Did you judge me? Transform stereotype, racism, and your world | Zamina Mithani | TEDxStanleyPark
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__QsI0hU_g Video ID: e__QsI0hU_g ============================================================ [Music] [Applause] when I was in grade 3 I went from this to this the next et little bend and I realized how my simple choice to wear a piece of cloth on my head would change my life forever immediately my classmates started judging me those that used to be my friends started distancing themselves from me until the point came where one girl to try and bully me said hey I know why you wear that it's because you have rainbow hair so I looked at her not knowing what to say and said I know it's because I'm trying to hide my bald spots judging others based on their appearance is not just dumb it can be damaging when we judge people by how they look we lose out on the opportunity to learn from or about them and society loses out on those opportunities to collaborate instead our biases become our barriers our words become our walls and instead of being kind to one another we start categorizing each other into different kinds the problem is the first time we see someone sometimes we think enough we know enough to pass a judgement and I'll give you an example a couple of months ago I was visiting my grandmother in Toronto and we were trying to find parking on Yonge Street so as I'm going into this one spot she holds my hand and she says saamana don't park here so I looked at her and said nonny why not and she said well do you see that man in the hoodie he looks like a thief looks like a thief because he's wearing a hoodie I see people in the audience squirming right now wearing their hoodies what if in fact he was a traffic engineer trying to fix the traffic lights or Drake trying to find his cellphone on the sidewalk I don't know I don't know because I decided to park two blocks away a common question that I get once people figure out that I can speak English is they ask they asked me where are you from like where are you really from Syria India or from that show on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles well I think I would make a fantastic Ninja Turtle the first two are incorrect because in fact I was born and raised right here in Vancouver but before I get a chance to answer that question before I get a chance to answer that question some have already answered it for me some have already judged me by what's on my head without bothering to find out what's in it today our society is obsessed with appearance and we only need to look at our smartphones to know that this is true the founders of Facebook tinder Instagram snapchat have made billions off of this idea that nobody here likes to look bad nobody here not you not me likes to look bad or be perceived negatively or incorrectly based only upon our appearance and that's why we try so hard to fit in just look at Facebook when we post our new profile picture don't we think hmmm how many likes am I going to get how many comments am I going to get and perhaps if you're single your favorite app might be tinder or if you're single and Muslim they've come up with a new app called Mandir but whatever your type we swipe left and right judge left and right faster than we order our morning cup of coffee so instead of judging people by their appearance why can't we judge them by their actions by the stories they share by the company they keep by their contributions to society when I was in grade seven my school was fundraising for a village in Haiti but we weren't quite raising enough so my teacher came to me and said saamana I need you to give an announcement tomorrow's parent-teacher assembly asking them to donate more so being the total Keener that I was I said okay I'll do it and I got up the next morning in my uniform and of course my hijab and stood there with a piece of paper in my hand and I saw that the parents were looking at me up and down like where did this Muslim girl come from but I wasn't fazed and I stood there just as everyone thought I was gonna read out an ordinary announcement I reached into my bag and put on these silver Snoop Dog shades and a blood-red diamond studded jacket that would have made Elton John a bit jealous and I stood there and all of my gaudy gear and I started rapping it doesn't matter where you're from or where you think you're gonna be we're all just one when you go skiing deep Haiti or Canada were all the same don't call me by my label just call me by my name but I swear the parents looked at me the most confused look I have ever seen they were probably thinking - that really happen did Kanye West go east and have a kid with Isis but surprisingly as soon as I stopped rapping they started clapping and pretty soon we ended up raising more money than we ever expected so what you might think the moral of the story is is that it pays to be different and sure it paid for those five minutes but I think the only reason it did was because I had completely obliterated their pre-judgement because we would have thought that a hijab' girl could rap right and it shows equating experience with appearance is so arbitrary just look at history did Einstein voluminous hair have anything to do with his theory on relativity did Gandhi's loincloth help him conquer colonialism and did the hippy mustache of Hitler make him any less of a bad person look at me I am a visibly Muslim woman doing a talk on stereotyping this is a stereotype because if you think about it there are so many Muslims who don't look like me and there are so many people who look like me who are just cold [Applause] [Music] why distinguish which one is which instead we need to start judging our judgments I stumbled across a way to do this to judge our pre judgments on a cold rainy Vancouver afternoon my friends and I were driving near the Downtown Eastside and we stopped at an intersection at Pigeon Park we looked out of the window and saw a group of homeless men huddled shivering in the cold their cardboard boxes damp ties flailing in the wind and there was one particular man who was sitting inside of his cardboard box and we looked at him his dark skin a scraggly beard and a deep scar down his right cheek the light turned green and we went off but that image still stayed in my mind so I turned to my friends and said listen we have to go back we have to help these hungry people on the streets and so that's what we did we went back to our dorms and made the best college styled egg salad sandwiches went back out onto the streets and started giving them out and as we're giving them out I feel a tap on my shoulder I turn around and it's none other than that same homeless man that I had seen before he looked at me and I looked at him his blue eyes and my brown two people who had been put into boxes their entire lives me in a racial box and him in a cardboard one I turned to him and quickly handed him to egg salad sandwiches and with his hands trembling he said thank you thank you for my first meal in three days he continued I'm so sorry about the kinds of things that people might say about those who look like you I want you to know that none of it is true please continue to be who you are please continue to be kind I didn't know what to say so I just looked at him and said sir what's your name he said wow it's been a long time since anyone has asked me my name my name is Jacob so I said Jacob thank you I hope you have a wonderful day and he left that day Jacob taught me a very important lesson on how to judge your judgement and that is to continue to be kind that this small simple act of kindness is the bridge that connects judgments from afar and connection from up close because if I had judged Jacob that day if I had called him dirty diseased downtrodden unemployed or if he had looked at me as something that he may have seen on the news the neither one of us would have understood each other in a light that the world normally never sees and it shows this idea of us and them is so outdated it blocks way back it belongs way back in the day not back in the day when we had land mines further back when we were nomadic hunters on savannas when the idea of us was a fellow human and them was a hungry lion trying to eat us but since our emerge from savannas to cities and then from cities to Siri we've evolved but our thinking hasn't we're still stuck in this primitive idea that those who look like us are more superior to those that don't this whole idea of judgment more importantly is a first step it's a first step into quicksand because pretty soon we've gone from judgment to prejudice and from prejudiced is discrimination and then we've gone from a world of immigration bans and hashtags to targeted shootings and ethnic cleansing because all it takes is for one person to judge all it takes is for one basement to look at a child in a hoodie and call him a thief all it takes is for one president to get up on TV and call Mexicans rapists all it takes is for one employer to look at me and say sorry you don't look like the right fit so let's avoid this judgment and let's avoid this first step and there are two things that you can do today to help avoid taking this step of prejudgment and the first is yes to look kindly upon everyone that you meet that it doesn't matter what people look like or where they're really from what matters at the end of the day is how they can help us grow and sometimes it's the people that don't look like us that teach us the most that you may be surprised that that neighbor of yours with curly dreadlocks and cheetah print leggings is actually a neurosurgeon who saves lives every day and when you open your hearts to kindness and make that the center of your thoughts on judgement then and only then can we move beyond a world of labels and towards a world of love the second thing is to look at the upside the positive rather than the downside of those who look different than us sometimes we're really quick to feel like we have enough information to pass a judgement just like my grandma but it's important that we look at people for who they are that the greatest leaders of our worlds than Mandela's and the Malolos were all given awards and given honor based on their merit and not on their melanin and so if we do these three things if we judge our judgment if we look kindly upon everyone and if we look at the upside rather than the downside of those who look different than us then we will discover that beyond our hoodies and hijabs we are all just raw red flesh that the white girl and the black boy the Muslim father and the Jewish mother the in the sand and the grandmother on a respirator all have one thing in common when you cut us we bleed and when you tickle us we smile and if you ask us do we look the same we will probably say no no we don't we don't look the same and that is precisely what makes our species so beautiful so next time you jump to judgment remember it doesn't matter where you're from or where you think you're gonna be we're all just one when you go skin deep [Applause] thank you [Applause]