> Have experienced similar things as a Sikh all over the world when I still had an uncut beard.
10 years ago, my neighbors were Sikh (I moved since then). They had all sorts of stories about how 9/11 got them confused with Muslims.
They were pretty big extroverts, and threw a lot of parties, and came to virtually every neighborhood party. But I can't help but think that they felt the need to socialize, to make sure their neighbors knew who they were.
Those parties are how I learned what a Sikh was. Before that, I did think they were Muslim. So it worked. But yeah, it probably sucks that they had to work extra hard to make sure people understood who they were.
Well, for me specifically, it was just kind of embarrassing to be the ignorant one.
Its like, I'm going over to my Muslim neighbor to see their birthday party. Later on... well... actually they were Sikh and I was ignorant and didn't know the difference until I asked them.
Fortunately, my neighbors must have been very familiar with the confusion, because they handled the discussion "what is a Sikh" pretty well.
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During 9/11 itself, I was in Catholic school. The teachers made it very clear that we needed to learn more about other religions at the time. So we visited local Churches, Synagogues and Mosques as part of various field trips. So I was familiar with Muslims, Jews, Protestants.
But we never visited a Sikh temple. I simply didn't know that religion even existed until I met my neighbors a few years later.
I think it's more like, if you assume that someone is Italian and then find out that they're Mexican, it's awkward that you made an incorrect assumption about their ethnicity despite the assumption being neutral in terms of judgment.
Yes, it seems that the weirdness of the mentioned interactions does not mainly stems from the confusion of the faith. It's based on people expressing their judgement of you as a person in relation to their perceived faith.
I think it’s absolutely amazing how much we put into looks and first impressions. My story is the opposite of yours, being a fit white Scandinavian cisgendered male who looks the part of an IT/banking manager when I’m clean cut. The amount of privilege afforded to me based purely on my looks and what I’m wearing is just insane, and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve often used it to my advantage.
These days I look like a hippie, sporting a full corona beard, coloured or happy message t-shirts, stretchy jeans and sandals. And it’s a whole different story, people offer me no leeway. Ironically my career and I guess wealth/status has progressed exactly opposite to my looks. So people should really stop judging anyone at face value.
Even then, it is quite likely that people offer you a ton of leeway still. It's only in comparison to your previous style that you see the reduction.
A friend of mine is considered white in the country he was born in (Guyana) and black in the country he's in now (Canada), and despite being always extremely well groomed and styled, he still ends up being very very clearly followed by security whenever he goes shopping. In comparison I've been to those places while looking more than scruffy, not showered, etc.. and have received nods and smiles from the security in every one of those places.
Sometimes it's even happening simultaneously: if we enter separately only one of us gets followed. And this is downtown Toronto, one of the supposedly most diverse cities on Earth.
Oh, you’re absolutely right about that. I probably wouldn’t be able to pull off my hippie look in my position if I wasn’t a Scandinavian man.
People just don’t automatically attribute me with financial power anymore. On the flip-side, anything “being a dad” related is much better now that people assume I work less.
>> Ironically my career and I guess wealth/status has progressed exactly opposite to my looks.
A friend of mine is an engineering consultant (software) and looks shabby. He met me for lunch one day after seeing a client and I said "you went to see them like that?" He said it's part of the uniform. It sends a message about being good enough not to worry about superficial impressions. I'm sure in some cases that's true.
The "uniform" thing is very true. I'm a software developer in the Pacific Northwest who loves to wear suits (they look damn good on me). I was told long ago that jeans and a hoodie are the de-facto uniform of my profession, and I needed to dress the part.
That got really hammered home when I showed up to a job interview in a button-down shirt and slacks and I was _far_ more dressed-up than the CEO. Getting bounced for not being a "culture fit" cleared up any lingering ambiguity.
I'm a t-shirt and jeans person but I will never go to an in-person interview without a button-down shirt. If a company judges me negatively for wearing that then it's not a place I want to work.
The opposite thing happened to me. I work as a lawyer and I was advised to get nicer suits and grow a beard to look older. I was told that my work was good, but appearances mattered. They said that I wasn't looking trustworthy enough to be presented to clients.
Once while giving a talk at a dev conference I was heckled just after being introduced. This was over 10 years ago but it was something to the effect of "get off the stage, suit". I wasn't wearing a suit but apparently my overall look screams "sales guy"...
I was pleasantly surprised when I completed my talk and the guy who heckled me (I never even saw him) came up to me and apologized. Then again this was in Toronto so maybe the old stereotype about apologetic Canadians is more true than not!
The "shabby nerd" stereotype is a very real thing and it goes both ways.
This is so true. There's been a lot of times when I cleaned up my look and wore really nice clothes to work, just because I felt like looking good -- and the number of "going for a job interview?" jokes I got all the time was countless. It's like a requirement to dress down.
Ugh, that joke was thrown around so many times at our office, whenever anyone dared show up to work in a button-down shirt and slacks. Or some variant like "Good luck on your job interview today!" or "Looks like you need to take an extra long lunch today. Let me know how it went."
I dont think it is amazing at all. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
Adhering to aesthetic cues signals conforming with society at large. If you are not in, you are clearly a threat. For example, if you dont follow simpler things, what bona fides can you provide that you will respect fundamental aspects of the society you are part of?
First impressions are a self-preservation mechanism.
Its not illogical. That being said this presents very interesting diamond-in-the-rough opportunities to visionaries
I've seen something similar with my fitness. I've gone from competitive powerlifter to very obese to moderately fit, and the ways in which it changes the way almost everyone interacts with you, all the time, is just insane - from the quite subtle (being more deferential, more pleasant, slightly more generous with their time) to not subtle at all ("you're so smart! You look so shy; I wouldn't have guessed you're so smart until you started speaking.")
I feel like that's pretty likely a bigger element of it when I was younger, though I'm sure it always figures in to some degree. Although part of it is circular: when people all treat you like you're nicer/smarter/etc. you feel more confident, too.
But some of it was just a bit too much of a stretch to just be confidence. I'm /generally/ a pretty confident person, and comfortable with people, and the difference in how many people suddenly can vs. can't find the time of day for you is pretty dramatic.
And, of course, some of it was just not subtle at all. I'd been told pretty frankly I was too fat to be a doctor. Because, you know, clearly my personal struggles with my weight have a direct correlation to my ability to diagnose your ailment. (Okay, I'm still salty about that one.)
Slightly off topic, I bought a pair of "stretchy jeans" recently but didn't know the term or know how to define what was good about them, so thanks for that! (Apparently there was some effort put into marketing these jeans - ostensibly "women's clothing" - to men https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/jeggings-... )
I've heard stories from salesmen at Porsche dealers that the people who come in puffed up, clean cut and suited are more likely to buy a base mode;, while the guys who buy the top end cars are often scraggly looking. Definitely something to be said for being successful enough you're no longer trying to convince people you're successful.
Most of the top line Porsche are very performance oriented versions of each model with some pretty radical departures from normal car features. Lack of back seats, rollcages, hard racing suspension, loud. The people that buy these are after race cars for the street.
You might be shocked to find that people buy top-end kit to impress absolutely no one. I have a top-of-the-line BMW motorcycle. I don't care if you know that, nor if you are impressed (you shouldn't be, they're less expensive than many Harleys). I bought it because I wanted it, and it would do the things I wished it to do.
I was, however, probably the scraggliest customer in the showroom when I bought it.
Anecdote: I once was able to board a high speed train going back to my home country while carrying a license plate from the country of departure and I only got a slight frown from the train officer(?) when I handed out my first class ticket (for a really long travel).
These two comments remind me yet again how our appearance is "marketing." I recognized at some point mid-highschool (10th year of schooling Age 15/16) that the way people dressed was being used as a signal by other people on how to treat them.
Because I found this interesting I created an arbitrary taxonomy and then talked to people I knew who fell into different branches and tried to understand if they were actively or passively participating in that branch of 'dressers.' Not surprising to my older self, a large number of people conformed to the taxonomic dress code due to external factors rather than internal ones. I suspect the adage 'you can't read/judge a book by its cover' is an expression that suggests a lot of other people found the same things my young self did.
As a result I try very hard to not "see" (and by that I mean color my perception) of someone by what they are wearing or how they present themselves. But I also recognize how difficult that is.
I vividly recall, in highschool in Los Angeles, right after 9/11, the leader of the class had to announce that our only Sikh student there was in fact Sikh, not Muslim, so please stop harassing him.
I remember John McCain being praised in the 2008 election campaign for speaking to a member of his audience who echoed the oft-repeated "Obama is a Muslim" claim, saying that "No ma'am, he's not, he's a good man". Nothing else.
Baby steps are better than no steps, but still, it does leave a sour taste.
That's not true and you are not being fair to McCain.
She said she didn't trust him and he's an Arab. He took the mic from her and said no mam, he's a good man. He didn't even address the Arab comment because he had already addressed it previously.
I see nothing negative either intentional or unintentional about his responses.
We have enough bad in this world. We need to give credit where credit is due and not invent thinks.
Thanks for pulling up the link, but it doesn't show him addressing it earlier as you said. I did mis-remember however; the lady said "He's an Arab" and not "He's a Muslim". Still, his response was "He's a decent family man and citizen that I have disagreements with".
Look, I know McCain is nothing like the Republicans that routinely use racial dogwhistling as a campaign strategy. But in this instance, he's still employing the right wing version of political correctness that's necessary to employ when talking to supporters that swallow Fox News/Rush Limbaugh views. He can say to his audience that Obama isn't an Arab. He just can't say that even if he were an Arab, it shouldn't be a problem in the United States of America.
>I remind myself that it is nothing but a survival instinct and even I was doing this in one way or another.
Astute observation. I mean we all react differently to a cat versus a snake, based on prior experiences or social conditioning. The average person out there with average intelligence ( nothing to be proud of) can evaluate only in black and white and not in shades of grey. Let's cut some slack (but not too much) for these mentally challenged people.
Most of the societal or political problems of the world are a medical problem: how do you treat IQ deficiency. You solve that, you revolutionize politics, ethics, demographics, etc.
It would be interesting if a new class of drugs was developed that had some of the effects people seek, so they maintained their allure to those who find them alluring, but also amplified impulse control instead of diminishing it. No doubt non-users would complain about users getting a benefit they didn't earn (e.g. the prodigal son's brother), and there are no doubt other consequences I haven't thought of.
From not being allowed inside a club for wearing a turban to being hugged by someone for being allah’s son.
Man, did being a Sikh teach me something about negative assumptions based on appearance.
I remind myself that it is nothing but a survival instinct and even I was doing this in one way or another.