hazy shade of winter

Do you ever have those moments where you meet someone, instantly dislike them, and then have to be nice because you inevitably end up being the person sitting nearest to them for the rest of the evening? I'm not saying that it happened to me tonight, of course--this is just a hypothetical situation. But imagine a hypothetical situation in which someone repeatedly made jokes about the Midwest (not knowing that the hypothetical 'you' was from the Midwest). They later hypothetically ask you where you are from, and you respond 'Iowa' in your most mocking tones. Rather than becoming flustered, they proceed to say that Iowa is very flat, and then make fun of Wisconsin for several minutes. Of course, I don't have a lot of opinions one way or the other about Wisconsin, and I recognize that Iowa is perhaps not as cultured as other parts of the world, but I don't particularly appreciate having my home state mocked by someone.

Actually, I don't mind my home state being mocked if I am friends with the person--but if I'm neutral or slightly negatively inclined, this is enough to end it all for me. Hypothetically, of course. The fact that this hypothetical conversation was then followed by what rubbed across my already-abraded nerves as a rather patronizing list of what I should see in Europe, almost all of which I've already seen, was enough to make me want to run screaming for the hills. Alternatively, I could hypothetically drive a knife into the person's hypothetical face--but they had already cleared away my cutlery, because this hypothetical person showed up over an hour late, which meant that we then had to have drinks with him, which prolonged the meal by another hour and a half.

I don't think that I will particularly enjoy pub culture--unless I'm with close friends, I don't like drawing out slightly awkward social situations. Clearly, dinner at Lucky Dhaba was slightly awkward, but I was with all of my favorite people, and so I was willing to prolong the insanity. But, when I'm with people I don't know, I'm usually quieter and more well-behaved, which quickly makes me feel bored, which makes me rather impatient with three-hour dinners. Ugh.

One interesting thing that I've noticed here is that people seem to feel absolutely no barrier to spreading stereotypes about other Europeans. I don't know how many conversations I've had in the last two weeks in which the 'organized, methodical Germans' were compared to the 'lazy French' or the 'disorganized Italians' or the 'drunk Irish' or whomever else. When I'm at home, I may discuss stereotypes about groups if I'm with someone from that group, and I probably encourage stereotypes about Iowans (with enthusiasm that directly contradicts the anger that I felt about having my state mocked by someone I didn't know today, hypothetically), but I don't really talk about other groups. Granted, I have been known to sing 'I'm Ronery', which directly abuses the occasional tendency of Koreans to be unable to pronounce the letter 'l', but I never would have come up with that joke on my own--it took the largely awful 'Team America: World Police' to plant that unforgettable song in my head. But, in general, coming from a society and an age-group that has drummed political correctness into everyone's heads, stereotypes now seem somewhat acceptable if they're made in a joking manner, but I don't know many people who would flat-out say something about that was in any way negative about another group in a serious conversation. The people who do usually are perceived (and probably are) racists, but here it just seems accepted that different European groups have various tendencies. On the whole, I think there are a lot of problems with political correctness, and I know that it has caused a lot of jokes and/or anger, and I would prefer to live someplace where it didn't matter. However (and this is a big however), the benefit has been that if people in positions of power are no longer able to say negative things about minority groups, new generations are afforded the opportunity to grow up in a more colorblind society. My grandparents' generation may be beyond repair in terms of racial prejudice (and I definitely don't just mean white grandparents--every friend I've talked to, regardless of ethnicity, says that their grandparents have some prejudices against other groups), but I'm confident that we'll see a minority president in my lifetime. I think that's much more than can be said of Europe--for all of its socialist utopian visions, the last few years have begun to show that Europe has serious issues to address in terms of race and what it means to be a citizen. Regardless of how much more progress needs to be made in the US, I can't think of any other societies which have integrated people from so many different nationalities to the point that it's possible for people from virtually any group to rise to virtually any level of power. In my opinion (and I could be completely wrong here), the issue is no longer really just race--at this point, the real barrier to progress in America is class and money. If two similarly-talented children have access to the same education, the same after-school activities, the same supportive families, and the same safe neighborhoods, they should have approximately the same adult opportunities available to them. The major issue facing America now is how we can clean things up for both the urban and the rural poor so that the next generations can break the cycles that their families are trapped in, regardless of whether they're a poor black kid from the slums or a poor white kid from the sticks.

Okay, enough about that. I'm worn out from walking around all day; I went into city center to do a bit of shopping, and thought that I was successful, but came home to discover that I'd bought the wrong wireless router. This was a problem with the method of purchasing--I went to this weird electronics store where you just flip through a catalog, write down what you want, pay for it without seeing the product, and then they bring it up from the back warehouse a few minutes later. From the catalog description, I thought this was what I wanted, but it turned out to be a router for phone modems, not for cable modems. I'm guessing the last person to buy this had the same problem, since all of the internal packaging had been opened by someone else before it was apparently returned. Hopefully my next trip will be more successful! When I got back, I discovered that my roommate had arrived, which was great--I went out for dinner with her, the other two Hyderabadis currently here, and a couple of other people, and it was nice until, let's just say hypothetically, the last hour or so. Now it's time for me to go to bed!