cultural differences that look like defecting

February 21st, 2024

• cultural differences that look like defecting #story from a friend of mine:
  • Group at the indoor playground is mostly Somalian(?) kids, 6-9yos, which is a ratio I haven't seen here before, and I was a little nervous bc they seem to be generally way more roughhousing-friendly than most kids in this area, and they're all older and bigger than my kid, and she always wants to just jump into a pile of other kids and go nuts
  • And at first it looked like they were being really rude and aggressive, constantly kind of shoving one another and trying to start shit, but then I realized none of them seemed to be getting hurt, definitely not more so than any other pack of kids would be
  • And I noticed that every time the bigger kids would get close to a little kid, they would stick their hands out and just continuously nudge/brush the little kid's hands, back, shoulders
  • And then realized they were doing that to one another; the brushes and reactions looked bigger but it was all informational for the most part
  • And it's wild bc it really really looked like they were being aggressive and mean until I stopped to check
  • And I think if I saw a bunch of white kids start spontaneously engaging in that kind of physical contact, it would be a signal that actual fighting was about to happen
  • which is maybe a clue about how racial conflict starts even when neither side wants it or is particularly predisposed to think badly of the other
  • I recall talking to my husband about maybe the white midwesterner side, which is that when they are trying to be polite to you, they give you space and more social "outs" which might feel pretty ostracizing if you come from a culture where that means "fuck you"
  • One can imagine a story where one side always looks like they're trying to get into a fight with you all the time even though they're just engaging in normal informational body language, and the other side looks like they're punishing that side by be ostracizing them when they're really just following a norm of "giving space"
  • And then you get a few nasty incidents between the groups that might not even have anything to do with that, plus a general sense that both groups are sending "hey fuck you" signals to the other with no provocation all of the time, and each side has plenty of normal-reasonable-person evidence to be wary of the other group
  • It's especially interesting that little prosocial friendly gestures were really hard for me to even see while I was feeling defensive about the way the kids in that group were moving
  • Once I realized they weren't just erratically aggressive but actually following a kind of predictable etiquette, they seemed like much friendlier kids!