Too often I see Americans taking xenophobic or anti-foreigner positions. Some of these people may in fact be racist and my blog post really isn't to address or communicate with the demographic of Americans who are racist. If you believe in any sort of racial superiority or adopt a racial identity then this blog post certainly is not for you. If on the other hand you have xenophobia due to perhaps legitimate concerns based on statistics whether it be perceptions of criminality, or cultural incompatibility, this blog post will attempt to address what in my opinion is the correct perspective when determining how to treat foreigners.
When you interact with a foreigner who does not speak good English it is very important to understand that when you travel outside your home country you'll get to be that foreigner. If you've never traveled outside your home country then you probably have no idea how big the world really is and that in some parts of the world you'll be the one who stands out. When foreigners visit or immigrate to the United States it is critical to treat them with the best behavior. Think of the foreigner as the most important guest person in the room.
Why the foreigner is the most important guest in the room
The reason to think of the foreigner as the most important guest in the room is because if you love your country or simply care about how people from your country are perceived then you'll want to treat any foreigner as you would treat a representative of that country. This means if someone visits your home and this person is from China then it is a good idea not just to think about how this person might perceive of you but how your actions toward this person could impact how China perceives of America or of the demographic of American which you're closely associated with. If you mistreat the foreigner then that foreigner will communicate back to their homeland in their language how the nasty xenophobic American treated them. This could even potentially impact international relations between the United States and China.
How not to be perceived as racist
In order to not be perceived as racist on the world level it is important to treat all foreigners with exactly the same respect. This is not likely going to be realistic for an individual to do but a company must do this. Foreigners or foreign travelers who are visiting the US or who shop in your store must be treated exactly the same no matter what country they came from. There are legal exceptions to this if there are sanctions but in the case where there are no sanctions the idea is to treat all customers with equal respect.
When people from other nations see that your store is giving special treatment to certain foreigners for certain reasons this is really going to disrupt relations. To be perceived as racist is not necessarily to be deliberately racist so the idea here is to avoid negatively stereotyping foreigners.
If the foreigner is Muslim and speaks Arabic they are an equal customer to the foreigner who speaks English. Their money is just as good, their contracts are just as good until proven otherwise.
World level vs local level
To operate on the world level requires considering the impact of international relations on your objectives. For example:
This is an example where the perspective is world wide. This is actually a good perspective. He highlights the problem but he does not offer the solution in my opinion. The solution ultimately is we must connect developing countries so that these countries cna unlock their wealth building potential. What developing counries need is access and blockchain technology in my opinion is the great equalizer when it comes to providing access. That being said, the "company" model is really just a legal construct and this legal construct can be implemented anywhere. FinTech companies in my opinion can bring banking to developing countries provided the technological base is available for them to build from. That technological base is hyper connectivity and smart phone tech.
World level requires thinking about how what you are developing will impact the entire world (not just the United States citizen). Most of this world and it's 7+ billion people are not US citizens. In fact, the average person in this world is an Asian. This means blockchain technology and all that we are building is primarily going to impact the lives of people in Asia, in Africa, in South and Central America, because that is where the demand is going to come from. It's not just a matter of banked vs unbanked but the complete lack of financial instruments, complete lack of ability to track who owns what, too much corruption is one of the big problems in some African countries and blockchain technology may help to solve that.
Local level thinking often does not consider the true state of humanity. Often the developers even do not have enough experience and may never have even left their home country. International or world level developers have left their home country and do have on their team people who can at least reveal to them the potential impact of their design decisions to different demographics of potential users around the world.
As blockchain and crypto develops into real world use cases it has to be developed for the demographic of potential users who will want it. For this reason it is important to actually know about different cultures, different living experiences, and what people in different parts of the world want or need. The needs of a person living in a village will be very different from the needs of a person living in a big city. The mindset of a person living in an Asian city will be very different from the mindset of a person living in New York or London or Moscow. Only by listening to foreigners and by being the foreigner can we learn what tools the "global foreigner" will need.
For sake of clarity the phrase global foreigner means any one of us who is in the position of foreigner in any country anywhere on earth. It is the case that if we leave our home country then we become the foreigner and what tools might we need to thrive from that position? This could be the person who leaves and renounces citizenship completely or it could be the person who simply takes a job overseas. The tool should be useful to anyone in the position of foreigner if is to be "foreigner friendly".
Reciprocity matters
The why be nice to foreigners is simply because by doing that it encourages foreigners to be nice back. It is also a matter of abstraction. Foreigner if we think of it like a position which anyone could find themselves in at any point in time then it becomes be nice to the foreigner position. So in the abstract, to accommodate the foreigner position is to promote reciprocity. If all people were nice to foreigners then it improves life for anyone who happens to ever be in the foreigner position. Refugees, asylum seekers, renouncers of citizenship, expatriates, all have unique challenges to face and at the same time we can learn from these people quite a bit.
- Walls only create more boarders and reduce the flow of people, goods, and information.
- Being mean to foreigners only encourages animosity when or if you or anyone you know ever travels outside your home country to experience being foreign.
- Developers need to listen more to foreign perspectives or the international perspective when designing certain technologies. Too often the technology is designed by the local geeks for the local geeks and that is a problem.
why be nice to foreigners is simply @Dana-edward
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I as Muslim from Indonesia, strongly agree with this paper. 👍👍👍
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I am very sensitive about this. I have traveled to places where there has been a major challenge with English speaking, but at the same time I always see that somehow or the other people help and get you your information, which has been a big learning experience for me.
It is very important to respect the visitors in your country. Cause at the end of the day every single person of a country is it's brand ambassador also.
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Interesting your publication, I like it. Let me follow you .. God bless you.
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I couldn’t agree more. I think the xenophobic behavior is the result of certain “news” organizations propagating the belief that all our problems are caused by immigrants. Those not like us that come across our borders and take our jobs. They beat this drum until it becomes true for a lot of people. It’s a simplistic answer to a complicated problem. It is also a ploy used throughout history.
The fact of the matter is, jobs are being lost to technology, particularly robotics, AI and machine learning. We are in a time of great turmoil without simple answers. It is easy, however, to get people worked up emotionally, effectively shutting down cognitive abilities like logic, critical thinking, and long-term planning.
You know it’s getting bad when conservative commentator’s like Ann Coulter claim that children crying at the border are “child actors.” It is bordering on the absurd the mental gymnastics required to maintain beliefs that shut down empathy. But that’s what they have to do in order to justify their worldview, make themselves feel good, and continue with the perception that they are the “good guys.”
I wrote a post yesterday explaining my view on what’s behind it all that you might be interested in. “Where Morals Come From.”
Thanks for your post suggesting what should be common decency.
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Very practical perspective on the ethics of treatment of foreigners. In general I agree with your points. It's also interesting to note that a foriegner might be someone who comes from a different part of the political country you live in, or from a different cultural group within national boundaries. This kind of thinking can be all the more important there.
Some points that struck me.
Related to your previous posts on racism, I didn't know that you went as far as to imply that even ascribing yourself a racial identity was racist, but it makes sense from your arguments. Something to think about here.
What are these legal exceptions? I'm not aware of any laws in the US or Europe which prohibit selling anything to someone from another country. I thought the restriction would come if they decided to bring something back with them that was not permitted to either leave or enter the country they're going back to.
Of course I can think of many things you can buy which are restricted in sale, such as firearms, alcohol, drugs, bonds and stocks, etc. but these are usually based on citizenship, residency, age, proof of capital, etc.
Pedantic correction, the idea of an average person is like some kind of genetic bluring average, or meshing everyone's face together (which I've seen done, and it does look Asian). I think this is misleading shorthand for that if you were to pick a random person of those living, they would most likely be Asian.
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A distinction should be made. Society coerces a racial identity on people. If you believe that race is a social construct and you're the victim of this societal coercion then I don't believe it is your fault if you are racist as a result.
On the other hand if you are aware that race is a social construct, if you know it's an identity imposed on citizens by the government (through stuff like the Census), and that it has no basis in genetics, yet you still adopt that identity then you're a willful racist. The key is how do you see yourself internally? Do you see yourself as a color or do you see yourself beyond those categories internally? Society is going to treat you however it's going to treat you regardless of how you see yourself so it's not at all about how racism affects people or how racist society creates a reaction in people but more about people internalizing the false identity.
My post appeals to people who fit into the first category who know race is a social construct and that the only race which matters is the human race. The distinction between foreigner and insider is basically a cultural barrier. This could be people who speak a different language, who believe in a different religion, and who come from a different country (and so they have a different social network) with a different government influencing their behavior.
America to me is it's people and it's people aren't races to me. America to me has American people, or to be more specific the in-group is the United States Citizen. The in-group could also be considered to be those who respect and believe in the ideals of the United States Constitution and anyone who defends it.
So if a person doesn't believe in the US Constitution and instead are in favor of another set of laws then they would be the foreigner in the most definitive sense. But if we are talking less definitive then it could be people in other countries in general. I'm not ultimately the person who determines who is or who isn't a foreigner.
If I'm treated as the foreigner then I'm the foreigner but the criteria isn't always obvious. For those who say "if you weren't born here you're a foreigner" then that is also a criteria. There are also some who say if you weren't born into the tribe (if you're not part of the family) then you're foreign. So it's a fluid concept which isn't clearly defined, but in general it means if you're not a foreigner you're in the in-group and if you're not in the in-group you're a foreigner.
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More on race identity/racism. To be clear and specific my definition of racist is anyone who believes in racial ideology. That means if you are a "race realist" which means if you believe race has a genetic basis and that the racial categories imply something real about people then yes you're a racist.
If you believe in genetics, in science, in sociology, in anthropology, then of course you're not racist. If you get your genetics tested and find out that some percentage of you is from a certain part of the world then it's not racist to believe that part of you is from there.
My point is descriptors like "white" and "black" are non specific and are inherently racist. Africa is a continent, and within Africa are different countries with tribes. Europe is a continent and within Europe are different countries with tribes. The history, the ancestry, all of that is real, but you can't know any of that from "white" and "black". As a result you don't get any of the true benefits from learning about your ancestors because it collectivizes people be superficial traits rather than encouraging people to learn where their ancestors came from or their genes came from.
I also want to make it clear I do not believe it is racist for people who have been historically oppressed to fight to improve their conditions. Anyone who has been a victim of racism, or any other kind of systemic oppression is not racist if they form allegiances to combat that oppression. In my opinion that is a reaction to racism rather than to be inherently racist or to actively promote racism.
Anyone who truly believes in civil rights, human rights, would still be willing to fight for those beliefs even if race doesn't exist. If the only race is the human race then oppression is still oppression. If people with big noses of the same race are mistreated or if short people are being bullied then it's the same problem and it's not wrong to combat that problem.
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