instead of a’s, the false aggression, the abrupt, harsh staccato characteristic of New York accents and feeling really irritated. Did they really have to talk like that?

What everyone sounds like right now
(From Friends Wikia)

Many Korean teachers of English have a habit of telling their students that English doesn’t really have formality. I used to say that just because English doesn’t use honorifics and different levels of language, doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to be more formal, which I think they knew, more or less, but they didn’t totally believe. So I used to make some basic rules for my advanced students: Generally you use more passive sentences, you avoid “I” or “you,” and strong emotions, and you make use of more Latin based words instead of Anglo-Saxon rooted words (i.e. you use “reception” instead of “welcoming” or “commencement” instead of “beginning”, “refrain” or “desist” instead of “stop,” etc.).

Of course there are many formal things that Koreans do at meetings or when greeting each other that are unnecessary for Americans, such as always shaking your elder’s hand with two hands instead of one, using titles instead of first names, and generally avoiding eye contact. Trying to learn all of these extra things at first can seem exhausting and silly. But when I came back from Korea, I felt so irritated when waitresses nonchalantly put plates down with one hand.

Before speaking in meetings, Indonesians generally say an Arabic blessing before they talk. And before making formal speeches, my students used to add two paragraph long blessings praising Allah and his creation. At the end of the speech, they would apologize for mistakes. When I said goodbye to my host family, I also apologized for my mistakes. Sometimes I’d get so annoyed with these formalities. They took so long.

But I went to a work meeting last week, and before the boss even started speaking, he spent a few minutes praising everyone, wishing everyone a good vacation, mentioning different family members and wishing good health. Before the meeting ended there was another five minutes of praise, of formal thank you’s, of encouragement. I’m sure someone could write whole research papers on what this implies; why do Indonesians use their formal speech for praising God and talking about the world and apologizing, while Americans use their formal  speech for gratitude and encouraging individuals?

When I first got to Indonesia the constant Inshallah, Alhumdulilah, Mashallah, and  assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarokatuh  was overwhelming because it comes from a different religious background than the one Western civilization is based on. But being back, I’ve been reminded of how often people in America say “Lord,” “Jeeze” “Jesus” “Jesus Christ” “damn” “thank God,” “God forbid” and “Oh my God.”  And it’s reinforced the idea to me that just because someone is steeped and in a certain religious/cultural background, the way in which someone speaks doesn’t necessarily reflect how personally religious that person is.

2.       

2.  Everybody asks stupid questions

At the risk of making myself and my fellow Peace Corps volunteers seem like a bunch of jerks, sometimes we would compare the dumbest questions Indonesians asked us.  There were the inevitable questions about America’s reputation for “free sex,” and inappropriate questions about the status of our virginity. There were the religious questions, “Do you know who Adam and Eve are?” There were questions about wealth; “There are no pot holes in America, right?” “All the roads are perfectly smooth, right?” “Everyone has a big house in America?” There were ignorant questions about race, “Is that [insert nonwhite race] person actually American?”  Then there were questions like “Are there many zombies/superheroes/vampires in America?” “Does it rain in America?” “Are there trees in America?” “Are there mountains in America?”

That "America The Beautiful" song is a total lie. Don't believe it.
(Photo of the Rocky Mountains from Wikipedia)

                

As silly as some of those questions were, I don’t think that it meant the people asking them were stupid. Indonesia and America are on complete opposite sides of the world. They’re connected to completely different global networks (America to the West and Indonesia to the Muslim world and to Asia). There aren’t many Indonesians living in the US (according to the 2010 census they were only the 15^th largest group of Asian Americans) and the majority of Indonesians living in the US are Chinese Indonesians (over 7000 of which were asylum seekers) and not the Muslim, Sundanese Indonesians I was living with. 

“Sundanese” is the name for the ethnic group that lives in West Java and has nothing to do with Sudanese people living Africa. I’ve confused a lot of people since I’ve gotten back

Sundanese people (photos from Wikipedia)

                For the most part, people asked me those questions as a conversation starter. Sure, many of them had seen American movies or music, but most of them had never really thought about what life was actually like in America. These questions were an invitation for me to talk about the weather, the nature, to talk about myself, to connect. Somewhere in there was a bit of national pride, too. They weren’t just asking me if America had mountains or trees or rain, but if we have mountains as grand and numerous as Indonesia, trees as green and lush, or rain as pounding and heavy.

                People in America ask “stupid” questions also.  “Your students knew how to use Facebook?” “If some people had smartphones, air conditioning, wifi, etc., weren’t they not poor?” “What do you mean that some people weren’t poor?” “What language do people speak in Indonesia?” “You don’t have to get sassy, Indonesian isn’t a real language, is it?” “Most Indonesians are Muslim?” “Didn’t you have to wear a burqa?” “Are women allowed to do anything?”  “Wasn’t it hard to live with all those Muslims?”

                People have ideas about what a Muslim country, or an Asian country, or a Peace Corps country should look like. They especially have ideas about Muslim countries, and a lot of people are looking for me to confirm some of their biases. This makes it difficult to honestly answer some of their questions because, although I may not have a hundred percent positive opinion about something, I know that if I say anything negative to many people ,they are going to take that and run with it and use it to confirm whatever they think is true. For example, no, I didn’t have to wear a burqa. I saw more women wear tank tops or mini-skirts in Indonesia than I ever saw in a burqa or niqab. Did most women cover their head, yes, but I didn’t, and aside from a couple of religious ceremonies, I was never told I HAD to cover my head. (for the confused, here is an easy guide to different types of Muslim coverings).

Did I ever feel judged for not covering my head or annoyed that the Indonesian media sometimes pushed a narrative that women that covered their heads were more morally pure than those who didn’t? Absolutely. But the average person I meet is not interested in listening to me say no, Indonesian women are not forced to cover their heads, but outside of urban areas there is a huge social pressure cover; there are many reasons, but some of which include cultural ideas that stigmatize female sexuality, that looking overtly religious is tied to looking more upper class, the Indonesian fashion industry and popular trends, and the emulation of Arab culture as a push back to growing Western influence.

Interestingly, Indonesian mass media tends to show a lot less covered women than the proportion of covered women you see on the street. For example, this video for Indonesian Independence Day (August 17), in which I saw only ONE woman with her head covered. 

However, I don’t necessarily think stigmatizing female sexuality means that women are totally disrespected or undervalued. No one in Indonesia ever told me women with stupid or evil or worth less than men. Women there are more comfortable breast feeding or openly talking about their periods than they are here. However, female virginity is still viewed by a lot of people as a marker of moral character, there are huge numbers of teen pregnancies or underage marriages, women are often labeled as more emotional and less able to lead, etc. What I’m saying in too many words is that the position of women in Indonesia, like in most countries, is complicated. And while I am not completely okay or blind to the issues Indonesian women face, I don’t want always bring those issues up to people who don’t know anything about the country. Call it paranoia, but I don’t want people to use what I say to confirm an extreme view that dehumanizes the people I lived with for two years.

                Did I ever find things difficult about living with a Muslim community? Yes, of course. But sometimes when people here ask me about it, they ask it with an expectation already in their heads. They are setting themselves up to hear a story that is some kind of an “us versus them” tale of how I somehow managed to deal with people who were utterly inscrutable and confusing. It leaves me feeling like I can’t be totally honest about the things I didn’t like because it feels like a betrayal.

There are things I don’t care for about Islam, such as that stigmatization of the female body and sexuality (to be fair this exists in Christianity and Judaism and plenty of other religions to various degrees, too), sometimes the sheer amount of rules and how particular Islam can be about diets, the proper way to pray, to eat, or to conduct one’s life can also be confounding and frustrating. So can trying to understand the reverence for Arabic culture, having to wait for people to pray, how loud the call the prayer can be, and the fact that living as a minority in any culture is hard and creates a lot of stress even when the majority isn’t actively or overtly trying to change you or make you feel bad.

But at the same time, there are things I admire about Islam. I admire the discipline, the order, the commonality. I can appreciate how many aspects of Islam were revolutionary for the Middle Ages (and now) and how it promoted reflection, scholarship, hygiene, and law. I appreciate its racial tolerance and emphasis on humility. And as annoying or shocking as the Adzan, the call to prayer, was at first (at 3:30 in the morning when the Mosque is right in front of your house and the speaker is broken and distorted and blasting at an angle directly into your room and sung by an old man with an extreme smoker’s cough, I was especially not too happy), I can appreciate it now for how well it fit into the rhythm of the agrarian day. The sound seemed to rise and fall with the heat, to follow the birds on their path through the day, and served as a way to make you feel connected with everyone around you.

My view during the evening call to prayer

Noontime

How do you explain this and so many more feelings to people that ask? Most people don’t care or need that long of an explanation. I know some people would selectively hear only negative things, and it’s very sad to imagine that these people who took me in for two years, that became my friends, that have individual personalities, might become nothing more than a simple label. Sometimes I want to have a more honest conversation with someone about things I might not like about Islam, or Indonesia, or even my specific village, but I never want to reduce the people I lived with or the culture around me to just a hardship I had to deal with rather than these living, breathing, complicated, nuanced things that they really were.

My students

Me and some of my bros

Me and my host family

3.       I could be more forgiving/tolerant

Stupid questions are annoying. But as I said, sometimes people are asking you stupid questions because they are trying to get close to you or give you attention or connect to you but don’t really know the best way to do that. A lot of volunteers complain about the bluntness of Indonesians, especially when it comes to physical appearance. If you’ve gained weight, look tired, have a pimple, or seem ill, Indonesians are not likely to beat around the bush. They say it directly.  This can be extremely stressful and shocking, especially when you first arrive in Indonesia (Koreans also are pretty blunt about physical appearance, so perhaps I was a bit prepared for this). There are some people who are trying to tear you down (like there are everywhere), but as I advised some new volunteers coming into Indonesia as I was leaving, sometimes people just say stupid things because they’re trying to connect with you and they don’t know what else to say or do. And no, they’ve never thought about whether or not it would be offensive to talk this way or that way to an American because it’s not something they’ve ever had to think about in their lives.

                When an Indonesian friend bluntly asked me about the death of my grandfather two days after it happened with a big smile on his face in front of a crowd of people, I know he wasn’t trying to upset me. He was trying to connect with me, however tactlessly. And yeah a lot of people asked a lot of stupid questions about America. But they all have their own lives and worries. It’s not their job or priority to know any in-depth details about America.

                In regards to the stupid questions I get in America about Indonesia, I think it’s easy to write off people that ask me stupid questions as ignorant or prejudiced. Or, I could accept the fact that just as it’s understandably not relevant for the average Indonesian to know anything about America, it’s not a priority for most Americans to know anything about Indonesia. Instead of getting annoyed—I mean this is the country with the fourth largest population in the world, and considering that our own government was very active in their country through the second half of the 20^th century, it’s pretty bad that Americans barely know Indonesia is a country—I need to just accept this reality. Most Americans don’t know about Indonesia because of some malicious hate for Indonesians; it’s just a result of international politics, colonial history, Western Imperialism, globalization, etc. I can’t expect Americans to know about Indonesia or be experts on South Korea. All I can ask is for openness and a willingness to listen.

                When you live in another culture, you are constantly fighting an internal battle to remain relative, fair, and patient. I have never been and will never be those things perfectly. But sometimes when we go back to our hometowns and countries it’s easy to forget that patience. It’s easier to get mad at the people we meet back home because they’re a lot like us, but they’re less open or knowledgeable. And sometimes we do definitely have the right to call those people out on the stupid things they say because we know more about their lives and cultures. But they haven’t been the places I’ve been.  Most people haven’t had to change so dramatically and to examine their world views so drastically. Some people have been able to go through life without ever being forced to really question the things they believe and somehow been able to avoid or not think about things that might challenge some of their view points. And you know what, just because I’ve lived in Asia for over six years doesn’t make me some paragon of wisdom either. There are plenty of things that people who’ve never left their hometown will experience that I never have or never will.

                But just as I had to learn to accept (even if I didn’t like it at all) that there are Indonesian men that married 13 year old girls and are not in jail or hated, I need to accept that there are some very hateful, condescending people in my home country. Despite the ugly things about them, they are still human. I cannot change someone’s opinion if I write them off as an enemy or as a complete idiot. Finding patience for the ignorance of people from your own culture can be an even tougher and less successful battle.

A very, very difficult internal battle
(picture from Flikr user Gage Skidmore)

And who knows, even with all of my traveling and my mind opening experiences and my worldly new perspective, perhaps life or history will prove me to be a hateful, ignorant moron because I hold some viewpoint I’d never even question as problematic.

Things my grandchildren will tell me after the biggest scientific discovery of 2060: 
"MOSQUITOES HAVE SELF AWARENESS, COMPLEX EMOTIONAL LIVES, AND PRODUCE ART AND MUSIC, YOU HORRIBLE GENOCIDAL ASSHOLE!"
 (Photo from Wikipedia)

“Cats are friendlier than dogs”: cultural stereotypes and how to break them

I was teaching about comparisons in class last week with about twenty-five tenth grade boys. I wrote three words on the board: cats, dogs, friendly. Which one is friendlier?  I asked them.

“Cats!” the entire class shouted back.

“Are you sure?” I ask again.

“Yes! Yes! Cats!”

“Nobody thinks dogs are friendlier?”

“No!”

I can barely imagine one student in America, let alone twenty-five, insisting that cats are friendlier than dogs. They may say they like cats better, that cats are funnier, that cats are more graceful, that cats are a better pet, but friendly? In America, cats are rarely ever called friendly Cats are supposed to be “jerks,” “shy,” or “moody”. 

Another time I asked a class what their favorite animal was. One boy told me his was a dog. When I asked him why, his reason was that they were “grumpy” and “noisy.” A dog, grumpy?  But in America, dogs are a symbol of unconditional friendliness and known for their excessive outgoing-ness.

Look at this grumpy creature! (from boredpanda.com)

How can Indonesians look at cats and dogs so completely differently?

First, we need to talk about religion. Most people in Java are Muslim. Many people are under the impression that Muslims do not like dogs.  Depending on whom you ask, dogs are forbidden in Islam. Totally forbidden is an extreme view (that some people do hold), but a more nuanced and accurate (if you’re looking at the text of the Quran, not necessarily local beliefs) is that dogs are not bad creatures, and you can touch their fur, but their saliva is dirty. If you touch the saliva of a dog, you have to wash your hands seven times and pray. Now, as most dog owners know, once a dog loves you, it is pretty difficult to keep the animal from licking you, and having to wash yourself so thoroughly every time you meet your pet would get kind of annoying.

And yet, some people still keep pet turtles....(from pets4homes.co.uk)

However, to say that all Muslims can’t and do not believe in keeping a dog as a pet or that they hate dogs is inaccurate. Even if they feel that they can’t touch dogs, I’ve never met a Muslim here who advocates mass violence against dogs, and they are disgusted by the idea of eating dog. However, I have seen non-Muslim owners of dogs hit their animals and dog meat is popular in some non-Muslim islands in Indonesia (eating and hitting dogs doesn’t mean the person hates dogs either, my point is that the relationships between dog and humans is complicated). I’ve also never had anyone argue that dogs are not loyal to humans or somehow evil animals (I do often hear that they are “dirty”).

from IMDB.com

The Air Bud film series about dogs that play sports are often shown on TV. I even saw the film Beethoven (the film about the large St. Bernard dog) play on television here [picture movie poster]. Considering how often films with dogs are played, and I’ve seen children in my village watch and enjoy these films, it can’t only be the minority non-Muslims watching.  Also, there are some Muslims who keep and touch dogs without any guilt. The status of dogs for Muslims is complicated and is better explained here.

All things considered, I think it’s not quite accurate to say my students don’t like dogs. They don’t think they are friendly or safe, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like them or can’t appreciate them. Most Americans don’t think pet monkeys are clean or safe, but that doesn’t mean the average American hates monkeys.

Second, regardless of religion, there are certain cultural norms. The island of Lombok (an island next to Bali) is majority Muslim, and yet when I visited there last December, I could see many dogs around the island and people were not scared or uncomfortable. Culturally, the people of Lombok and Bali are quite similar and in Bali there are also many dogs (but the majority of people are Hindu). In the case of the people of Lombok, certain cultural norms have overridden any religious attitudes.

Thirdly, one needs to look at environment. While Lombok and Bali are filled with stray dogs, Java is filled with cats. Now, when I read about schools in America or in Europe that are charmed by a single stray cat that spends time on the campus and plays with the kids and becomes adopted by the school, library, graveyard, store, etc., I feel pretty amused. 

You ain't special in Indonesia, bub (from deweyreadmorebooks.com)

 In Java there are cats everywhere. There are several cats that weave in and out of the offices, the classrooms, and the fields at school. One day my class was interrupted when a cat decided to have her kittens in a desk at school. At night, you can hear the cats crawling on the roofs, fighting, or yowling, and if you leave the windows of the house open, cats will come inside and steal food or try to sleep on couches. God help the poor Indonesians who are allergic to cats because they are ubiquitous.

Most of my students have been interacting with cats since right after they were born. And the cats have been around people since they were born as well. The few times I actually see dogs on Java, they usually avoid eye-contact with me and move right past me. Or, they are guard dogs and they aggressively bark. The dogs on Java, for the most part, are not raised with touch or friendly smiles or human affection. They do not run to you smiling and with wagging tails.

Some of the cats are afraid of humans and run away, but they are rarely aggressive. One cat that used to be afraid of humans now follows me around the house, tries to sleep in my bed, greets me when I return home from school, and every time I have private lesson at my house, she will sit in the middle of the lesson, trying to nuzzle or lick the kids. Just this evening she tried to give me a large rat she caught. Throwing aside my own stereotypes of cat behavior, I can’t make any logical argument that this animal is “unfriendly.”

killing me with friendliness

There are so many cats on Java that most of them are not kept as anyone’s specific pet and they compete for whatever limited food there is. If a cat is especially aggressive, most people would probably have no qualms about having the cat killed or reacting violently; cats here are dispensable because there are so many, and they probably aren’t anyone’s pet, so probably no one is going to get to get angry if you have the cat killed or hit the cat. Cats are small and do not hunt in packs, so in a fight with a human there is simply no way to defend itself. Cats must be neutral or friendly to humans out of necessity because friendly cats get fed.

If I had only interacted with cats or dogs in Java my entire life, of course I would think cats are friendlier than dogs. The dogs of Java are never given the chance to become friendly because most people are afraid of them or don’t want to touch them. The people see them as unfriendly and continue to keep distance. And the cycle continues.

Last month, I watched the new Disney film, Zootopia. It was surprisingly very good and a nuanced exploration of prejudice and stereotypes (and also the war on drugs according to one reviewer). I guess the film really stuck with me because I just talked about animals to start a conversation about human stereotypes.

From t3.gstatic.com

I apologize for nonspecific spoilers, but the film does a good job of showing that while stereotypes do sometimes have a basis in reality, as the main rabbit character is attached by a fox as a child and later is tricked by a fox, society perpetuates and encourages certain behaviors and pushes people to adhere to stereotypes. It is later revealed that the one fox character was abused as a child for being violent and untrustworthy even before he ever displayed those qualities.

Even if a dog on Java were born with a friendly personality, he is not raised in an environment that encourages him to be friendly, so that’s not the animal he will become. In the film, the government line is that all animals are equal and can be anything they want, but while everyone says that at schools or in government buildings, actually prejudice of all kinds still exists. Just because an idea exists in the government or in mass media, doesn’t mean it is accepted at all levels of society; my students may watch many films with friendly dogs, but they still don’t think dogs are friendly animals.

Both the United States and the Indonesian government are officially pro-multicultural. The US’s slogan is “Out of Many, One,” while Indonesia has “Unity in Diversity.” Officially all races and religions and ethnic groups should be equal and have the same opportunities in both countries, but it isn’t true. In America blacks are stereotyped as lazy, more sexual, musical, cool, more prone to crime, not as book smart, less attractive (if female). Asians are smart, less sexual, awkward, weak, and strange. Whites are racist, boring, less interesting and unique, normal.

 In Indonesia the Javanese are soft, hard-working, polite, more educated. Sundanese are lazy, but pretty, and artistic. The Madurese are violent. The people of East Nusa Tengarra or Papua are black, ugly, not as clean, but sweet and somehow less “Indonesian.”

While I’ve never heard an Indonesian claim to hate any other specific ethnic group, the fact is that many people prescribe to these stereotypes. Even though most people don’t hate dogs, the fact that they aren’t treated as “friendly” changes their behaviors and lives. Just because a stereotype isn’t extreme or even completely negative doesn’t make it totally benign. In Indonesia, white skin is seen as beautiful, regardless of other features. I have seen casting calls for women and they nearly always insist that the women must have light skin. Occasionally there is a darker skinned male character, but I rarely see a dark-skinned female Indonesian on TV (outside of reality shows or singing contests). The one time I did see a dark-skinned Papuan woman in a singing contest, I said, “She’s pretty.” In response, the Indonesian woman I was watching with said, “Sure, she is pretty for someone from Papua.”

She's pretty...for a human being (from kabar.24.com)

A dark skinned Indonesian actress may not be hated, but she would be far less successful than a light-skinned actress. She would have to apologize for the color of her skin constantly. Her opportunities are simply not the same. Furthermore, if she is told over and over again that she is not beautiful, she will not carry herself with confidence--so she will in fact look less attractive.

When I first came to Indonesia, I couldn’t understand. To me there were plenty of dark-skinned Indonesian women who seemed quite beautiful to me. And I’ve heard Indonesian women comment that white men like to date ugly Indonesian women; ugly usually meaning dark or more Asian looking.  I understood the cultural stereotype, but still I was confused. Look at all the beautiful women that are dark and that you constantly interact with? How can they not be pretty? Even men or women who were in love with people who were dark would still often say their lover isn’t pretty or handsome

I am reminded of learning about slavery in the US as a child. In slave owning societies, whites and blacks were constantly exposed to one another. There were slaves that worked in the house, and some of those slaves were even related to their masters or their family. And yet, black people were still stereotyped as less intelligent and less human.

One of the ways to break stereotypes is to simply expose people to a group of people they are unfamiliar with, but history has taught that exposure by itself is not good enough. Men and women in most societies interact daily with members of the opposite sex, but that doesn’t stop them from stereotyping each other despite having many examples that contradict stereotypes.

Granted, this isn’t to say that increased exposure is an overall bad tactic; the increasing media presence of gays and lesbians on television greatly influenced the greater acceptance of homosexuality and same sex marriage in America. And, from what I’ve seen, gender stereotypes are definitely more fluid in societies where men and women interact more freely; e.g. gender stereotypes in Indonesia are more fluid than those in Saudi Arabia, and in some ways (from what I can see) they are more fluid here than in South Korea (where more schools and work places are segregated by gender).  If we look at Civil War era America, even if a white Southern woman did not believe slavery was wrong, she was probably more comfortable around African Americans than the average white Northern women who was exposed to racist ideas but never actually interacted with any black Americans.

Anti slavery can still be racist...(from wikipedia)

Exposure is usually only successful if people are exposed in a different way that what they are used to. Even if Indonesian television was filled with more dark-skinned actresses, if they are not presented as objects of desire or as main romantic interests, this exposure will not break the idea that they are somehow ugly or less attractive.

Everyone is has physical limits (some people are short, some tall, some are naturally athletic, etc.) and their own unique personality, but within each person exist so many potential abilities, however only some of those potential abilities are encouraged by society. All of you reading might be shaking your head in agreement—this is something we have been taught as members of pluralistic societies, and yet, even if we say we agree with this line of thinking, in our personal interactions we still stereotype and push people into boxes.

I don’t mean to say it’s totally wrong to make generalizations. Generally Indonesians are shorter than Americans. That’s true and not wrong. Going further, in general I’d say that Indonesians have a more relaxed attitude than Americans. Again, I don’t think it’s wrong to notice or say this. When it gets problematic is that when we look at a stereotype over individualistic behavior. While generally Indonesians are more relaxed, if I meet an Indonesian person who isn’t very relaxed, I can’t just write off her behavior or not acknowledge it. I can’t deny her the potential to not be a relaxed person when I meet her.

Looking at the Indonesian population as a whole, I might predict that they may react to certain news in a certain way, but if the evidence shows otherwise, I need to accept that. I have to allow all populations the luxury of exhibiting all extremes of human behavior, both good and bad. I may look for logical explanations for why so many people in America support Donald Trump. And then I also need to look for logical and historical explanations for why many Middle Easterners might support a horrible dictator instead of simply writing off the Middle East as “violent” or “unstable.” [http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/donald-trump-americas-muammar-gaddafi-125108954]

 If a little girl begins to act aggressively, instead of calling her “boyish,” perhaps I should just accept that, while most girls are not as aggressive as boys, some girls are.

The important thing, I believe, when trying to break down cultural stereotypes is that they are not a disease themselves but a symptom of a certain kind of world view that a society or individual may hold. And both societies and individuals have multiple layers of world views that are going to affect their behavior. They may have a political world view that affects their politics or what they may say in some official setting, but they may also have an altogether different world view that colors their personal actions with friends, family, or coworkers. Stereotypes, especially rigid stereotypes, exist as a tool to help categorize a chaotic world and make sense; they help enforce an individual’s place in society and their psychology.

In regards to identity and psychology, we can look at sex-based stereotypes. Much of the stereotypes that men or women have about members of the opposite sex aren’t really about the other person; really they’re about defining yourselves against those things and having a clear identity. For men or women to be “normal” in most societies, they need to be adequately masculine or feminine. Masculinity or Femininity cannot exist within a vacuum; the must be defined against each other like dark and light, hot and cold.

From wikipedia

When men complain that women are emotional, perhaps it doesn’t have to do so much with what women are, but it serves as a way of absolving themselves of guilt or bad behavior; I didn’t do something wrong, the stereotype implies. Women are just simply more emotional. Or the woman who says all men are jerks. There is nothing wrong with me personally, says that women, simply all men are jerks. What complicates things is that yes, to a degree, society may encourage women to be more emotional or men to be more jerk-like,  so there might be evidence that both things are true. However, to continue to think this way about absolutely all men or all women, or to never look for the reasons why a woman might be emotional or a man might be a jerk and understand them only perpetuates those ways of thinking and makes it more and more difficult for men or women to behave in any other way.

If we look at a different example, this time with race, we can also see how stereotypes and prejudice uphold psychology and identity. I once met a young man who insisted that he has never in his life found a black woman attractive. “I am not racist,” he insisted, “but I have never been attracted to a black woman.” When I first moved to Asia, I met many Western women that insisted that Asian men were never attractive to them, even though, they were, of course, not racist. I think attraction is complicated, and I don’t mean to say that having physical preferences is wrong. Being more attracted to one race over another does not, in itself, make you racist. Also, being attracted to members of a specific race other than your own definitely does not absolve you of racism.

Had lots of half black kids...still racist (from wikipedia

However, I would argue that finding absolutely no one of a certain race attractive in any form does imply that you are at least a little racist. The first problem is exposure; the man who didn’t like black women lived in a mostly white town and rarely interacted with black women. The Western women who moved to Asia, too, had never been exposed to many Asian men, and the media in the US does not do a good job of portraying Asian men as attractive or desirable, especially a few years ago. But it isn’t only about exposure. In order to be attracted to someone, you need to be open to that attraction first. This is why (most) people can avoid being too attracted to people who are married or in committed relationships because as soon as we know that person is unavailable, we psychologically close ourselves off to the idea of them as a potential partner.

To say that you are completely not attracted to ANYONE of a certain race or nationality allows you to express a degree of uncomfortable-ness with interacting with people of that race without seeming too racist. It allows you to treat that person differently from someone of another race without guilt—it’s not that I don’t like Asian men, says the stereotype, it’s just I’m not attracted to them, so I don’t need to get close. It could also be a psychological block; part of the person may know that being attracted to or dating outside their race or culture might be very complicated and difficult, so the person’s brain cuts off attraction to those people. It also has to do with what people find attractive and cultural stereotypes. If white or black American women decide that a man must be highly masculine to be attractive, they may insist they are not attracted to Asian men because they believe in the stereotype that Asian men are less masculine. Perhaps the young man has internalized the idea that black women are less feminine.

hmm, yes, so very manly (from lipstickalley.com)

So girly! (from menstylefashion.com)

As I have written about before, there are whole websites and forums filled with American men stereotyping all American women as entitled, spoiled, masculine, and evil, and foreign women as better girlfriends. I met a girl in high school who insisted that all American men were sex-crazed jerks but that somehow Japanese men were more caring and affectionate. She continued to hold onto this stereotype even when her friends tried to shock her by showing her hentai (animated Japanese porn). The last two examples are extreme, but as I said, in many cases, the stereotype isn’t about the person being stereotyped, really, but the person who holds those stereotypes. Instead of taking responsibility for their own shortcomings and failures, some people latch onto small generalizations or marginal trends and magnify them, only seeing things that reinforce their world view and completely ignoring anything that challenges it.

Earlier, I mentioned that people could have layers of world views. Sometimes you meet someone who lives in a politically liberal area. He or she may vote for a liberal candidate and when he is with his friends, he may say he believes in gay rights, helping refugees, ending mass incarceration, equality for men and women, etc. because he has been taught in his social circle that to not believe in these things would make him ignorant or dumb. However, he tells his girlfriend she is crazy all the time and gas lights her, he has very few friends who aren’t white, and he makes “ironic” racist jokes. At work, when he is forced to work with a client from India, he gets impatient and frustrated quickly and makes no effort to really be patient of cross cultural differences. He makes jokes about all conservatives being evil or everyone from West Virginia is a gun loving hick, and he never tries to understand the sources of other people’s political opinions. On the surface, he might firmly believe and espouse, liberal, tolerant ideals, but in practice and in his personal life he has unconsciously stereotyped and written off things he doesn’t want to think about or deal with because they question his own self-worth and identity.

On the other hand, I’ve met people who have espoused some pretty racist and intolerant political ideals because where she is from, that is the norm and to not regurgitate those stereotypes would socially outcast her. She may vote or support politics based on stereotypes. However, when actually exposed to people different from herself, she may actually be quite tolerant and kind because she feels secure in her own identity, and someone in her life emphasized empathy and friendliness. While politically she says she does not support homosexuality, a gay man has become her friend. Ultimately, she has more need for his friendship than the political need to reject him.

Neither of these two people is ideal. If we want a more tolerant society and fair society, people must be both politically and personally fair and tolerant.

But how?

On the political level, of course the laws need to be fair. Second, mass media must be changed. Lieutenant Uhura from Start Trek was important not because she was black woman on TV, but she was a black woman scientist. The sitcom Will and Grace was important not just because it had gay characters, but the gay characters were main characters with normal lives, jobs, and friends. Both of these shows were successful at changing stereotypes because they not only increased exposure, but they directly contradicted stereotypes (that black women aren’t intelligent or that gay people are less normal), and these contradictions of stereotypes were accepted as totally normal and understandably by the other characters.

from mirror.co.uk

If a government wants to eliminate certain stereotypes, it must also push the media to characterize holding those stereotypes as backward or damaging, but only to a certain degree. If a push is made too far in one direction, there is a chance of making new stereotypes or of making people feel bitter because they are suddenly made to feel guilty or less special. I am not against programs that promote minorities or their accomplishments, however, keeping in mind that not everyone is a sociologist; too much propaganda promoting a certain minority group could create backlash from different insecure groups in society. To others, this may come off as selfish, ignorant whining, but if a government can be sensitive to potential backlash, it will improve society in the long run.

Nelson Mandela famously understood this, which is why, although violence had been perpetrated far more heavily by whites than blacks during apartheid in South Africa, he made and effort to not isolate white groups. South Africa is not a perfectly harmonious racial society, but it could have been a lot worse were it not for his wisdom

The government must promote minorities but be inclusive and sensitive to other groups, especially those in decline, and it must show people the political and economic advantages of being more inclusive. Not everyone reacts to logic and data, so it must play with people’s emotions and use anecdotes. Instead of characterizing majority groups as barriers to the success of minorities, it must promote the idea that the majority can help others and find heroism and identity in working to make 

things fairer.

In the case of Indonesia, the Indonesian government has tied tolerance for other religions to the national identity of Indonesian Islam and promotes tolerance for other religions as a source of pride and characteristic of the Indonesian people. Indonesia is not perfectly religiously tolerant, but that government action has certainly helped promote tolerance.

and they've got a pretty sweet abandoned chicken church (from atlasobscura.com)

Combating stereotypes on a personal level is more complicated. People my learn their politics from mass media, the government, or circles of friends, but their personal behavior comes from their parents and their closest peers going up, and they may be subconsciously held. Simply forcing exposure doesn’t always work either—as I’ve written about before, sometimes expatriates who live in foreign countries end up more prejudiced than they were before.

If you really want to break someone of a stereotype, you need to understand why that stereotype exists. There are stories of people who used to be part of the KKK or other white supremacist groups who after working years with people of other races got over their stereotypes and began to work for racial equality. In their cases, the source of those stereotypes was the social network that supported those people. The friends and the groups and the people that were most important in their lives held those beliefs. Working with someone of a different race who didn’t end up hurting him and supported him socially erased the reasons for holding those beliefs.

Eventually, most of the Western women I went to Asia with eventually became attracted to Asian men. Part of it was exposure, and the other part was that after time, the culture became less alien. The psychological shock of hoping to understand someone of that race enough to date them had worn off.

For Indonesians, the stereotype that people with darker skin are less attractive has roots historically in Asia but more importantly from European and Arab colonialism. Indonesia as a society must become more secure in its position in the world and shed the vestiges of colonialism. The stereotype is there to insist that it is not all Indonesians who are dark—simply some women are dark and they are the ugly ones.

You can show a blind man a million pictures, but he still will not know what the ocean looks like. Before exposure can work, you first need to attack the disease that is making someone blind or out of focus. Yes, rigid stereotypes are damaging and awful when perpetrated on another human being; we should never forget to help the victims of stereotypes and prejudice. But if you want to stop prejudice from being perpetuated you must ask what is damaging the person who clings to it.

A dog and a cat being friendly (from petsbest.com)