Discrimination

I was asked by one of my Asian students the other day whether (as a white Englishman) I discriminate against anyone. History suggests that indeed my ancestors might have done so. I immediately protested that of course I did not, and my joke is that I am not white but pink. However I think on these things and find that I am always making choices between what I see as good and bad. How can I distinguish? I sometimes teach a class on 'culture' where the differences between behaviour and attitudes are mentioned in relation to international business and national ethics. Worse is that I have now come to the conclusion that in spite of 35 years in South America, Middle East and Asia much of my behaviour is the result of living for the first 21 years of my life in England. I see quite clearly that there will be certain ideas and attitudes in me that I cannot change and maybe do not even realise that I have. Most of us are brain-washed as children into ways of thinking which appear absolutely normal until we go somewhere else! I am now much more careful after 35 years of exposure of being too dogmatic about what I am. I may not even know! I like very much the people I have met in traveling for the last 40 years around the world, but try as I will I think I am still recognisably English, even if I am more eccentric, transparent and open than I used to be when I was 21. So why am I saying this?

It is because when I look at President Bush or Prime Minister Blair or The President of the World Bank, I think they are very much representives of the worlds that they come from, and I suspect discriminate against most of the foreign world that they come up against. The reason is that they cannot be other than what they are based on their childhood, education, and fact that they have hardly ever lived overseas. They may protest that they do not discriminate, but their actions belie their words. They cannot help themselves, in the same way that I am not always sure I can help myself, even after 35 years of trying. So much is subconscious. So when nations go to war, I wonder whether this is not an inheritance that the decision makers are not even aware of! Never to have lived anywhere except one's own country suggests there will be an inherent background of prejudice, that they are not even aware of. That makes the world a complex and dangerous place!