Pyramid of Hate

I have been on both sides of the pyramid of hate: both a perpetrator and a target.

When I was in seventh grade in Hong Kong, I was in an all boys school. There were two students, classmates of mine, always got picked on. And I was one of those insensitive bullies. We picked on them because they acted feminine--ast least in our eyes. As I recall now, they were nice, gentle, non-threatening people. But in our eyes, they were easy targets. I might have even be the worst. I used to tease them and just taunt them. Thinking back now, I feel really bad about my behavior. How they felt growing up with me and the other students picking on them is something that I could only imagine. The only saving grace for me was that I left that school a couple of years later and somehow outgrew that adolescent brutishness. But I still shudder from time to time what scars I and the other bullies in our school have left on our two nice class-mates -- who have done nothing wrong. They just want to be left alone.

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I was walking into Mayo Clinic's Baldwin Building one early morning for my appointment. Just ahead of me was an older man. As we got closer to the subway lobby entrace, he turned around and asked me, "Where are you from?"

It was either too early in the morning or the fact that I have lived in the United States for close to 40 yeares and Rochester for twenty years that caused me to reply without too much thinking. I said: "I am from Rochester."

I could tell from the expression on his face that he didn't like my answer. He turned his back to me and continued to walk into the building while grumbled under his breath, audibly, "Foreigner!"

At first I didn't quite get what just happened. What did he just say to me? He didn't call me by one of those derogatory names that people sometimes call people of my race. But what he did call me was loaded with emotions and meanings nonetheless. He had contempt for me. He was outraged by my reply which he thought was a smart alecky remark. To him he must have thought I was being smart aleck, he had a pre-conceived idea that I would say I was from China, Vietnam, or Cambodia. From there he would probaly start a friendly conversation with me about "my" country of origin--how in the Korean war he had stopped by some Far East port and had a good time there.

But when I said I was from Rochester, I appeared to him I was a pretender, a forigner pretending good enough to think he was American. I didn't look American.

I personally was more amused by his behavior though shaken up a bit but recovered quickly. I didn't let that stay with me very long. But with this blog, as I think about the incident, I now wondered if that man has children or grandchildren and what kind of biases and prejudices and judgment might he have spread to them. It might be just as little as an sense of arrogance or superiority to people who don't quite look like they could be from Rochester or might be worse -- though I hope not.

In any case, for a number of years now I have decided that I would be very careful not to stereotype people and lump them into a category or being insensitive. I am not always perfect but I try to remove as many layers of biases as possible when I discover them in myself.

Also I try to tolerate small things or mistakes that others may commit. It's not a bad way to live.