Terrorist Paranoia

By Shae Hadden
Bio

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I live in a country where multiculturalism was once the watchword of a generation. I attended high school in a ‘multicultural district’ in an inner city, took several language courses at university and hung out with people from diverse racial, social and cultural backgrounds. Today, I am disheartened to hear how ‘terrorist paranoia’ creeps into our everyday lives and has us question whether we will accept new people into our lives.

Today, two of my cousins asked for my perspective on something that happened to them recently. They each, obviously, had opposing perspectives on what had occurred and wanted me to objectively give my opinion. Their story goes something like this...

A young woman of Chinese descent, an engineer by trade, is living in our city, working here temporarily. She has no friends or relatives here and has been attending a downtown church in an effort to meet people. Before arriving in our country, she had ‘met’ one of my cousins’ brothers over the internet, found out that one of their family ancestors had been a missionary in her family’s area of China, and basically, begun a friendly dialogue with him. When she heard that one of the family’s elder members would be visiting our city, she called my cousin to invite them both to meet her at her church.

All three (cousin, elder and young woman) met, exchanged pleasantries and decided to spend a bit of social time together sailing. During that short trip, the young lady revealed that she knew much more about my cousins’ family, and mentioned she was looking to meet more people here (specifically young men). She made no requests for money or time—simply asked to be connected to more people.

My cousins were both unsettled by her forthrightness and knowledge about their family, and asked my opinion of this scenario. Both of them had very different interpretations about this woman and what she was about: either she was a spy, sent to establish herself for some long-term objective for her country (a half-joking suggestion, albeit somewhat serious) OR she was a gold digger, intent on finding herself a husband. Either way, they didn’t know what to make of her, certainly weren’t interested in seeing her again and definitely afraid to introduce her to any of their friends or acquaintances.

I asked them both how they had gotten established in this city when they first arrived, and they admitted they had both had the good fortune of being introduced to people who ‘introduced’ them to their friends. Neither had gone to the trouble of researching people before meeting them: however, they were both aware that, in some Asian cultures, there is an expectation that one know quite a bit about someone before meeting them—whether in a business or social context.

I mentioned to them that beginning life in a new city can be a lonely experience for anyone, and, when you are placed inside a new ‘cultural context’ without any information about the social norms, you assume that what worked where you were before will work just as well where you find yourself now. I pointed out that, in a way, I felt sad that no one had explained to this young lady that it was not normal to know a lot about a person before you meet them in North America. And I shared my hope that someone will have the courage to see her as a short-term visitor in our country, get past their interpretations of her behavior, take a chance to get to know her better, and perhaps, introduce her to others in the community.

And I would hope someone would be willing to do that for me the next time I relocate…wouldn’t you?

Written by Shae Hadden at Wisdom in Action
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