Annie is a Caucasian friend and colleague at work. I am African and we have been working together for three years and I have personally invited her to several African parties. From her experiences at those parties, I don’t know, the only thing I know is that she always tells me that she liked African food and she liked to talk to the Africans that she knew at the parties that she invited her to. She has been telling me about her only brother who lives in West Virginia and she always tells me that she would be delighted for me to meet her brother. This is because; according to her, he has been telling her brother how nice I have been to her since he joined the company I work for.
I had the opportunity to meet the brother when his 50th birthday party was scheduled for December 2009 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When Annie handed me the invitation at work, she told one of my colleagues about the party. She advised me not to attend because it might be a whites-only party based on what she knows about Martinsburg, West Virginia. He was emphatic and he told me that even though he is Caucasian, he will not attend such a party.
The party took place at Annie’s brother’s house in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The brother is a cyclist and was assisted by several members of his cycling club. The house was full of people when we arrived at 8:30 pm, we immediately walked through the door; I looked around for several minutes and didn’t see a single person of color. I immediately began to feel insecure. Annie was busy greeting friends and family. She was following her for introductions. She introduced me to her brother, her mother, and some of her sisters. She didn’t remember how many because honestly I already felt insecure. This is because, although I was introduced to the brother, his body language gave me no indication that he was welcome at the party. He jokingly told me to make myself at home and talk to everyone. Most of the people at the party drank and smoked heavily. I immediately realized that I don’t belong there.
I started looking around if I could find someone to talk to. I started smiling at almost everyone at the party and making friendly gestures, but to no avail. I walked over to Annie and told her how I felt and how I wanted to leave the party. She told her brother that he came to talk to me for a few minutes trying to make me feel at home, telling me about his love for bikes and how some people have the mistaken impression that bikers are gangbangers and racists. . I only listened and responded only when he asked me specific questions. I felt a bit relieved during the conversation, after all, he is the host of the party and if he feels at home with me, why should I worry about the attendees? According to an article I read in the Harvard Business Review, “Tempered Radicals,” by Debra Meyerson, for a person to feel or be treated differently, he or she must be different from something. That was exactly how I felt. I was different by race, interests, and behavior. Everyone at the party was smoking and talking about bikes. None of the topics of conversation were of interest to me.
Also, I feel very uncomfortable when people smoke around me. I found myself in a bad situation because I didn’t use my car for the trip. I decided to let my friend Annie know that I am not enjoying the party and that I want to leave, but Annie has attended several African parties with me and she feels like she is at home every time she attends my parties. I decided to stay put and pretend I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me, and that worked for me for the three hours I stayed at the party. This is what WEB DuBois called the double consciousness. I decided to strike up conversations with anyone I could find and it worked for me. I struck up a conversation with one of the bikers named Ken, who was a former Marine and had visited Africa providing security to train President Clinton on his Africa tour.
Ken provided the conversation starter that put me at ease. He started by telling me how some of the bikers behave and why they behave that way. I found Ken to be an interesting person to talk to. We talked about football, Africa, especially his experiences in Ghana and how he always wanted to visit Ghana and interact with the people he met there.
The party gave me several lessons. First of all, I realized that it is not good to stereotype people. When I got to the party and greeted the few people at the entrance, I concluded that all partygoers are bad. This really prevented me from interacting positively with them. It is not good to believe in something and expect other people to conform to those beliefs. Although it is not easy to break down prejudices and erroneous stereotypes, sometimes it is really unnecessary. According to Snyder (1982), “when people meet others for the first time, they cannot help noticing certain highly visible and distinctive characteristics: gender, race, physical appearance, and the like.” Snyder goes on to say that “despite people’s best intentions, their initial impressions of others are shaped by their assumptions about said characters.”
Also, it feels really uncomfortable to be different in an environment you are not familiar with. I found most of the attendees in similar uniforms and with body tattoos. They wore similar vests with similar biker club inscriptions, and almost all of them smoked cigars and drank heavily. They also appear masculine and there were only a few women at the party. These made me feel very uncomfortable and I remembered the advice of one of my co-workers not to attend the party. I felt left out until I met Ken.
Also, I felt out of place due to the music, physical appearance, behavioral styles, and habits of the partygoers. The music was loud and the dance seemed very physical to me. According to Johnson, in his article Privilege, Power, and Difference “People’s perceptions are difficult to control, yet they tend to assume that they can identify characteristics such as race and gender simply by looking at someone.” are based on general assumptions. I made a generalization about everyone at the party until I met Ken, who was nice to me and made me feel at home. He introduced me to the president of the biker club and joked, “He could be the first black person in his club.”
In conclusion, differences cause people to make hasty generalizations about people. It is always best not to stereotype people based on the information available to you. Stereotyping people can cause hate. According to Martin Luther King Jr., hate is like a cancer without control; it corrodes the personality and eats away at its vital unity. It can destroy one’s sense of values and objectivity. It can also cause you to describe beautiful as ugly and ugly as beautiful, and mistake true for false and false for true.