Who am I? I know this will sound a bit weird and ironic but I don’t actually know just yet. I know in general what to answer when I’m asked this question, I can tell them my name, my age, and sometimes when necessary, my nationality. Yet I find that the real answer to this question is quite complex.

Even after turning 21 years old, I still wonder if our names truly reveal anything about who we are. My father called me Randa wondering if my mother and I would be alike. I see myself in her sometimes. My name means “delicate desert tree” and I somehow find myself hidden between those words, so strong yet the smallest things can affect me.

I can say that I was born in a privileged family and honestly this has shaped a lot of things in my personality. Even though, this is not the most important thing about me at all, however it did open up my eyes to numerous things in life. Saying that I understand the world and the different social classes around me in Egypt wouldn’t be completely realistic after all. Even if we try to see AUC as a mini “melting pot”, but that’s really not the case. I still feel like we’re in a bubble. All of this influenced my behavior, some in good ways, others in bad ways. Although, one thing I try to have is empathy and I hope that my behavior is always influenced by my “inner compass”. I am a person who feel things deeply, which is not always the best thing, it’s sometimes exhausting. At AUC, I know a lot of people but knowing them does not mean that they really know who I am. In my opinion, social media plays a pretty big role in forming wrong ideas if you ask me. If you see my instagram, of course you’re gonna think that I am careless privileged young girl, having fun and partying on weekends, but that’s like 1% of who I am. Going back to what I was saying, people around me get this “single story” about me, which is okay a side of me but not who I am. Which brings us to the TED talk of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which I found really interesting and I would recommend anyone to watch. “The danger of a single story” I really like the title. Having heard only one side of a story is really dangerous in some cases. It can lead to being offensive sometimes even if you don’t mean it. I feel like it can even lead to biases later on.

Binna Kandola explained in his video that “the world is divided into those who recognize they have bias and those who don’t – and those who believe they have no bias generally have the most unconscious bias”. Which can also be related to the article “The problem of othering” that explains that people tend to group people unconsciously and don’t even realize it sometimes. The problem with biased is that its not always easy to figure out. One would think that a psychologist would not have biases, but Kandola himself admitted that when he took the Implicit Association Test, he found out that he is unconsciously more favorable towards asians. However, Kandola mentioned that ‘reflecting on our own behaviors, setting fairness as a goal when making decisions and saying I’m not going to stereotype’ can help reduce bias. For me, you’re not the place you are born in, not the family you have or the money in your bank account. You are however, how you treat other people. Unfortunately, with the recent outbreak of the Corona virus, a lot of people are using it as an excuse to be ignorant and racist. I saw a video on Facebook yesterday that broke my heart. Just because the virus began spreading in Asia, specifically in China, people think they have the right to be biased against them? Ironically, they’re the same people who get upset if the West portrays them as terrorists. I hope one day Egyptians can really see that not everything is considered funny.

So after watching the video of Kandola, I decided to take a couple of IATs to see for myself if it works. Yes, it was also a requirement for this assignment but I was gonna take it anyways. The first one I took was the religion one. Apparently, I have a “slight automatic preference for Christianity over Judaism”. Is this because I dated a christian guy before? I wonder if this means anything. I don’t have a problem with jews, I never even really interacted with one I guess, so maybe that’s why. The second test I took was the gender-career one. I was so happy with the results cause it just reaffirmed my beliefs. I got “little or no automatic association between female and male with career and family. Yup, you got that right IAT, feminist for life. Even though, some would think that because my mother does not work that I would be maybe biased to relating women with family life. However, that’s not the case at all. My mother taught me to be a strong independent women, and she’s one of the main reasons I behave the way I do. My father on the other hand is biased against women and this has affected me in lots of things in my life. His famous “if you were a boy” sentence makes my blood boil every time. I feel like this is partly why I became such a feminist. I feel like my dad’s biases held me from doing things I wanted to do in my life, one of them was study abroad. So this is why I am here writing this assignment at AUC.

We all have biases, some more than others of course, but at the end of the day we all have them. I think my mom is biased towards white people more than black people, wonder what the IAT will say if she took it, maybe I’ll try to make her take it. I remember as a kid, we used to have a Nigerian maid and whenever I would do a bad thing, my mom would tell me I’ll tell her and this was her way of “scaring” me I guess. I won’t lie, I would get scared but I was a kid I did not really get all of this. I feel like biases can really be influenced by our parents since a young age but it’s in our hands to change this attitude the more we grow up and understand the world. I don’t think I have this bias nowadays, or at least I am trying to learn not to have it. In the end of this blog post I’ll leave you with this quote that I once read somewhere that said “It’s not at all hard to understand a person, it’s only hard to listen without bias.“

Reference for the featured image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_%22I_love_you%22_tile_wall,Place_des_Abbesses,_Paris-_panoramio.jpg