It was 11 o’clock at night. I was about to enter the departure hall. Aisyah, my only niece was crying badly. She might not understand what was happening, but she must be upset seeing the whole family was hugging each other. Mom passed away last year and I wasn’t there by her side. So, I decided to spend my whole summer in Malaysia, to be there with my family, especially my dad who was feeling down since the loss.
After my sister and I met up in London Gatwick International Airport, we took a bus to Heathrow International Airport. I had to catch another flight to Pittsburgh on the next morning. I am going back to the States to continue my third year in college. I am so close to my sister, that it was so hard for us to say goodbye.
After 15 hours of flight, all I can think of is to rest. I was dreaming about the bed. I was so sad to leave my family. I did not have the guts to do anything, not even eat or drink. I was so disturbed that I even left my purse in the restroom. Fortunately it was still there when I went to search for it. I can’t believe how reckless I am.
My flight from Heathrow to Pittsburgh took about 6 hours. I needed to hurry as I had to catch a connecting flight to my last destination, Cleveland. I bet I was not the only one who needed to go out quick. As soon as the plane stopped, everybody stood up taking their luggage from the upper compartment.
The passengers were stunned to the announcement made by the stewardess. We were told not to leave the plane until further notice. Soon after that, a group of people came in. The lady next to me recognized those people as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). I was so worried that I was going to miss my next flight.
Nobody informed us what actually happened. The security told us that we needed to go through a few security procedures due to an incident in that flight. I did not want to be prejudice, but I knew there’s something wrong from the moment all FBI officers were staring at me, when they got into the plane.
All passengers and their luggage needed to be scanned. A few bags were searched, and mine were not excluded. Luck was on my side.
“Let her go, she’s just a student,” said a mid-40 woman supervisor to her assistant when I was referred to her. I was relieved and ran as fast as I could to the passport clearance booth. I got only an hour to catch up my next flight.
When I was queuing up, an officer approached me. He asked me to follow him to the office. I was given a full explanation on what happened in the plane just now. Someone wrote unidentified characters on the wall in the rear lavatory using a black marker pen. The officer added that they were looking for the person who supposed to be responsible for the incident. I was so shocked that I was chosen, together with two other Indian men.
I was nervous and fretful, even though I know I shouldn’t. I did not know how to prove that I didn’t do it.
“I was sitting at the 2nd row of the Economy class. I did go to the lavatory a few times, but the one I went to is the one in front. You can ask other passengers that I did not even go to the back of the plane. I bet most of the passengers can recognize me, I am the only one wearing the scarf.”
I ran to the next station where a few officers were checking the hand luggage. I thought, I was done with this issue, but I was definitely wrong. One of the officers found a marker pen inside my backpack. The black permanent marker pen was the same type as the one used to write in the lavatory. I just recalled, I took the marker pen out when I was in London. I needed it to mark my checked-in luggage.
It was so frustrating to know that I’d missed my connecting flight to Cleveland. I started to be frantic and wrathful. Again, I was in probe with the white-Caucasian officer. He has a face of a typical FBI officer, he has a thick moustache, large eyes and very pointed nose. Even though he’s a short guy, he has a strongly built body. This time, he was not alone. A few other officers joined him and I realized at that time, almost all eyes in the hall were looking at me.
It was funny that I sometimes thought that this setup might be the one show that I watched on the television where they were pranking other people. It was unbelievable that I was still able to smile to myself at this situation.
One of the officers showed me the picture of that writing. She asked me whether I can recognize the writing or not. “Do you know any Arabic character?”
“Well, I know a few characters.”
I was shocked to see that the writing was nothing near to Arabic character; it was more to numbers and scratches as if that person was trying to erase it.
I remember one of the case studies that we went over in my Psychology class, it was about the prejudice in US authority officers. This is one of the examples. I am startled to see how prejudice can affect our judgments and how social psychology can explain the human interactions.
Prejudice refers to negative feelings towards persons based on their membership and certain groups. The formation of prejudice results from stereotype that begins with the tendency for people to group themselves and others into social categories. Social categorization allows perceivers make quick inferences about group members. However, this spawns the outgroup homogeneity effect, where people tend to assume that there is more similarity among members of outgroups than ingroups.
“In my opinion, it’s just a single-digit number.”
One of the officers agreed with my opinion but his colleagues were all looking at him with that look. I thought to myself, this is one of the process-loss of group, identified as groupthink. Groupthink happens when there is an excessive tendency to seek concurrence among group members. It emerges when the need for agreement takes priority over the motivation to obtain accurate information and make appropriate decision.
In this incident, contrast effect takes place. It is obvious that the FBI officers tend to perceive stimuli that differ from expectations as being more different than they really are. In the worse case, negatively stereotyped and devalued community can be recognized as a stigmatized group. Research has documented a huge and growing list of groups whose members show underperformance and performance-impairing behaviors when a negative stereotype about their abilities is made relevant. Furthermore, this technique will facilitate to form cross-ethnic friendships and discard ethnic and cultural stereotypes. It has the potential to improve education dramatically in a multi-cultural world by revolutionizing the way people think.
Jennifer Eberhardt and others (2004) did conduct an experiment with police officers. Some of the officers were shown white faces and others, black faces. It was revealed that the officers were more likely to rate a black face as “criminal” than a white face.
There are some approaches that have been suggested for combating stereotypes, prejudices and discriminations such as intergroup contact, the jigsaw classroom, the decategorization and recategorization; and changing cultures and motivation. In other words, we should improve our attitudes toward the outgroup and increase the perceived variability of the outgroup. Jigsaw classroom was first come to mind of Elliot Arronson when there was an incident in Columbine High School in 1999. The Jigsaw classroom is a specific cooperative learning technique. This “cooperation by design” facilitates interaction among all students in the class. This will eventually lead them to value each other as contributors to their common task.
In brief, changing the social structures will help to reduce the conflict-promoting effect of social categorization.
