My name is Salma Almasry, I was born in Saudi Arabi but both of my parents are Egyptians. We later on moved to my parents original city Mansoura and then we moved to Cairo to enroll in AUC. I don’t have a certain hybridity that I know of, as I’m mainly Arab Egyptian. The identities that I strongly associate myself with, are my Islamic religion, Egyptian nationality and female gender. I would like to believe that I try treat everyone equally as best as I can, as someone who highly believe in distancing your behavior for what your initial thoughts may be or what you initially want to do, I think I can be aware of my biases and then act oppose to them.
As we learned in class, everyone of us have his own biases towards different groups and different identities. Another key idea that stuck with me from the beginning of the semester is the idea of the empathy of humans with each other is guided by who the situation is intimate. As mentioned in the article “Critical Digital Citizenship: Promoting Empathy and Social Justice Online”, understanding where are people coming from and what is the context of their behavior help us be more empathetic and understanding of their situations. To me, this linked later on when we discussed the idea of othering, as we discussed that to identify people with different groups is something but to treat them as “others” or alienate them is something else. This link helped me understand how to become closer in understanding other groups without treating them in a negative manner. Another idea that was captured by Taiye Selasi in her TED talk “Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local”, is that the communities are the generation of cultures. I remember discussing this in class as we talked about how our memories and upbringing are the generation of the culture. Also how the idea of nature and nurture can be affecting our culture and ideologies.
After discussing such ideas in class, I was more familiar with biases before taking the quizzes on Project Implicit (that mainly measure your biases towards a certain subject) and this scared me a little bit as I was scared that I have a lot of biases that I’m not conscious about. However, I took two tests one about Gender-Career and one about age. Starting of the gender-career test, I chose to take it because it felt like something that is very relevant in Egypt, where generally men are expected to be the ones with higher career status and women are more associated with their family and children. I took the test and the results were “little or no preference between gender and family and career”. I was worried that even though this is what I be believe in, the culture surrounding me might have affected my thought of equal job opportunities for men and women. As for the second test, I chose to test the age biases test and I mainly chose this test because of how in Egypt elderly work so hard and might not get the personal aid that they deserve and I wanted to see if this is something that would affect my judgment over them. The results of the test was “ moderate automatic preference for young people over old people”. Even though the results are not the perfect scenario of what I should be but it is kind of true due to my current age at the moment. As a reflection to the test, I think I should be more aware that I’m more comfortable with people within my age group as they may have more things in common but also take the harder step in treating elders with my full respect and try to understand them. The experience is very positive in directing the one to behave better; even though, I can be a little skeptical with the results but it brings up certain discussions in my head that helps guide me into being a better person.
Reflecting upon the discussions, I can tell that there are a lot of biases that surrounds us in Egypt. Gender is a major one and it is often justified with un true religion values and it is mainly how in Egypt women and men are not treated the same in any social class. I think the point in which the gender biases become harmful the most is when it affects education of women in lower classes and this is a huge issue but it is slowly getting better. There are also biases against men in Egypt as they are expected to fully financially handle their households without any help. Also, young men are also often perceived as troublemakers and this is shown when public places or malls don’t allow young male groups to enter the place. I think this biases is harmful because it triggers problematic behavior among the young men as they live up to what is expected from them. Another biases is against hijab, as even though, Egypt is a Muslim country, it won’t allow women with scarfs in certain areas justified by public image. This biases is something I have experienced and it is dangerous because of the idea of Egypt not accepting itself and expect other countries to accept it fully and this is a harmful mentality to live in.
Awareness of one’s own biases is the first step into not letting it affect your behaviors negatively and this is something that I truly believe especially after the discussions. I have noticed that the bias that I have are the ones with groups that I’m the most alienated with. I tend to justify the biases as a way for me to understand the groups but this ends up making me a judgmental person towards them. foreigners in Egypt is not that common and this me be one of the factors that affect my biases, so I tend to listen to what is being said about a certain group to understand them rather than actually searching and hearing from the group themselves.
References
Image 1:Women of Egypt Mag, womenofegyptmag.com/2019/03/07/cartoonist-rasha-mahdy-draws-to-empower-women/.
Image 2: https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-xdjpm CCO
Bali, Maha. “Critical Digital Citizenship: Promoting Empathy and Social Justice Online.” Connected Learning Alliance , 30 June 2016, clalliance.org/blog/critical-digital-citizenship-empathy-social-justice-online/.
Bali, Maha. “Knowing the Difference Between Digital Skills and Digital Literacies, and Teaching Both.” International Literacy Association , 3 Feb. 2016, literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2016/02/03/knowing-the-difference-between-digital-skills-and-digital-literacies-and-teaching-both.
Selasi, Taiye. TED, 2014, http://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local/transcript.
powel, john, and Stephen Menendian. Othering and Belonging , via.hypothes.is/www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/.
