The Surprising Faces of Prejudice

A couple of days ago, I met with a very senior colleague in the department where I work along with several staffers to discuss ongoing research projects. In the midst of a lively discussion, that colleague, wanting to give an example of ways to control unruly women (in the presence of three women!), half-jokingly turned to me and said: "In your country you beat them, isn't that right? yeah, Muslims beat their wives". I was shocked but not totally surprised.

These statements are not the product of a defective and ignorant mind. My colleague is a highly educated man, a world traveller who spends half of his time flying from country to country to give invited lectureships. Yet as brilliant as he is in his profession, he remains essentially a closed-minded bigot and yet he would never admit it. He is of Anglo-Saxon descent, and remains a die hard Anglophile. No other culture or ethnicity quite measures up. The farther East or South you are, the less worthy. On his scale of worthiness, Italians from Milan are passable but those swarthy Sicilians might just as well be Arabs. He is also a born-again Christian and does not miss an opportunity to proselytize. He once told a bright Indian post-doctoral fellow working in our department that she behaved like a Christian. He meant it as a compliment. She, a Hindu by birth, but from a secular family, rightly took it as an insult. She did not fit his stereotype and yet he could not accept that what he admired about her as being intrinsically Indian; it must have been the result of some Western, Christian influence.

I have always assumed that people exposed to other cultures were likely to be more open-minded and less prejudiced. It is obviously a wrong assumption as the case of my colleague demonstrates. He loves to travel and meet different people, but what he takes away from these encounters is very selective. Anything that reinforces his own preconceived notions, he took in wholeheartedly and anything that challenged the stereotype, he ignored. So, in a twisted way, the more exposed to other cultures he was, the more prejudiced he became.

My assumption was also proven wrong in other ways. As a clinician in the U.S. for the past twenty years, I have treated patients of all socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities and religions. With most patients, my own background mattered little, although with some, it was a problem. I was always surprised by the people to whom my background mattered the least. It was almost invariably the simplest of rural folks, who could not place Syria on a map if their life depended on it, with whom I developed the most trustful and mutually respectful patient-doctor relationships. With this realization my own preconceived notion, my own stereotype of the "bigot", was shattered.

Of course, in the greater context of East-West misunderstanding, this type of prejudice cuts both ways. We all know many of our brethren who go West and come back without having expanded their cultural horizons one iota.

So what happened with my colleague?

I did not confront him during that meeting but chose instead to send him an email later that day. I measured my words carefully. I started with a long tirade that I thought was too confrontational and so I whittled it down to short paragraph:

"I just wanted to let you know that I was deeply offended by the statement that you made earlier today that spousal abuse is the norm in among Muslims and in "my" country. It is akin to saying that spousal abuse in the United States, not a trivial issue, is a "Christian" problem rather than a societal problem. And for the record, my mother, a European Christian, will tell you that, as a woman, she feels much safer walking at any time of the day or night in Beirut or Damascus than she would in any Christian European or American city. "

And he responded:

"Thank you for telling me. I hope you know that I would not intentionally offend you. The recent NY Times articles on the issue have made the same point that you make. They have also noted that a sense of humor about the differences in cultures is the best hope for mutual understanding. Please accept my apologies. "

Despite his apology, I am not sure he gets it or that he is truly remorseful. It was rather a cold response for someone with whom I have worked closely and successfully for the last fifteen years. Unfortunately, he is set in his ways and I will not be able to change his outlook. At least from now on he may think twice before unleashing the humorous interludes meant to improve mutual understanding among cultures.