[The Hierophant]

Well, here's a little gossip, but with a socially redeeming question attached.

At my workplace (the illustrious 'McCafe' section of the local McDonalds food outlet), there are a large number of employees, all from varying backgrounds. Now, while sitting in the staffroom on my lunchbreak today I was talking with this guy Chris. Y'know, just lunch-time chats with the workmates. Anyways, I looked at a headline in the paper about troop escalations in the middle east and made a comment along the lines of 'oh dear, looks like the shit is about to hit the fan'. Now, this naturally started off a conversation about the seemingly perpetual middle-eastern conflict, nearing the conclusion of which Chris stated word-for-word 'man, all of those Arabs are crazy anyway. We should just wipe them out and the world will be better off'.
Naturally I was a little taken aback by this, but I didn't let it show and merely stated 'well, you'd be surprised. Most everyday joe schmos in the Arab world are pretty much identical to joe schmos like us over here'. At which point he said 'yeah, but they're all hard-core religious over there. They strap bombs to themselves and kill innocent people'. Now, I tried to convince chris that it was only a small handful of people within the Arab population that engage in this sort of behaviour, but he didn't seem to getting the message. So I asked him about one of our workmates named Mohammed, an Arab immigrant from Jordan and practising Muslim who is without a doubt the nicest, friendliest most even-tempered worker on the roster (he was the first person at work to sit down and have friendly, lunch-time chats with me. We call him 'Mo' for short [img]smile.gif[/img] Whenever we're doing the night shift he gives me a ride home afterward and he always has a spare smoke if I need one [img]smile.gif[/img] ). Chris stated, 'yeah, Mo's cool. But he's over here. Over there they're all crazy'.
At this point I had already pointed out the evils of christian extremists such as white-power, the klu klux klan etc. So at seeing that this had made no effect and not wanting to delve deeper into just what difference 'here' and 'there' made, I kinda gave in to despair. Luckily, my lunch break was over so I just went back to work.

What I'm wondering is, how many of you have had similar such brushes with this sort of hateful prejudice? Chris himself is by no means a bad guy, he's another really friendly one on the roster. So naturally it kinda disturbed me to hear him advocating genocide against the middle-eastern peoples. Prejudice is rife it would seem, even in places you wouldn't expect to find it. How dangerous is this kind of thinking, that the actions of a few bely the character of the many, and justify the blanket-condemnation of an entire people? I myself have been guilty of such thinking in the past. Is it even possible to overcome prejudice? To make a conscious effort to see the person and not the stereotype?
Am I over-reacting? (yeah, probably).

Thoughts?

[ 02-23-2003, 12:59 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]