Discussion in the #SIPS2019 diversity session: being a truly diverse society and a node in the community means bringing in people with very different cultural notions of diversity than North Americans.
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It might sound as not that bad, but imagine if every time you interacted with somebody about your research you also had to give a quick history of you & your homeland. It might seem like I'm exaggerating but I'm sadly not. I have to go through genocide, war, what ethnicity I am.
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This deeply taints my interactions with people and makes it much harder for me to have a chat with them. I feel respected often and listened to, but I also feel like a museum exhibit too.
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And I'm not that clueless or arrogant to assume this is just me, anybody who has roots outside the West (I have seen it) is expected to do this type of education to their academic peers. It's epistemic exploitation, see:https://philpapers.org/rec/NOREE-2
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Yup, pretty much. I kinda stopped thinking about it and have a relatively well practiced a) tourist board answer or b) short history lesson.
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I do feel how this outside gaze molded my own relationship to where I'm from - I kinda developed a reflex to orientalize my own heritage, a reflex I'm trying to consciously control now.
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I like saying I'm from the Middle East or the Levant or Western Asia without saying which country. Just to avoid the specific stuff of "are you Greek or Turkish?" blah blah. It doesn't actually work but it helps with the inevitable geography lesson.
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Do you then get the "wait, you say Cyprus is levantine/middle eastern?"

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Certainly. Often people literally think it's 2 hours away, especially Germans for some reason.
End of conversation
New conversation -
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