One of my classmates, trapped in pre-comps isolation, hosted a barbeque yesterday for doctoral students.  She provided the burgers, the sausages, the condiments, and a tossed salad.  Her instructions were to bring what we wanted to drink, but I wanted to bring salads -- cuz I like more salad and less meat myself, so I could solve the problem by bringing them, I figured.  Besides, I like breaking rules like that.

Despite downpours and thunder storms before, during and after, it was a good time.  While not all my favourite doctoral students were there, I had a chance to meet several PoliSci doctoral students, who have already written their comps -- two questions, no more than seven pages each, and it's over.  I'm jealous! I also had a chance to reacquaint myself with classmates who had started the year I did, and some who started this year, but weren't in either of the two classes I took.

I was struck, looking around, that several of my classmates are far braver than I, particulary those whose first language isn't English, and whose country of origin is far (culturally and geographically) from North America.  India, Turkey, Kazakhstan were represented last night.  I looked at them, and wondered "How in heck did they get here, anyway? What do they think of having made this decision?  Do they have regrets? Is it horribly lonely?"

Then I realized I didn't know any of them well enough to ask.   It takes more time to get to know people from other countries and of other languages, and I've not done it.  At least not with the four who were there last night.  And that, I realized, was the root of Xenophobia, of racism, of bigotry.   Not taking the time.  I don't think I'm a racist.. but I have been selectively lazy!

Partly, it's the extra effort it takes to "hear" what is being said: to listen actively, instead of hearing a half-syllable and knowing what the rest of the word, and maybe the rest of the sentence, is likely to be.  This is not dissimilar from the extra effort to listen to someone with some speech impairment, which I have trained myself to do.

Then there is the true obstacle: there is no cultural short-hand.   Partly that's language.  After all, when one is trying to translate as one speaks, the clever turn of phrase is often lost in the process.  (Or at least I've found that to be the case when translating into my section language, which happens to be French.)  Part of it is a life-time's experience in a different context. 

For example, when I think of the Mafia, I think of movies mostly -- Godfather (in all its versions), Pulp Fiction, I Married the Mob.  In other words, I think of Americans of Italian descent who seem to have enormous impact on the lives of their fellow members and clients, and otherwise, are a fictional phenomenon.  When my colleague Saule thinks of the Mafia, she thinks of the Russians who terrorize the economy, having robbed the Kazakhstani people of their capitalist and democratic hopes and dreams.

When I speak of writing a Master's thesis, I think of having lived in an unusually white city where the biggest employers are the insurance companies and the university, dithering my way through my  mid-20s.  When I talk to Arslan and Bourras, they talk of going to a university in Turkey where they studied in English, and wrote their theses in English, and prepared for the day they would do graduate work in public policy in Canada. 

When I speak of my background in public policy, I am revered as an "established" person in the field.  When my colleagues from Rwanda or Ghana or India speak of their experience, they are seen as interesting curiosities who worked for a foreign government doing something or other, for varying lengths of time.   We don't know what their experience means.  And we don't probe and ask.

Would my colleagues like to be quizzed? Does it take too much energy for them to try to build intimate relationships with people whose language is foreign, and whose experience and culture and foreign, and who they will likely leave behind four or five years down the road?  Maybe they view us as curiosities: people who wouldn't know a real public policy challenge if we tripped over one; spoiled brats who take higher education for granted.  Maybe the divide is as much of their making as ours, by omission or comission, in both directions. 

It's a divide I regret, whoever is responsible for it, and however it has emerged.  It is a divide, however, that may never be bridged, as we all struggle to live our lives and complete the tasks required to jump through all the correct hoops in the right order, to get the almight degree.  I only hope that for them, the degree is a ticket to a life they find familiar and comfortable and filled with intimacy, when all this is over.

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