Others and me
Treat your fellow beings with respect.
I’ve been raised with this simple sentence. My parents have been fairly a-religious for as long as I can remember, aside from having been raised Protestant (my Mom), and Catholic (my father). However, I haven’t been indoctrinated in religion (as Dawkins would say, I’m sure) with religion or faith.
My schooling was humanist as well, with no emphasis on religion, though I did take philosophy as a subject, and had one of my final exams in school in philosophy.
To make this clear: My behaviour toward other people is not driven by some religious dogma, doctrine, or ideology. It’s part of me because my parents felt that this was the right way to raise their children, and I can’t say I disagree.
However:
The simplicity of “treat everyone you meet with respect” is deceiving. I’m a heterosexual, white male. I’m part of the majority in most of the West, and part of the powerful strata where males dominate society. Not necessarily in numbers, but by the simple virtue of being male, the historical default for everything deemed important by these very same males.
I can’t ever experience what Turkish, African, or Arab immigrants experience. I can’t ever experience what gays (male or female), or transsexuals experience. I can’t ever experience what women experience.
Though I could experience what it feels like to be a minority when I visited Atlanta, Georgia. Being part of the majority gives a striking amount of security and anonymity. Just another face in the crowd, unheard and unseen. Visiting a city for a couple of days, however, doesn’t make me an expert in what others have to go through, simply because the majority doesn’t have to consider others’ well-being when decisions are made, or not made.
Nonetheless it opened my eyes to how difficult to practice “respect others” really is, if it is supposed to be more than feel-good words (“Some of my best friends are $insert_minority!”).
And that is something that makes me incredibly self-conscious about my actions toward other people. It’s easy to know how to deal with other heterosexual, white males, since I am one myself, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to know what is appropriate when talking with other people who aren’t like me. How do you frame a question? Is an assumption made a prejudice because of some feature of the person I’m talking to? Am I condescending to or ignoring the other’s point of view? Am I doing what I am doing because it is really the right thing to do?
I wish I knew.
