USA Biker Party Experience

Website design By BotEap.comAnnie is a Caucasian friend and colleague at work. 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, the only thing I know is that she always tells me that she liked African food and she liked to talk with the Africans she met at the parties she invited them to. She has been telling me about her only sibling who lives in West Virginia and she always tells me that she would be delighted for me to meet her sibling. This is because; According to her, she’s been telling her brother how nice I’ve been to her ever since he joined the company I work for.

Website design By BotEap.comI had the opportunity to meet the brother when his 50th birthday party was scheduled for December 2009 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When Annie handed me the invitation at work, she told one of my colleagues about the party. She advised me not to attend because it might be a whites only party based on what she knows about Martinsburg, West Virginia. He was emphatic and he told me that although he is Caucasian, he will not attend such a party.

Website design By BotEap.comThe party took place at Annie’s brother’s house in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The brother is a cyclist and was assisted by several members of his cycling club. The house was full of people when we arrived at 8:30 pm, we immediately walked in the door; I looked around for several minutes and I didn’t see a single person of color. I immediately started feeling unsafe. Annie was busy greeting friends and family. She was following her for introductions. She introduced me to her brother, her mother and some of her sisters. She didn’t remember how many because honestly I already felt insecure. This is because even though I was introduced to the brother, his body language gave me no indication that he was welcome at the party. He jokingly told me to make myself at home and talk to everyone. Most of the people at the party were drinking and smoking heavily. I immediately realized that I don’t belong there.

Website design By BotEap.comI 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 over to Annie and told her how I felt and how I wanted to leave the party. She told her brother that he came to talk to me for a few minutes trying to make me feel at home, telling me about his love for bikes and how some people get the wrong impression that bikers are gang members and racists. . I only listened and responded only when he asked me specific questions. I felt a little relieved during the conversation, after all, he is the host of the party and if he feels at home with me, why should I care about the attendees? According to an article I read in the Harvard Business Review, “Tempered Radicals,” written by Debra Meyerson, in order for a person to feel or be treated differently, he or she must be different from something. That was exactly how I felt. I was different by race, interests, and behavior. Everyone at the party was smoking and talking about bikes. None of the topics of conversation were of interest to me.

Website design By BotEap.comAlso, I feel very uncomfortable when people smoke around me. I found myself in a bad situation because I didn’t use my car for the trip. I decided to let my friend Annie know that I am not enjoying the party and I want to leave, but Annie has attended several African parties with me and she feels like 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 me for the three hours I stayed at the party. This is what WEB DuBois called double consciousness. I decided to strike up conversations with anyone I came across and it worked for me. I started a conversation with one of the bikers named Ken, who was a former Marine and had visited Africa providing security to train President Clinton on his tour of Africa.

Website design By BotEap.comKen provided the source of conversation that put me at ease. He started by telling me how some of the bikers behave and why they behave that way. I found Ken to be 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 there.

Website design By BotEap.comThe party gave me several lessons. First of all, I realized that it is not good to stereotype people. When I got to the party and greeted the few people at the entrance, I concluded that all the partygoers are bad. This really prevented me from positively interacting 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 break prejudices and wrong stereotypes, sometimes it is really unnecessary. According to Snyder (1982), “when people first meet others, they cannot fail to notice certain highly visible and distinctive characteristics: sex, race, physical appearance, and the like.” Snyder goes on to say that “despite people’s best intentions, their initial impressions of others are determined by their assumptions about said characters.”

Website design By BotEap.comAlso, it feels really uncomfortable to be different in an environment that you are not familiar with. I found most of the attendees in similar uniforms and with tattoos on their bodies. They wore similar vests with similar cycling club inscriptions, and almost all of them smoked cigars and drank heavily. They also look masculine and there were only a few women at the party. These made me very uncomfortable and I remembered the advice of one of my co-workers not to come to the party. I felt left out until I met Ken.

Website design By BotEap.comAlso, I felt out of place because of the music, physical appearance, behavioral styles, and habits of the partygoers. The music was loud and the dancing 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.” They are based on general assumptions. I made generalizations about everyone at the party until I met Ken, who was kind to me and made me feel at home. He introduced me to the president of the cycling club and jokingly said, “He might be the first black person in his club.”

Website design By BotEap.comIn conclusion, differences cause people to make hasty generalizations about people. It is always better not to stereotype people based on the information available to you. Stereotyping people can cause hate. According to Martin Luther King Jr., hate is like an uncontrolled cancer; it corrodes the personality and eats away at its vital unity. It can destroy one’s sense of values ​​and objectivity. It can also make you describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.