impressions

just returned from breakfast, on a normal saturday morning, and chatted with the chinese contemporaries (that's what they call people with black hair and slightly yellow coloured skin here..). she was telling me about her bad experiences while working in the hostel, and how she was discriminated against by her boss as compared to another worker of african origin.

now, i'm not going to start preaching anything racially inclined here, neither am i planning to incite any form of violent sentiment that will result in some form of physical/mental/legal etc. conflict.

but, again, by that experience, the worker involved provided a negative message to the chinese girl, and this shaped a highly negative impression against himself, and also his community in general.

No matter how much we try to avoid such blunt generalisations, the impressions that we have on a particular group of people are usually based on the few contacts with the few 2, 3, 4 acquaintances, colleagues or friends that we have. This could be the very spark of the racist sentiments in many people! (at least this is how i postulate)

for everyone, i guess it's very important to take one step back and assess our sentiments, because again, it's not the community that shapes the person, but rather the person that forms the community. every individual has a different set of values, character and personality, and it is only fair that we mix with more individuals before placing clichés on the whole group.

yes. but this is again only my opinion on the short 10 min conversation that we had (of course in chinese - good opportunity to catch up on my lost linguistic abilities). for me, i've got more things at hand to settle - one of which is searching for accomodation, which has been quite erfolglos till today...