Many years ago, when I was attending the University of the West Indies in Barbados, I used to walk down the hill to Paradise Beach Resort. I used to act as if I were a guest at the hotel, so enjoy the chaise lounges, swim in the sea, drink water, and then walk back up the hill.
Often tourists would see me and assume I came from America or England or Canada, one of the ‘civilized’ places.
They’d be friendly and then do the “Where you from?” and I would say; “Jamaica’.
They would then begin to speak to me in Special English.
I recall one guy, who had been talking to me as if I had a right to breathe. We were going back and forth at a normal pace. He must have noticed my accent was a little ‘off’ and asked where I came from. I told him.
Now that I had revealed I arrived from what he assumed was some backwards corner of the earth he began to speak very slowly breaking up his words;
“I…Am…an…Audi.olo..gist…do…you…know…what….that…is?”
There is an kind of imputation that persons who don’t come from the ‘Civilised’ countries aren’t very educated, don’t understand ‘simple’ things, and need to be dealt with, cautiously.
This kind of ethnocentric behaviour always marks the 1st Worlder.
When I meet people from Syria, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we don’t instantly do the ‘I’m better than you’, thing.
They will think; Bob Marley, ganja, Peter Tosh, Usain Bolt, some will know of Marcus Garvey and Michael Manley.
They don’t assume I’m stupid, unsophisticated, or unequal.
I will tell them what I know of their country or if I have friends who came from there. It is not an imputation that one of us is ‘inferior’ to the other.
When we in Jamaica first got onto the Internet in 1995 we quickly learned to pretend to be white American men (the kind that would vote for Trump) so that our views wouldn’t be dismissed as coming from an inferior.
I had created a guy called Al who was in his thirties, married, with two kids and lived in the midwest.
Everything I posted as Al was given weight and even when he was wrong, the corrections were so gentle.
Contra me
Joining the same site as myself, anything I said that was even slightly different from what they thought, they believed, was kicked as if it were coming from a retarded gerbil.
So I stopped joining sites as me, and created my persona and was treated as an equal.
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When I had my mission in Central Asia under one of the prestige international non-government organization, I was nibbled by people from the UK. Since I am an Asian young lad, they treated me differently. The worst scenario, when they even questioned my soft skills. In terms of speaking, they can't find any flaws. Prior to my acceptance in this medical mission, I had been teaching English in one of the best good English academies in my country. However, they still find ways t be pulled down. But I fight back and tried to prove something to them. I cannot be nibbled that easily. At then end, they bowed their heads when my special project ended in a successful manner.
I know exactly what you are saying.Very often if people think I am American they treat me with much more respect. The idea that a non American can excel is difficult for them to grasp.
I agree. Well, I cannot control their minds. As long as I had given my piece, that's enough for them to know. They can say anything against me: good or bad. I will fight back if it is degrading in my part. This is not an excuse implications towards me.
The attitude of inferiority is why so many Jamaicans resort to scamming... if the tourist thinks one is not at intelligent, they don't protect themselves and the 'inferior' rips them off.
Those think inferior are those who are jealous and have evil past due to which they think that other are inferior and they are superior such persons fall prey to inferiority complex in real life. But the main cause becomes jealous and greed.
Actually inferiority complex an unrealistic feeling of general inadequacy caused by actual or supposed inferiority in one sphere, sometimes marked by aggressive behaviour in compensation.
Most of us compare ourselves to others. Mass media beams in the finest looking, richest, and most talented people into our lives 24/7. This creates the illusion that we 'know' all these beautiful, clever, younger, athletic, rich, able people. Because we compare ourselves to people we know, this illusion of knowing air-brushed 'have-it-alls' can make us feel correspondingly worse about ourselves.
An inferiority complex is a general feeling of not being 'up to the mark'. Now, I want to distinguish between knowing and feeling. I know I am inferior to Bill Gates financially, to Stephen Hawking intellectually, to millions of men aesthetically; but this knowledge doesn't bother me one iota. Knowing you're inferior in some ways is very different from feeling inferior.
Knowledge that you might sometimes compare unfavourably to others may just be insight and perception. It's crazy to try to pretend that we are all as good as each other in all ways.
I would not use the term 'inferior' because I don't think that is correct. I can not fix the pipes as can the plumber, I can plant like the farmer, I can play cricket like the professional but I do not call myself inferior.