Prejudice

My wife, Elaine, a 55-year old grandmother of Scots, Welsh, and Germanic lineage, is also a full-time student here at the University of Macau. Like other Susquehanna students with us, she has had some encounters with prejudice. This is from a note she sent to one of our daughters:

I had a terrible/wonderful experience in my first Community Psychology class, last Friday morning. Arriving early, I had chosen a seat where I could be in the midst of the action. To my sorrow and horror, every one of the 19 Chinese students who came in later sat as FAR AWAY from me as they possibly could. It was excruciating!!! But, when the professor came in, she made some of the students come and sit near me ... which wasn't much better, because they still made it clear that I was not welcome. Still, over the three hours, our prof put me in a group with two other mainland Chinese girls (over 8,000 students from the mainland apply to the University of Macau each year, and only 200 are admitted, so they really are cream-of-the-crop spectacular students!!) and we had about 20 minutes to prepare a project on a community problem of our choosing. I mentioned the problem of "materialism" which was a totally new concept to my teammates. They had no idea what I was talking about. But they listened and thought about it, and BAM!!, when it came time to present our proposal to the class, my teammate stood, and nailed it in the most inspired demonstration of "getting it" (within a very short period of time) than I have ever seen! I could not help but clap spontaneously for her, and she in turn, high-fived me. In a way, she exemplified the rapid rise (within 15 years) of China itself - from an impoverished communist backwater ... to its role on center stage today.

At any rate, even though I was something of a thorn in the side of the class, politely raising my hand to point out every single (and they were constant) instance of anti-American bias, stereotyping and propaganda that underlies much of my classmates' personal ideology, by the end of the three hours, I no longer felt ostracized. My prof shared how she grew up in South Africa, spoon-fed the notion that black-skinned people were less intelligent than whites. She knew well that many Chinese think they are the superior race and that this elitism works against any notion of diverse community, which is what our class is partly about. ... So, it is all, um, very interesting! Frankly, because the students are truly top-notch, it is evident to me that they could very well think of themselves as "superior" to most anyone else on earth! THAT keeps me "ever so 'umble!"