The Xenophobia of Everyday Life
As we all watch the news in disbelief, seeing our country turn into Nazi Germany before our eyes and the man in the White House condoning the most vile ideology produced by the human race, my thoughts go to a much more minor and mundane incident that happened a few days ago.
No one was a monster and nothing turned to tragedy. And yet, I find myself still thinking about it.
I was at a fitness instructor training for an acrobatic discipline. It was rigorous and required physical and mental concentration and effort. There was to be a practical exam at the end of the training, in which we were to teach a complicated, multi-step sequence of poses and transitions to the general public while spotting them for safety. With or without justification, the students were stressed out, fearing they would forget something or mess up the sequence. Some of us were truly gifted athletes and yoginis, whose ability to demonstrate poses exceeded their ability to spontaneously come up with rich and precise languages to describe those poses. People have different strengths. Also, four of the attendees had come to the training from different countries, whose native language was not English.
I don't know how to explain to people who only speak one language the difficulty of adapting to speaking and writing in a different language in a professional setting--especially given that the training was in English, all the anatomy and terms of art were in English, and all the nomenclature for the poses was in English. Frustratingly, the newly minted instructors would be taking their training on to fitness careers in their own country, in which they would obviously be speaking their own language. The amount of mental gymnastics required to understand our instructor, translate her words in our mind to their native languages, write this down in English, then translate the text that comes out of their own mouths from their native language to English while retaining some fluidity and richness and doing all this while flawlessly executing physically demanding moves AND scanning the room to ensure that the students are safe.
I have some appreciation for this difficulty because, when I came to the United States for grad school, English was my third language (after Hebrew and Spanish). Before coming to Berkeley, one of my Jerusalem professors advised me to learn quick typing in English. It ate up a couple of weeks, but it was a good skill to acquire. Nevertheless, in my first semester at Berkeley I really struggled between trying to write in English during class (which was slower but required no mental translation) or translating everything in my mind and taking notes in Hebrew. My English is in daily professional use--I speak English much more than Hebrew and Spanish in any given day--so things have improved, but I still like the English subtitles on when I'm watching movies at the end of the day.
While these experiences offer me a window into what my fellow trainees were going through, I don't think it's rocket science for a native English speaker to grasp that other people in class are facing higher hurdles than her.
Which is why I was struck speechless for a moment when one of my fellow trainees, a native English speaker, said something that I found thoughtless and offensive, and repeated it several times during the training.
Our instructor (very reasonably) told the foreign trainees that, if they wanted, they could teach the sequence in their own language, as they would teach it to their students, as long as they used the English nomenclature for the poses (this made me proud, as inclusivity is one of the main values of the company.) The English-speaking trainee blurted out, "well, she's going easy on you! You guys are lucky! She's going to go extra easy for you because you speak a foreign language! It's always like this! I'm the one who's getting screwed!" and softened these statements with crass laughter. This incident repeated itself at least twice more during the training.
A few others smiled, perhaps in agreement and perhaps in embarrassment, but I'm sure the foreign trainees were rather shocked. I was shocked, too, felt bile and anger rising in me, and found it very hard to handle the "hooking" sensation I felt. Our fellow instructor had a Southern accent, and before I stopped to sit with my feelings, I found myself making up a story in my head about her, her politics, her ideology, and her intolerance. After a few seconds of that very unpleasant sensation, I reminded myself to sit with my breath. Just feeling the feelings, without exacerbating them with a backstory full of prejudice and thin on information, was enough to calm myself down somewhat. I then realized that my fellow trainee was probably extremely nervous about her own performance at the practicum (she had not done particularly well the previous day and masked her embarrassment and nervousness as laughter) and, when we are nervous, we tend to feel that the deck is stacked against us. Looking deep within myself, I found several instances in which telling myself a story about "fighting against the odds" made my failures explainable (albeit more bitter) and my successes presumably more valuable (because my chances of succeeding were lower than those of other candidates.) This helped me find empathy in me for my fellow trainee. Nonetheless, I deliberately sought a chance to work with the foreign trainees from then on. I made a point of telling each and every one of them how much I admired their ability to deal with such a mentally taxing job, and with two or three of them, whose languages I spoke quite well, got to give them a chance to cue me in their native language.
As I see the angry faces of Nazis and white supremacists on my computer screen, I wonder how many of them have come to this extreme form of xenophobia and exclusion from a sense (justified or unjustified) that, somehow, immigrants have it "easier" and that affirmative action is offering other people "breaks" that they themselves were not getting. I ask myself if this little instance I witnessed of xenophobia in everyday life--ugly but not too dramatic--wasn't a microcosm of the Trump voting base. And I ask myself how we could work together to uproot the ignorance and fear that give rise to little resentments and big hatreds alike. I think, with a certain degree of despair, about the extent to which hatred has corroded the human spirit to the point that the vulnerability underneath is no longer recognizable or relevant.
And I find a small glimmer of hope in one incident from the last few days. I was thinking about this angry young man, screaming with red hot hatred at the white supremacist rally, who was probably horrified upon looking into his own face (and soul) in the mirror of the media, who immediately jumped to defend himself, claiming that he was "not an angry racist." I'm sure that, had I confronted my fellow trainee about her statement, she would not have identified her comment as xenophobic, because with a little bit of introspection she would see where it comes from. Now, granted, the surest way not to be photographed in a Nazi rally is not to attend Nazi rallies in the first place (or, better still, to simply not be a Nazi.) But I know that, at the bottom of these raging souls, these faces twisted into scowls of anger, there is someone nervous and afraid who feels his country has been taken away from him. How to bring these angry, hate-filled people to self-examine and to find the tender spaces within, which require careful self-nurturing rather than violence and contempt toward others? I don't know. And I wish there was a place to start, because it's hard to see it today.
No one was a monster and nothing turned to tragedy. And yet, I find myself still thinking about it.
I was at a fitness instructor training for an acrobatic discipline. It was rigorous and required physical and mental concentration and effort. There was to be a practical exam at the end of the training, in which we were to teach a complicated, multi-step sequence of poses and transitions to the general public while spotting them for safety. With or without justification, the students were stressed out, fearing they would forget something or mess up the sequence. Some of us were truly gifted athletes and yoginis, whose ability to demonstrate poses exceeded their ability to spontaneously come up with rich and precise languages to describe those poses. People have different strengths. Also, four of the attendees had come to the training from different countries, whose native language was not English.
I don't know how to explain to people who only speak one language the difficulty of adapting to speaking and writing in a different language in a professional setting--especially given that the training was in English, all the anatomy and terms of art were in English, and all the nomenclature for the poses was in English. Frustratingly, the newly minted instructors would be taking their training on to fitness careers in their own country, in which they would obviously be speaking their own language. The amount of mental gymnastics required to understand our instructor, translate her words in our mind to their native languages, write this down in English, then translate the text that comes out of their own mouths from their native language to English while retaining some fluidity and richness and doing all this while flawlessly executing physically demanding moves AND scanning the room to ensure that the students are safe.
I have some appreciation for this difficulty because, when I came to the United States for grad school, English was my third language (after Hebrew and Spanish). Before coming to Berkeley, one of my Jerusalem professors advised me to learn quick typing in English. It ate up a couple of weeks, but it was a good skill to acquire. Nevertheless, in my first semester at Berkeley I really struggled between trying to write in English during class (which was slower but required no mental translation) or translating everything in my mind and taking notes in Hebrew. My English is in daily professional use--I speak English much more than Hebrew and Spanish in any given day--so things have improved, but I still like the English subtitles on when I'm watching movies at the end of the day.
While these experiences offer me a window into what my fellow trainees were going through, I don't think it's rocket science for a native English speaker to grasp that other people in class are facing higher hurdles than her.
Which is why I was struck speechless for a moment when one of my fellow trainees, a native English speaker, said something that I found thoughtless and offensive, and repeated it several times during the training.
Our instructor (very reasonably) told the foreign trainees that, if they wanted, they could teach the sequence in their own language, as they would teach it to their students, as long as they used the English nomenclature for the poses (this made me proud, as inclusivity is one of the main values of the company.) The English-speaking trainee blurted out, "well, she's going easy on you! You guys are lucky! She's going to go extra easy for you because you speak a foreign language! It's always like this! I'm the one who's getting screwed!" and softened these statements with crass laughter. This incident repeated itself at least twice more during the training.
A few others smiled, perhaps in agreement and perhaps in embarrassment, but I'm sure the foreign trainees were rather shocked. I was shocked, too, felt bile and anger rising in me, and found it very hard to handle the "hooking" sensation I felt. Our fellow instructor had a Southern accent, and before I stopped to sit with my feelings, I found myself making up a story in my head about her, her politics, her ideology, and her intolerance. After a few seconds of that very unpleasant sensation, I reminded myself to sit with my breath. Just feeling the feelings, without exacerbating them with a backstory full of prejudice and thin on information, was enough to calm myself down somewhat. I then realized that my fellow trainee was probably extremely nervous about her own performance at the practicum (she had not done particularly well the previous day and masked her embarrassment and nervousness as laughter) and, when we are nervous, we tend to feel that the deck is stacked against us. Looking deep within myself, I found several instances in which telling myself a story about "fighting against the odds" made my failures explainable (albeit more bitter) and my successes presumably more valuable (because my chances of succeeding were lower than those of other candidates.) This helped me find empathy in me for my fellow trainee. Nonetheless, I deliberately sought a chance to work with the foreign trainees from then on. I made a point of telling each and every one of them how much I admired their ability to deal with such a mentally taxing job, and with two or three of them, whose languages I spoke quite well, got to give them a chance to cue me in their native language.
As I see the angry faces of Nazis and white supremacists on my computer screen, I wonder how many of them have come to this extreme form of xenophobia and exclusion from a sense (justified or unjustified) that, somehow, immigrants have it "easier" and that affirmative action is offering other people "breaks" that they themselves were not getting. I ask myself if this little instance I witnessed of xenophobia in everyday life--ugly but not too dramatic--wasn't a microcosm of the Trump voting base. And I ask myself how we could work together to uproot the ignorance and fear that give rise to little resentments and big hatreds alike. I think, with a certain degree of despair, about the extent to which hatred has corroded the human spirit to the point that the vulnerability underneath is no longer recognizable or relevant.
And I find a small glimmer of hope in one incident from the last few days. I was thinking about this angry young man, screaming with red hot hatred at the white supremacist rally, who was probably horrified upon looking into his own face (and soul) in the mirror of the media, who immediately jumped to defend himself, claiming that he was "not an angry racist." I'm sure that, had I confronted my fellow trainee about her statement, she would not have identified her comment as xenophobic, because with a little bit of introspection she would see where it comes from. Now, granted, the surest way not to be photographed in a Nazi rally is not to attend Nazi rallies in the first place (or, better still, to simply not be a Nazi.) But I know that, at the bottom of these raging souls, these faces twisted into scowls of anger, there is someone nervous and afraid who feels his country has been taken away from him. How to bring these angry, hate-filled people to self-examine and to find the tender spaces within, which require careful self-nurturing rather than violence and contempt toward others? I don't know. And I wish there was a place to start, because it's hard to see it today.
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