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No
Pride in Prejudice By Jim Curtiss |
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I was living in Berlin when the World Trade Centers were smashed into by
jet planes. During the following months, my wife Jarmila and I watched
television relentlessly; press briefings by White House officials, footage
of the airplanes hitting the buildings, cleanup efforts, victims names and
so on. And of course we learned about the Taliban and the al-Qaeda network. It was a difficult time for us as we attempted to find a middle ground
between the sense of vengeance that I as an American felt, and the
level-headed approach that my Czech wife took. My parents, who live in rural Western Pennsylvania, were very concerned
about their son and daughter-in-law living in Germany, especially after it
was found that some of the terrorists lived in Cologne and Hamburg. So our
weekly Sunday conversations turned into twice-weekly conversations, and
the cost didn't much matter. It was during one of those conversations that my father related the
following story to me: as part of having his own business, dad has to
visit various clients and one day while on the road he stopped in at a
fast food restaurant. He got his order, sat in a booth and was eating when
a little while later, two Arabic men sat nearby and started to eat their
own meals. Dad didn't feel scared or angry, but he noticed right away that
they were Arabic. A few minutes after the Arabic men sat down, two large men wearing hip
holsters came into the restaurant - holsters which were full of big
handguns. The men walked directly to the Arabic men and sat down at the
table beside them. They didn't come in to eat – they just sat and stared
at the Arabic men. Naturally, the Arabic men became alarmed and left
shortly after. My father presented the story as a humorous anecdote that perhaps
captured the feeling of people in the States during that time. But far
from finding it funny, I saw it as a dangerous episode that not only
highlighted the dangers of legalized guns, but the ignorance of a
supposedly civil and democratic society. Whatever happened to
"innocent until proven guilty?" Still, I cannot claim that I myself was without prejudice. Indeed, after
the beginning of the military reprisal against the Taliban, scarcely a day
went by when I was able to avoid the media telling me of the evils of the
Islamic religion and the backward people who practice it. Unfortunately, I
am not completely immune to such messages and were it not for my
clear-thinking wife, I fear I would have been more affected than I
actually was. Moreover, my sense of security was threatened when the State Department issued multiple warnings of impending danger to Americans living abroad. That the American and British embassies in Berlin were barricaded and lined with tanks and soldiers did nothing to assuage my concerns, and I admit that I was a leery American living in a foreign city in a time of international crisis. Why
would you live there? So it was with trepidation that we approached our move to the Neuköln
(New Cologne) district of Berlin. You won't find much information about
Neuköln in the travel books aside from blurbs on the incredible size of
some of the tenement buildings or that it is a district to avoid. In fact,
when you mention to Berliners that you live in Neuköln, the reaction is
either unfavorable or of polite but unmistakable surprise. Neuköln is not
a beautiful place. There are several things about Neuköln that give it its distinct feel:
first of all is its population density, the highest of all Berlin
districts. Secondly, Neuköln has the highest concentration of foreigners
of all the Berlin districts – partially related to the import of
Gastarbeiter (guest workers) from Turkey, who helped rebuild Germany after
WWII. Thirdly, Neuköln has the highest unemployment of any district in
Berlin. These factors all contribute to the gritty feel of Neuköln, and made my
wife and me question the wisdom of moving there, especially given the
political climate of the time. However, we were offered a living deal that was too good to pass up; our
friend had scored himself a visiting scholar position in America for six
months and was looking for someone to move into his family's flat. The
apartment was huge by European standards, about 110 square meters, and it
was fully-furnished and equipped. So even though we were moving into the rough part of town, we would have
a fine flat in which to live and work. Circumstances, then, brought us to Neuköln. Direct
observation I was more concerned than my wife was about living in an area highly
populated by Middle Easterners. After all, I
was the American who had been listening to the whispers of danger and the
evil of the Arabic population for months. On our first Sunday in Neuköln, my wife had a difficult time convincing
me to go for a walk as had been our Sunday custom in our previous
neighborhood. She wanted to check out the nearby park, and thought that it
wouldn't be too crowded on such a cold and rainy January day. I relented
out of sheer curiosity. As it turned out, our first walk through the park brought us face to face
with no less than six brown- and black-skinned drug dealers. What's more,
they were highly organized, with sentries at every entrance to the park.
Five years ago as a single man I wouldn't have been fazed, but as a man
walking with his wife, I was extremely anxious being surrounded by them in
a deserted park in the middle of Neuköln. Thus ended our traditional
Sunday walks. That very same night we were horribly awakened at 2 a.m. by the sounds of
our neighbors having an intense fight. I had seen the man in passing when
I was moving in: he hadn't returned my "Guten Tag" and he was of
Middle Eastern descent. From the cries and screams that we heard, we could
tell that there was a wife and a daughter in the way of the man's anger.
The melee ended just as my wife was picking up the phone to call the
police, and we had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. Welcome to Neuköln. Acclimation The following weeks were easier to bear and we didn't have any more
overly negative experiences. However, we were keeping a close eye on our
surroundings, and what we saw was both interesting and thought-provoking:
all the computers in our neighborhood computer store bore Arabic language
screen-savers; there were thousands of heretofore unknown products
available in the stores; the fruit and vegetable sellers would loudly hawk
in Arabic at the passerby; there were dozens of exclusively male
"social clubs" from a myriad of countries. Indeed, when one of us would leave the flat, we would invariably return
with a new and often strange experience to relate over dinner, and our
discussions sometimes lasted for hours. One of the first topics my wife brought up was the aggressive manner of
the men in Neuköln. For example, while walking down the street, she had
an Arabic man walk straight at her and place his face into her line of
vision in an attempt to get her attention. Another situation saw a German
man put his outstretched fist into her face. And yet, the men never touched her. So while she sometimes felt
uncomfortable, she didn't feel directly physically threatened. After
awhile she became accustomed to avoiding the looks and stares, but there
was always a feeling of tension and wariness when she walked alone. As she
would say, "It was sometimes unpleasant walking there." One of the things that I myself noticed was that an lot of Arabic women
walk two steps behind their man. As a topic of discussion, I suggested
that it was a bit unfair and chauvinistic that the man and woman could not
walk side-by-side. This brought about a whole discussion on women's rights, which included the fact that many Islamic women are denied schooling and therefore any possibility to work outside of the home; this stuck a strong chord with my wife, who, through hard work has been able to leave behind the limited opportunities of small village life and move into the international marketplace. (On the other hand, we also spoke about the many benefits that the Islamic family enjoys from having a stay-at-home mother). Acceptance When we moved to Neuköln, I was prejudiced against Arabic people.
Indeed, I was against them as a concept; they had destroyed the World
Trade Centers and were a threat to Americans everywhere. However, as time wore on, my wife and I began to accept that even though
we don't agree with some of the practices and attitudes that we observed
in Neuköln, the people who apply them have every right in the world to
live as they choose. And that's the point, really; the freedom to choose. The problem, however, is that people afflicted by dogma or prejudice of
any kind are denied choice by a narrow range of thought. This not only
goes for prejudice against racial groups or religious beliefs, but also
for blindly patriotic dogma or fundamentalist conservative dogma as well. I am glad to say that after living in Berlin-Neuköln, I no longer feel
prejudiced against those of Middle Eastern descent. Instead, I simply
disagree with some things that they believe and practice (just as they
likely disagree with some of mine). But I arrived at this opinion only after long discussions about the
things that my wife and I were witness to; discussions which confronted
our own values and beliefs as we attempted to understand what others
believe and value themselves. If only more people arrived at opinions like
that. |
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