USA Biker Party Experience
Annie is a Caucasian friend and coworker. I am African and we have been working together for three years and I have personally invited her to various African parties. From her experiences at those parties, I don’t know, all I know is that, she always tells me that she enjoyed African food and enjoyed talking to the Africans that she met at the parties that I invited her to. He has been telling me about his only brother who lives in West Virginia and he always tells me that he would love for me to meet his brother. This is because; According to her, she has been telling her brother how kind I have been to her since she joined the company I work for.
I had the opportunity to meet the brother when his 50th birthday party was scheduled for December 2009 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When Annie gave me the invitation at work, I told one of my colleagues about the party. He recommended that I not attend because it could be a white-only party based on what he knows about Martinsburg, West Virginia. He was emphatic and told me that although he is Caucasian, he will not attend that party.
The party took place at Annie’s brother’s home in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The brother is a motorcyclist and was attended by several members of his bike club. The house was full of people when we arrived at 8:30 pm, we immediately walked through the door; I looked around for several minutes and didn’t see a single person of color. I immediately started to feel insecure. Annie was busy greeting friends and family. I was following her for introductions. He introduced me to his brother, mother, and some of his sisters. I didn’t remember how many because honestly I already felt insecure. This is because even though the brother was introduced to me, his body language gave me no indication that he was welcome to the party. Jokingly, he told me to make myself at home and talk to everyone. Most of the people at the party drank and smoked heavily. I immediately realized that I don’t belong there.
I started looking around if I could find someone to talk to. I started smiling at almost everyone at the party and making friendly gestures, but to no avail. I walked up to Annie and told her how I felt and wanted to leave the party. She told the brother, who came to talk to me for a few minutes trying to make me feel at home, telling me about his love for bicycles and how some people have the wrong impression that cyclists are gang members and racists. I only listened and responded only when asked specific questions. I felt a bit relieved during the conversation, after all, he is the host of the party and if he feels like home with me, why should I worry about the attendees? According to an article I read in Harvard Business Review “Tempered Radicals” written by Debra Meyerson, for a person to feel or be treated differently, they must be different from something. This was exactly how I felt. I was different because of race, interests, and behavior. All the partygoers were smoking and talking about bicycles. None of the conversation topics interested me.
Also, I feel very uncomfortable when people smoke around me. I found myself in a bad situation because I did not use my car for the trip. I decided to let my friend Annie know, I am not enjoying the party and that I want to go, but Annie has attended several African parties with me and feels at home every time she attends my parties. I decided to stay and pretend I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me, and that worked for the three hours I was at the party. This is what WEB DuBois called double consciousness. I decided to strike up conversations with anyone I encountered and that worked for me. I started chatting with one of the motorcyclists named Ken, who was a former Marine and had visited Africa providing security to former President Clinton on his tour of Africa.
Ken provided the source of conversation that made me feel at ease. He began by telling me how some of the motorcyclists behave and why they exhibit such behaviors. I found Ken an interesting person to talk to. We talked about soccer, Africa, especially his experiences in Ghana and how he always wanted to visit Ghana and interact with the people he met while there.
The party thought several lessons for me. First of all, I realized that it is not good to stereotype people. When I arrived at the party and greeted the few people at the entrance, I came to the conclusion that all the partygoers are bad. This actually prevented me from interacting positively with them. It is not good to believe in something and expect other people to conform to those beliefs. Although it is not easy to eliminate prejudices and wrong stereotypes, sometimes it is really unnecessary. According to Snyder (1982), “when people meet other people for the first time, they cannot help but notice certain highly visible and distinctive characteristics: sex, race, physical appearance, etc.” Snyder goes on to say that “despite people’s best intentions, their initial impressions of others are determined by their assumptions about such characters.”
Also, it feels really uncomfortable to be different in an environment that you are unfamiliar with. I found that most of the attendees wore similar uniforms and had body tattoos. They wore similar vests with similar bike club inscriptions on them, and almost all of them smoked cigars and drank heavily. They also look masculine and there were only few women at the party. This made me very uncomfortable and I remembered the advice of one of my co-workers not to attend the party. I felt left out until I met Ken.
Also, I felt out of place due to the music, physical appearance, behavioral styles, and habits of the partygoers. The music was loud and the dance seems very physical to me. According to Johnson, in his article Privilege, Power and Difference “People’s perceptions are difficult to control, yet they tend to assume that they can identify characteristics such as race and gender simply by looking at someone.” Johnson goes on to say sometimes these impressions are based on general assumptions. I made a generalization about everyone at the party until I met Ken, who was nice to me and made me feel right at home. He introduced me to the president of the bike club and jokingly said, “I could be the first black person in your club.”
In conclusion, differences cause people to make hasty generalizations about people. It is always better not to stereotype people based on the information available. Stereotyping people can provoke hatred. According to Martin Luther King Jr., hatred is like an uncontrolled cancer; it corrodes the personality and corrodes its vital unity. It can destroy one’s sense of values and objectivity. It can also cause you to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and mistake the true for the false and the false for the true.