People who come from elsewhere are people, not aliens
Despite being cradled by a different culture, immigrants are surprisingly human — the same species from the same planet as the rest of us
A minority likely experiences some mistreatment by the majority. It’s how the power imbalance works. The rationale motivating some of the majority members to exercise their power is often formed by and fed a steady diet of stereotypes. The legitimacy of these misrepresentation parades as the protection of the majority’s beloved and supposedly virtuous ways.
Having no clue — the neglected birthplace of stereotypes
In my research on the immigrant experience in America, I have wondered in an almost disgraceful anticipation if I’d be flooded by the stereotypes I haven’t yet heard of and expand the shameful repertoire of the distorted portrayals of various peoples.
When I asked immigrants to tell me about the stereotypes they have encountered about the places they’d come from, I’d half expected to hear that of course Mexicans are lazy, Italians are loud, and no matter what country in Africa you come from you must be famished and illiterate.
As horrific as all these sadly ingrained misconceptions sound, they still required an awareness of the land they labeled and the specks of its culture that through repetition and various unfortunate ways got bigger and eventually entrenched as widely held truths.
And then, I was yet again reminded not to assume what research will uncover before it does. Most of the responses I got were similar to this one:
I haven’t encountered stereotyping because most people don’t know where Armenia is. People will nod politely, but have no idea.
This reminded me of when I first came to the US and told people I was from Croatia to which a few replied something like: oh yeah, Croasia, gotta teach me how to eat with them sticks some day! Not only are these remarks off the mark, they instantly beget a feeling of insignificance especially for those from the smaller, lesser known countries.
Ignorance, the mother of all fear
What’s dangerous though is that this ignorance-endowed clean slate is a breeding ground for all kinds of fabrications. When no story exists human brain is only happy to supply explanations, to categorize, and fill in the gaps with meaning. Our reptilian brain declares open season on filling these blank spaces with any speckle of suspect distinction it’s quick to notice.
When we spot a difference, be it a skin color, an accent, an article of clothing worn in an uncustomary way, we use it as a kernel of data to envelop in layers of detail and meaning. We build these layers by bringing to the surface the buried knowledge we have acquired from, no doubt, another reputable source.
Many of us are guilty of, after having met one person from another country or at best having once been to it, basing much of our perception of the entire place on that one encounter or experience. As humans we are hard wired to judge. Assessing others is the basis of our survival, what helps us make split second decisions about our safety and wellbeing. The soundness of our ruling to either fight, flight or freeze can mean the difference between life and death.
However, as Zat Rana points out in his recent newsletter, even though many of the dangers in our environment have been eliminated, our brains continue to irrationally presume that all risks such as “funny” looking and acting people, should be avoided. We give in to what behavioral economists call loss-aversion. Who has time for asking questions or listening and learning from competent sources anyway?
Instead, there is a shiny speckle of a perfectly plausible simplification to move along with, our newfound (if often subconscious) bigotry in tow. That darker skinned out-of-towner could just be the threat we cannot afford to ignore:
When we go an hour out of Pittsburgh and stop at a diner it’s like a ghost just came in. Everyone is looking at my wife. A lot of these people have never seen a Columbian, a bit darker skin, and they’re staring at her because it’s something different. The staring is not pleasant, but I don’t think they always mean to be mean either. Though sometimes people are really not nice to you if you are different. (Belgium)
Daring to move, earn and claim
To make matters even more intriguing, when it comes to the immigrants, the profiling goes beyond interracial tension and is palpable even within the same and otherwise privileged racial or ethnic group.
What seems to be the immigrants’ supreme offense, past any biological markers of identity, is their daring to be here — a place some believe should be reserved for the natives.
But what makes one a native? A birth certificate? How many generations does one have to be removed from their once newcomer ancestor (as is case with most Americans) to qualify as a native?
I don’t know where does the stereotyping against Europeans come from because a lot of Americans are Europeans. Their great grandfathers came from somewhere in Europe. There aren’t really that many Native Americans and the ones that are here are sent to where nobody sees them. So is it because some came here a little bit before me they get to be the real Americans and because I’m a newcomer I can’t be? (Belgium)
The percieved otherness paired with ignorance can escalate the intolerance based on any surface level distinction into a threat triggering distrust, fear, even hate:
I had a bad experience at 7/11 where I used to work. This guy used to come every day and one day he said: You’re working so many hours! I said: I have kids, I need to survive. He said: You’re making more money than me, why don’t you go back to your country! I said: I have a legal right here, your country is my country, too! These instances make me feel scared but also angry. Why do people talk like that? They don’t even know me! (India)
To protect their sense of dignity and their sanity, immigrants thicken their skin in hopes of making it impenetrable to the petty yet hurtfuly shameless fangs of assumptions:
A lot of people in Pittsburgh don’t know where Guyana is. Many think I’m Mexican, because I’m brown. It doesn’t bother me. Because really, you’re mind is as narrow as your opinion.
They don’t even bother to ask me about me, they just see that I’m brown and quickly assume I’m Mexican. Even a lot of my friends pronounce my name as if it’s Spanish. I just roll with it, I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of getting upset.
As my grandfather used to say: words are wind, if you let it get to you then you’re on the same level as them. So, don’t make a big deal, wash it off, it’s off in two seconds.
Taking stereotyping in stride may be mistaken for building resilience, but the scars remain and thicken with each exposure to inconsiderateness.
The fallacy of “positive” stereotypes
The seemingly harmless stereotypes are certainly more pleasant to endure, but what’s still unsettling about them is their clinging to a random cultural trait about a country and the people it comes with, without caring to expand the awareness to truly understand that culture’s authentic and many facets:
I’ve heard a lot of positive, because people go on vacation to Mexico. I always tell them, yes, Acapulco is beautiful but you haven’t really been to Mexico. You probably stayed at a resort, the owners are probably American and anything you find there you could also find in Miami.
If you want to go to Mexico, you will not find it at the resort. For example, a lot of people don’t know Puebla because it doesn’t have an ocean. But it is where you will find authentic Mexican food, music and rich history.
Playing along with the stereotype may at times be a tempting path of least resistance for immigrants, but it soon comes at the unsavory price of forgoing their human dignity. Adopting a label means overriding a part of one’s being for the sake of not rocking the boat, lest it unsettled those who created the label in the first place.
Pigeonholing them within the parameters of their native land, strips the immigrants of their personal identity and the rest of us, of the treasure of their individual uniqueness. Their potential to thrive and creatively contribute smothered by sterile clichés:
There was a bias toward me because I came from Ireland, so in the nuns’ school where I taught, I could slip through. I didn’t even have to act a lot, just react in stereotypical ways and play it off.
But, I had an uneasy feeling they’ll discover what I am one day! Not the “pure” Irish girl. There was a multiple personality thing going on and it wasn’t fun but painful.
Curiously though, going rogue by being themselves brings new challenges. When immigrants’ behaviors, tastes, opinions, values and beliefs veer out of the host’s frame, a new reasoning pathway forms. Any novelty or seeming peculiarity doesn’t shatter but ironically augments the existing stereotypes.
No longer their own personal quirk or an interesting habit, but what everyone else must be like in the country they are from, immigrants feel exasperatedly entangled in the maze of misconceptions about who they are.
Suddenly, many immigrants find themselves under pressure not just to integrate into their adopted homeland but in so doing also do justice to the land they came from. When everything they do somehow becomes a representation of the country that birthed them, immigrants are nudged into an unplanned role of a cultural attaché.
While many an immigrant loves sharing their memories and snippets from their life in their native land, most don’t aspire to the dutifulness of some tacit ambassadorship:
Some people here explain my accent as a speech impediment. That is not pleasant to hear. When I’m around those people, I’m additionally aware that whatever I do is no longer just what I do but becomes what Germans do. And that’s something I have in the back of my mind. And if I was not an immigrant but in the majority, it wouldn’t be a question.
Even those who see some purpose in taking on the role of representing their land of origin, find themselves in an exhausting perpetual battle of trying to fix all the negative perceptions cemented by years of false reiterations.
The task of swaying others’ perception of them, for immigrants often becomes a way to pay their dues to the land they’d abandoned. The relentless hamster wheel of fighting stereotypes disguises itself as a higher calling born out of a nagging sense of indebtedness to their native land.
This self-imposed diplomatic mission for some immigrants presents a way to, as its impassioned lobbyists, get the story straight and polish up their motherland’s image — and thereby their own — in the world:
I’m still the face of Panama here. It’s a reminder not to complain like people often do there. I distanced myself at times from the loud Latinos because I didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating that perception either.
Or when people say, but we’re Latinos, we’re always late! I always fight against it. I’m late sometimes but you can’t just say that’s just the way we are. I can be a better face of Panama. Even as one person you can make a difference.
Like a story striped off layers, detail, and context, a stereotype is a vapid weakling posing as the truth
It can be tempting to think of stereotypes as much ado about nothing. After all, they must have stemmed from some “truth,” right? Perhaps. However, the main problem with stereotypes is that they favor one story until it becomes the only story.
To view entire countries and groups of people through a prism of a single story is not only intellectually bankrupt but dangerously divisive and disturbingly devoid of the humanity we all share and its inherent longing to be seen, acknowledged, and accepted.
One of the people I interviewed brought these photos to express in more vivid detail her thoughts on the many dimensions of the Russian cultural identity, against the way she feels it’s generally seen as by the world.
The black and white picture describes Russian ancestry and heritage as mysterious and romantic. At the same time scary and attractive. It’s like the depth the of the soul.
The other side of the spectrum is Troika: wild, big, strong, crazy and unpredictable.
The world sees this unstoppable power of Troika, but in reality if you get to know people, Russians are more soulful like that black and white photo. There is just no depth of understanding of who we are.
Mutual openness rewards us with discovery, appreciation, and joy
As painful as it is to immigrants to feel chronically misread and stuck under the rigidness of blanket statements, they don’t steer away from realizing that what is common where they come from may not be at the country they’ve ended up inhabiting. Some even feel they have a responsibility to explain the pieces of their culture, not to make it more palatable but nevertheless clearer and less remote to the confounded locals.
This approach too, however, cannot work without the reciprocal willingness from the receiving culture to be open to learning about cultural dissimilarities, to suspend judgement and allow immigrants to have their stories appropriately presented and contextualized:
I don’t care how people look at me because of my hijab. If they want to approach me and get to know me, I’m open. It’s also my responsibility to explain myself because I do look different to people who don’t know what’s it like where I come from. I came to their country after all. But if they don’t want to know, it’s their loss, because they don’t know what they are missing. (Morocco)
And miss, we do. Stereotypes prevent expansion of understanding and empathy. They perpetuate segregation by a set of surface, worn out qualifiers that since their inception largely morphed into inaccuracies. The labels are seductive in their simplicity yet all they do is sustain divisive narratives fogging the person underneath:
Clearing of the fog around me means that I don’t have to pretend to be something that somebody else projected on me, so it’s no longer a game of fitting in. You just are. But that’s not an easy path. Some immigrants will search for acceptance their entire life and never get there. (Taiwan)
When we deny ourselves the opportunity to get to know others we miss out on the new ideas, contributions, kindness. We strip our bonds of the ever invigorating sense of possibility:
I’ve learned from my immigrant experience that we need to embrace our differences and diversity. Because we all bring something to the table and then as a collective whole we can become better people.
If I can make your life a bit easier because I’m not putting you in a stereotype corner and treating you like a second class citizen, then what you’re teaching me becomes valuable.
The melting pot of this country is not of a homogeneous glob, mush. It’s the different cultures and ways of life to be celebrated and embraced. (Cuba)
Tearing down the opaque walls of stereotype boxes sets free both the people trapped inside and those inclined to keep them in. Allowing our various backgrounds and stories to emanate their glorious spices is what nourishes our shared humanity with flavor and substance.
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This post is a glimpse into the insights that emerged from my research on the immigrant experience in the US. I spoke to women and men who immigrated to the US from 33 European, African, South American and Asian countries. My one-on-one hour long exploratory interviews dove deep into how the immigrant experience impacts one’s beliefs, value system, worldview, patriotism, sense of identity and belonging.
If you are interested in a complete study report drop me a note at bergitabugarija@gmail.com
