Hard to judge a book by its cover

Submitted by R. Craigen (Canada), Jan 16, 2015 at 18:49

It's easy for visitors to get the wrong impression of a place by walking through and assessing the experience by surface impressions. I think your experiences in the "sensitive zones" in Europe might be this, a case of "tourist journalism". I don't mean to denigrate your observations, they are surely quite real. I just spent 3 months visiting in Ireland, and did not get the impression of economic depression. Yet the locals, and those who write about Ireland, have assured me that its situation is still rather fragile. I just spent a couple of months in Japan, and found it was hard to get a measure of the society by simply walking around and observing. Yet that gave a much better idea when you get off the beaten track than when you visit the sites that are there for the visitor. I loved, in both countries, taking an entire day and walking at random far off into the suburbs, just looking at how people lived and presented themselves in areas that are NOT set up for non-locals. In both cases it is very different from the usual "places to go". Yet even then I was keenly aware that you only get a very thin slice of the experience. You do not go into people's homes, you don't see what political organization is happening behind the scenes, you don't experience (much of) the night life, or the schools, or the crime scene -- it would be stupid to seek that out and try to assess it as a casual eyewitness.

Some years ago I was at a conference in Boca Raton, Florida. My hotel was perhaps 5 km from FSU where the meeting was held. It was a lovely day and I had lots of time, so I decided to walk to the meeting. I had a map, but did not know the area at all.

I perceived the shortest route went over a set of tracks. I noticed a slight change in the housing. Not dramatic, but things were a little more "clapboard" and depressed. Yet the yards were neat and tidy. There were few people on the street, and they were very quiet. An older gentleman, who happened to be black, just watched me pass by, silently, on his porch. I nodded a greeting; he did not respond.

I saw some young folks, all black, in the distance. They would stop what they were doing, and watch me pass. Then after about 15 minutes, a tall and friendly-looking young man came up as I walked by, paced himself to walk beside me, and opened a conversation. He wanted to know how I came to be walking through that neighbourhood. And he informed me that it was quite dangerous for a person of "my colour" to be there alone. He was not threatening. In fact, he offered to walk with me -- and then he did, all the way to the university. Now, I saw no indication of anything threatening in the neighbourhood, but apparently it was unspoken, and unsignalled, that white folks are simply not welcome. A "sort of" no-go zone deep in the U.S. But a visitor could not determine that by any appearances. Sure, everyone was a lovely dark colour, but what what that meant to me? Coming from Canada and teaching university to students from all over the world I do not have much sensitivity to that sort of thing. I tend to live in neighbourhoods with a lot of immigrants. I am quite accustomed to standing out as the only white person in the room.

What I'm saying is that I could not simply walk through that neighbourhood and give you an accurate assessment of the socially exclusive nature of it, and the not-so-obvious threat to one's safety that lurked under its surface. I imagine one could visit Pakistan or Nigeria and come away having not seen a Taliban riot or Boko Haram raid, and come away pooh-poohing the idea that they are basket cases of violence and extremism.

Of course there is a corresponding and opposite mistake one can make, by basing one's entire understanding of a place by the colourful events and news stories that emerge from it. You may see videos of riots and hear stories of attacks, but even in a basket case region, most of the time life probably seems pretty "normal". And, frankly, is normal. Many of my Canadian friends vacation in Cuba. NONE of them have seen instances of the awful human rights abuses and political oppression happening there. That does not mean it is not happening. It means that visitors are unlikely to see it. And we must keep that in mind.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".