Jumping to conclusions
In some ways, it is a pity that humans depend so heavily on visual clues for our socialization. The clothes we wear do “make the man” in terms of our contact with others. We live in a world that tries to convince us to alter our appearance; hair colour, clothing styles, even the shoes we wear.
Some interesting studies have been done to see if changing how we look changes how others relate with us. Small surprise; we do make first impressions. We also react based on visual clues, to save us the time that a more intense physical interaction would require. Back in high school I had the chance to read a book that I’ve never forgotten: Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin. My community was “rather homogenous” at a time when the relations between races in the United States had turned violent, and so the book served as a small introduction to a world that I wasn’t familiar with.
This week, CBC carried a story about a university professor that came to class dressed in a niqab, or veil. Nothing too startling there, as Canada is multicultural in “certain areas”. The difference in this story is that the professor was not dressed to reflect her own culture; rather, she wore the veil to see how others reacted. And, she used the experience as a teaching situation with her sociology students. Don’t jump to conclusions…
These are two brief examples. As we wade through the piles of advertising that clutter up our lives, perhaps we should draw something from the detritus. A decision to alter how quickly we decide about the “other person” based on the hair style or the cut of the cloth.
