Discrimination has always existed. Attacks on different ethnicities, races and even entire populations have always usurped the news. But, I have never seen them capture the headlines in such a propelling manner, one by one after another.
At university, I once took a class that taught me how to perform comparative political analysis, to try and examine why similar events take place in different forms around the world. So, when I switched on the television one morning and heard about nine African Americans who were killed in South Carolina, my recently acquired comparative analysis skills started to kick in.
How could this incident compare to when African Americans were discriminated against and wrongfully arrested in the Ferguson riots? Or more universally, how could both these incidents compare to similar, yet different larger scale issues across the globe. Such as the persecutions committed by the Islamic State in the Middle East?
My first instinct in trying to muster my brain around this was to look up the definition of "discrimination". When we were younger, our English teachers taught us to take a word back to its root to make it easier to find its meaning and effectively use it in a sentence. I thought applying the same concept in this case would help me understand the word on its own, in order to see how it is effectively used in each of these different, yet similar situations.
Merriam-Webster identifies "discrimination" under three descriptions, one of which stood out the most for me: "The ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not."
So far from my experience and knowledge, discrimination has been widely used against people of a somewhat different kind; be it race, gender, ethnicity or religion. None of these differences, however, define level of quality, and that is the rooted problem I have begun to absorb.
Educated or non-educated, people are going to inquire, wonder and even judge others who look or seem different than them. But education and knowledge empowers people with exposure and experiences that teach them to be tolerant and open to those who are different from them. And yet we see educated people carrying out acts of discrimination on a daily basis.
During my time at university living in the States, I have come into contact with people from different ends of the Earth. And the common (but not single) response I have received when I say I come from Jordan is:
"Do you mean Georgia?"
"No, I mean Jordan -- the country."
And then, the typical hesitated retort that I've heard more often than the initial response of assuming I had mispronounced my own place of birth: "Forgive me; I was never good at geography. Where is that again?"
At first, it would annoy me that people didn't know where Jordan was -- but not because it was my place of birth. Because they were supposedly educated, and were at the same institution as myself seeking an even higher degree of education. And yet, they didn't know where Jordan was or even what Jordan was.
The greater part of my annoyance, however, lied in what would typically happen next:
"Jordan is a country in the Middle East... home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World... Petra? You know, where they filmed the Indiana Jones movie? Where the lowest point on Earth is located... the Dead Sea? It borders Syria, as well as Palestine and Israel?"
Although I spat out statements that I presumed were common knowledge, I phrased them in the form of questions, because inside, I was questioning a lot of things myself.
Some people eventually got it, and some just nodded, pretending to comprehend my words, when they clearly had no clue or interest in what I was saying. But the people that got to me the most were the ones with the astonishing realizations: "Ohhh... so if you're from the Middle East, how come you speak English?" Or, "Ohhh... so why aren't you covering your hair? Aren't all Arab women veiled?"
Or my absolute favorite, "Ohhh... so do you ride camels to get around in Jordan?"
After spending a couple of years abroad, I've learned to take advantage of these encounters. I've learned to turn them into valuable learning experiences for both the corresponding person and myself. Now, I yearn for these questions, no matter how ignorant they may sound to me. I yearn for them, because they allow me to change someone's perspective on something bigger than the both of us.
When I look at Merriam-Webster's definition of discrimination, I see it play out in people's actions. I see it teaching people to italicize more on differences and less on commonalities. And when the differences in people are addressed categorically, it formulates and reinforces stereotypes that embed misunderstanding and hatred between populations that may be a lot more similar than they are allowed to know for themselves.
The appalling crimes the Islamic State has committed in the name of religion, for example, have placed Muslims everywhere on the same stratum in the eyes of many. Sensationalist media outlets have invaded our television sets, loudly condemning the group's actions, by placing the blame on Islam. This not only prevents viewers from developing their own opinion on Islam and its followers, it contrives one for them, at face value.
Painting people with a single brush is the most common form of bigotry. And although ignorance is indeed dangerous, the illusion of knowledge is undeniably worse. They are both branches that diverge from the same poisonous tree; however, one can be prevented if we simply opened our minds to different people, experiences and perceptions.
So, I hope the next time someone questions, inquires or even judges my background that I will be able to change their perspective and open their minds to a wider room of the world they inhabit.