We are approaching the end of the year, and to many people, that means long hours in the library. The library will most likely be jam-packed with people trying to salvage what they can of this semester’s grades before it’s too late. Indeed, everyone’s going to be there, because if there’s anything that ties this school together, it’s the fact that everyone’s serious about studying, regardless of gender, extracurricular activities or ethnicity.
Which means that the library will be, in every sense of the phrase, a melting pot. Students of all backgrounds will be shoved into small cubicles and semi-forced to rub shoulders as they frantically study for their exams. People who might otherwise never be in such close quarters with each other, let alone meet, will virtually live, breathe and sleep together (don’t deny that all three of these things happen in the library).
As in any situation that involves different people interacting within a small radius, there will be problems and misunderstandings. To avoid such misunderstandings in particular and to understand what it really means to respect diversity in general, it is perhaps helpful to study the case of the UCLA girl who became the subject of nationwide condemnation last March when she, in a YouTube video, accused Asians of being loud in the library and of lacking “American” manners.
Immediate responses of anger and resentment aside, there is much food for thought in the incident. Let us see exactly what she did wrong that brought her so much hate.
She did two things wrong. The first is obvious. She noticed a common trait among members of a group, and jumped to generalize that trait to be applicable to the whole group. Such false inductive reasoning is the basis for most prejudices and biases, and she, without exception, fell into the same trap. Clearly, just because some Asians were loud in the library does not mean that all Asians are.
The second thing she got wrong is the fact that she failed to identify the difference between universal rudeness and cultural differences. The former is one that arises from actions by individuals that causes reasonable discomfort in others and affects them in other adverse ways. An example of universal rudeness would be getting into an elevator before everyone in it has a chance to get off. Regardless of in which country this takes place, this is rude because there is only one way for it all to work out, and to go against it causes unnecessary inconvenience. This is universal rudeness.
Of course, this means that talking in the library does fall under the umbrella of universal rudeness. The library is a place to study, and common courtesy dictates that everyone be as quiet as possible. However, the mistake that the UCLA girl makes is that she attributes the universally rude nature of talking in the library to cultural difference. She makes it sound as if the Asians were causing a raucous because they were Asians, because they were somehow different. No. Those Asians were in the wrong when they chose to have phone conversations in the library, not because they’re different, but because their actions were simply disruptive.
Then what, you ask, are the cultural differences that the UCLA girl confuses inappropriate manners for? Cultural differences are the disparities among people of different upbringings that nonetheless arise and stay within the boundaries of reason and common courtesy. An example of cultural differences would be the American social norm of holding the door for others.
While it is a nice thing to do, such a social convention by no means should be binding to everyone, precisely because omitting it does not lead to an appropriation of the rightful interests of a second party or an abridgment of a common good. Simply put, not holding the door does not result in the direct harm of another person or the community at large. It just results in a little less convenience on part of the person following the other person in.
Think of the difference between cultural disparities and universal rudeness as the difference between being stripped of a privilege and being punished for a crime. Not following a certain cultural code results in people losing certain benefits that come from everyone following it, while universal rudeness actively generates harm to others.
Another example of a cultural difference would be the Confucius, and thus largely Asian, practice of yielding seats to the elderly in public places. In the subway or on a bus, people are encouraged and even expected to give up their seats to them. In the West, although this practice is done, just as holding the door is done in Asia, it is not nearly as widespread or mandatory as it is in the East.
That is not to say that people in the West are uncultured or rude; that’s just not a social convention that took root. The elderly in America might have sorer legs when they travel, but they are not universally entitled to a place to sit wherever they go (of course, we are not talking about the disabled elderly).
These cultural differences should be acknowledged and tolerated, not singled out and condemned. Although the UCLA girl directly complained about cultural differences in only a few instances (i.e. how Asian parents are doing their kids’ laundries in the dorms), given her alacrity to attribute an actually inappropriate behavior to cultural differences, which are completely unrelated, I can dare say that she is representative of the people who are not acceptant of cultural differences. She is the kind of person who, in terms of the example used above, would frown upon someone for not holding the door for her and would think him a barbarian. It would be going against “American manners,” something she is quick to point out in her video that Asians at her school need to learn.
But what are “American manners?” First of all, they are an ever-changing body of social mores, and second of all, they are what America’s constituents make them to be. Before Chinese workers brought chopsticks to California for the first time in the 1800s, the usage of those utensils was not part of “American manners.” However, as soon as the Chinese workers became a part of American society, so too did their use of chopsticks. The Asians doing laundry in the UCLA girl’s dorm are just as American as she is, and thus their social conventions are as American as hers.
However, what bothered me most in the aftermath of the controversy after the UCLA girl’s video was the response from the Asian Americans. While they were offended by the video, they were also quick to point out the difference between their “American-ness” and the embarrassing “Asian-ness” of more recent immigrants. In doing so, these Asian Americans are falling into the pitfalls of prejudice that the UCLA girl did in her video. They need to realize that being culturally different is not something to look down on or be ashamed of, but something that they need to tolerant about.
Indeed, that is the message that we all would need to take from the controversy surrounding the UCLA girl’s video. Know the difference between universal rudeness and cultural differences, root out the former and recognize the latter. It’s as simple as that.
