Exploring My Bias: Hitchhiking
‘All the people like us are We, and everyone else is They’— Kipling
These days, unconscious bias training has been a mandatory constant in most corporate settings. Never mind the fact that I find it futile; I haven’t seen a tangible improvement in the treatment or presence of diverse groups at work as a result of these trainings. But conducting these trainings makes the corporations feel good about themselves, so we go on about it, smiling and waving.
That makes me wonder, without disputing the need to tackle bias at the workplace, what were the origins of biases? If they are so bad, why haven’t we, as a species, evolutionarily overcome it yet? Does it still protect us, or has it become a rudimentary instinct of self-protection? While bias goes hand-in-hand with tribalism, let’s focus on just bias for the moment, looking at how bias plays out in my own life.
Instead of boiling the ocean and tackling all of my possible biases in every situation, I’m going to focus on a single setting — hitchhiking. Pirsig’s advice comes to mind: “Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman. Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”
We were in the Dolomites a month ago. After a day of exhausting hikes across one of the most mesmerizing landscapes in Europe, we got in the car to drive down. Not much farther from the parking were two young women looking for a lift. I hesitated a moment, thought for another, and then pulled over. The women were from Munich and hoped to find a sympathetic soul in our Munich registered car. Their destination wasn’t out of our way, so we showered the sympathy they hoped for, dropped them 20 minutes later, making small talk in between.
Five years before the Dolomites was Patagonia. A year before that was southern New Zealand. They were all young women, waiting for a passerby to offer them a lift on a rural road. With the hopes and dreams of youth, without fears of penis or guns, they strut on, seeking a ride from strangers.
I stopped only because they were women. Sexist as it might sound, I was less fearful of letting in strange young women than I was of strange young men. It’s difficult to explain what exactly in a strange man would give me angst. Perhaps their ability to overpower me, or the possibility of a gun in the mix, or the potential crime of harboring a fugitive. My anxious imagination would run wild.
It would be unfair to women if I claimed they were incapable of all of these. But I guess that’s where my bias creeps in, favoring people like me.
I grew up with the exploits of Sukumara Kurup. Four years before I saw the light of this world, Kurup was looking for some easy money, and what better way than an insurance fraud. He duly enrolled three others who’d equally appreciate some of that money and went about fishing for a victim. He found the perfect one when he saw Chacko, someone with a physical build similar to himself, looking for a lift. They then knocked him unconscious, and killed and burnt his body along with the car.
This being in the 1980s, police didn’t yet rely on dental records or such to determine the identity of the victim. So, for the first few days, everyone assumed Kurup was dead. But his family couldn’t keep up the pretence well enough, and couldn’t resist celebrating over the easy money. Thence started the search for ‘pidikittapulli’ Sukumara Kurup, wanted by Kerala police and Interpol since 1984, coloring the dreadful imaginations of generations that came after.
As a woman, I wouldn’t dare hitchhike or take in a hitchhiker in India. Between being raped by a single person, being gang raped, and being sold as a sex slave, the possibilities are endless. With over 4,500 kids being sexually abused just in Kerala, there’s no dearth of horny men. Even when raped, going to police would be another nightmare.
After enduring the rape, the victim might also have to endure a round of moral judgements without even a tiny flicker of compassion — why was the woman travelling alone, why did she board a stranger’s vehicle unless she was looking for ‘it’, why was she wearing this kind of clothing, etc. So, while in India, you try not to stick out. Your own vehicle or public transportation during broad daylight are your only friends.
As a human, I wouldn’t dare hitchhike or take in a hitchhiker in the U.S. First of all, men in the U.S. are much larger than in India. So, even with the best self-defence training, I wouldn’t outmanoeuvre them. But I would be less worried about the sexual crimes, and more worried for my life there. Is this guy a fugitive? Does he have a chainsaw hidden in his backpack? Does he have a gun with him? I wouldn’t be as fearful of police in the U.S., but that’s also because I’m a brown from across the ocean rather than the black within or the brown from the south. There’s a non-zero likelihood of receiving a sympathetic hearing.
So, with all my compounded fears of hitchhikers, I don’t stop for strangers. Even when living or traveling in a country safe for hitchhiking, with no fear of being raped or killed, my fears catch up to me. I sometimes stop when they are young and not-so-huge women like me.
I imagine myself in their situation, and offer to help. Sometimes I imagine what might happen if I don’t stop. In the best case, they might stay stranded. In the worst case, they might get into a car with rapists. So, to avoid that worst-case scenario, I offer to help.
In some sense, I’m tapping into my reserves of empathy when I’m stopping for all these women. But that empathy falls short when the hitchhiking woman is huge. I don’t seem to care for her safety then as much as I care for mine.
Once we were returning from a hike in North cascades, thirsty, famished and exhausted. We had hiked our way through all our reserves of water under a brilliant sun. So, we decided to stop for a bite on our way back. Since I couldn’t find any coffee shops for miles, I stopped at a restaurant in Sedro Woolley. The waitress/owner, a huge woman with both arms covered in tattoos, gave us the disappointing menu. The only bite-sized vegetarian food they had was a Caesar salad.
When it arrived, the lettuce was disgusting and dirty. But like an obedient schoolgirl, I ate my way through the salad, because I was terrified of the huge woman. I feared she would beat me to a pulp if I sent it back. I’ve been quite ashamed of this bias. I’ve known women who are huge and kind and tender. I’ve known nasty but puny women. So there’s no empirical backing for this bias, and yet I’m scared of huge women in strange situations.
And no amount of that empathy for someone my age and gender would let me stop for a woman hitching a lift in India. This is for the simple reason that women my age, or any age, will not get into a stranger’s vehicle in India. The one defying that rule of survivalist common sense is either looking for trouble or looking to sow trouble.
Of course, that’s my deep-seated bias and reeks of middle-class prejudices. I have no clue how a poor woman in rural India will go about her life. But this is one that I can’t overcome in a non-harmful setting.
I’ve rarely seen a non-white girl seeking a ride. I’m also now unsure whether I hadn’t seen any non-white girls, or hadn’t noticed any. But the ones I did notice made me bemused at their trust and wondered whether trust is a luxury of the developed. However, my theory has its failings.
If by developed I mean rich, those women should have enough money to rent a car. They wouldn’t need to hitchhike. If by developed I mean from a developed nation, I must have seen more hitchhikers in the U.S., which wasn’t the case. The only other explanation is, all those women came from countries which had a communal lifestyle; from hostels to buses, they all relied on shared resources rather than individual cocoons.
Quick googling indicates that my biases aren’t just mine. Women are statistically more successful in being offered a ride, and a man is more likely to be offered one when accompanied by a woman. Some of these actions are instincts for self-preservation.
For example, no amount of data will convince me that hitchhiking is safe for women in India, even when accompanied by a man. That is an instance when the elephant in the brain is beyond the control of its rider. But bias against huge women isn’t a fair one. I’m fully aware that it’s the primitive fear of a larger animal, which has no place in a civilized society.
What about the bias against the poor and decrepit? Quoting Orwell, “Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.” The bias against the poor is an instinct against unpredictability. When freed from the standards of behaviour, what regulates the actions of humans in their interactions with others? And that question makes each of us erect the wall to keep them out.
However, traveling itself is a pursuit of luxury, even when it is a budgeted luxury. So, do I really encounter that abject poor who has ousted themselves from the frontiers of civility on such a road? Or am I just being a snob, looking down on people in tattered clothes?
Across all of these anecdotes, I’m glossing over the fact that statistically, hitching a ride or offering one in a country like the U.S. may not even be as dangerous as driving a car. If I were to use the numbers on this random website, there is a 0.0000089% likelihood of being raped or killed during a hitchhike. And this is a 0.94% lower likelihood than dying by accidentally falling. But does that statistic inspire confidence to pick up a stranger? No.
Every time I offer to help one of those women, I assume I’m crossing a gulf. However, as Kipling says, All the people like us are We, and everyone else is They. When I selectively offer to help only those women who might be like me except for the skin color, I’m certainly building a tribe for myself. And my tribe, shamefully, doesn’t include divergent bodies or varied genders or belong in other economic classes.
But, unlike other unconscious biases, overcoming this one requires me to cross a gulf on narrow suspension bridges. And with my fear of heights and fear of drowning, I’m still standing on one end of the bridge, wondering whether and how to cross it.
