I was confronted by my own deeply repressed racism the other day. It was the day where I was wandering around suburban Beograd, searching for my dentist. I was going round in circles, 30 minuets late when a Roma man, who was going through the trash and extracting the recyclable materials, called me over. In my frustration, and embarrassment at being totally clueless about where I was going, I wanted to ignore him, but I didn't. I went over and he started rattling off in Serbian, and I didn't understand anything. Eventually we figured out what the other was trying to do, and he managed to give me directions (albeit to the wrong dentist). But as he was talking to me, I noticed that I was keeping a certain distance from him and that I had my hand over my wallet in my back pocket. I had done these things subconsciously, but I felt awful once I realized what was going on.
This man had reached out and tried to help me the best he could, and my immediate reaction to him was to condemn him as a thief. It made me think back to HON 299, because I think, in some way, this is the very learned reaction, totally artificial, that Dusan was trying to get us to recognize was part of us. The critical multiculturalist in me has now exposed the deeply subconscious suspicions of otherness, embodied by this Roma man. Now I am aware of this mechanism and hope that I can deal with it in future encounters with the other.
Hmm, is it racist of me to even describe the man by (what I am assuming) is his ethnic origin? I ask this because it feels like I am not looking past his ethnicity if I continue to use it for my social cues. Rather than being a "Roma" man, maybe he is just a man.
No comments:
Post a Comment