Travel Discrimination: Might Save Your Life!

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The man labeled "confirmed threat" unsuccessfully tried to pick pocket my camera. I was so angry that I started taking pictures of him with the very camera he tried to steal. It led to a confrontation, but the pictures ended up with the police. As it turns out, this guy is a leader of an organized pick pocket ring, and is dangerous. I was lucky. The two women sitting down helped me out afterward, and their very presence probably kept the thief from getting violent. After traveling a while and having some security close calls, this picture illustrates cartoonishly how the brain starts to function. You can call it stereotyping, profiling, or whatever you want...but I call it necessary to my safety.

Have you ever walked down a street, changing directions when you saw someone that gave you a bad feeling? Afterward, did you realize what you did is arguably sexist, racist, ageist, or some kind of cultural discrimination? In Central and Southeast Asia, I have had many such situations and am convinced that demographic discrimination (profiling) is essential to safe worldly travels. With so much talk of discrimination in America recently, sparked by big political issues being debated, I want to throw some “brain food” out there that many of the political pundits don’t consider, namely, the benefits, necessity, and logic of discrimination.

As a biology major, I had a professor who once said something like “Tell me the nature of the crime, and I’ll tell you the gender of the criminal.” The FBI and other organizations have professionals who are able to look at clues and figure out fairly accurately the background of those involved. How do they do this? Using years of case studies and experience, they recognize correlations. It isn’t magic, and it isn’t some evil, nefarious practice. Rather, it is a way to indentify likelihood and prioritize efforts, thereby catching criminals faster and keeping the public safer. Simply put, certain demographics are much more likely to commit certain crimes. Ignoring that, while maybe “politically correct,” is naive and will never lead us to the roots of problems.

As individuals, we have our own mental files of “case studies” and experience from which we draw sweeping generalizations of others. There is nothing wrong with this, as it is a natural defense mechanism. We would be foolish to try to eliminate this personalized profiling from our own thinking or to attempt to raise children “blind” to the differences of others. If all crimes in every city in the world were committed in equal rations by the different age, gender, racial, religious, and other groups, then sure, we could strive for some kind of utopian society in which everybody is considered equal from the get-go. Unfortunately, those of us in the real world know that this is an impossible undertaking in our lifetimes. To force ourselves or children to be blind to differences opens us up to injury in the “real world.”

I am nearly always aware overseas, in varying degrees, of my personal safety. If I don’t like how somebody looks, and get that “gut feeling” something isn’t right, I remove myself from the environment. When I want a picture of myself, I seek tourists or local women to operate my camera, while intentionally avoiding local men aged 15-50. Let me offer some cases which have led this year to my further profiling or discriminating while traveling:

-In Vietnam, I went to the Cu Chi tunnels with a woman I met through couchsurfing (another topic forthcoming). While enjoying a drink of water near the concession stand, two men in their early 20s kept watching us. I would see one look at my camera or her purse, then I’d catch them looking at each other, doing that unspoken eyetalk we all recognize. Well, they walked by our table a couple times and my “gut feeling” was that these guys had designs on our belongings. I did what I thought necessary to keep us from getting robbed, but it became one of several instances that made me instantly distrustful of almost all Vietnamese men by the time I left the country.

-I avoid being anywhere near “ladyboys,” the famous transgendered population in Thailand, both because of the strangeness of them, and for my own safety. Most, I’m told, are prostitutes and thieves, sometimes using hidden, drug-laced needles to sedate victims or ganging up on drunk men to rob them of their money. Not all are prostitutes, and not all are thieves, but enough are that it’s a good idea to avoid them altogether, don’t you think? Aside from this one group, I’ve found myself generally comfortable and trusting of all Thais, much more so than I was of Vietnamese men.

- Various resources mention that organized pick pocketing in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia is often executed by pairs of men. So, guess who I was wary of, particularly when they were eyeballing my wallet or camera? Sure enough, one day at a busy outdoor market full of families, kids, and elders, two men in their 20s with no shopping bags, just moving along the crowds, were scanning others, particularly tourists. I positioned myself in such a way that they would have to face me head-on if they hoped to rob me. I have no doubt that they were looking for an easy loot. Just a few days later, a man in his 30s, working with others, unsuccessfully attempted to steal my camera while I was leaving the main post office.

-In South Korea, I had a couple instances where very old men wanted to practice English with me. Soon, the conversation would delve into religion. Religion, and learning English, happen to be incredibly big business in South Korea. Next thing I knew, I was being asked to teach English to some kind of religious group. After that happened a couple times, I started automatically labeling old South Korean men, who wanted to talk, as religious zealots targeting me! These were perfectly harmless men, but it illustrates how easily our minds start developing reactions to the patterns we experience. I don’t see myself as some anti-South-Korean-old-religious-men hater, but if I visit Seoul again and am approached, I will have my defenses up, ready to decline an offer to teach English at a church.

-Turning the tables around, as a tourist I am approached every day by dozens of people trying to sell me things. Locals don’t deal with this regular harassment. So, in a way, locals profile tourists as walking piggy banks, full of money. I could grow a big beard, shave my head bald, trade clothing with a local, and I believe I would still get approached. Expats I’ve met that have been living overseas for years continue to stand out like sore thumbs. I have that “foreigner” look about me and there is nothing I can do to erase it. As a man traveling alone, I get propositioned nearly every day. When I’ve shared this with female tourists, most are somewhat amazed. They are immune to the illegal human trafficking and sex industry that is rampant in Southeast Asia. Why do they pick on me? Because I fit a specific demographic that has a much higher likelihood of being interested in their “products.” They would be wasting their time trying to get middle-aged women to visit a go-go bar. Tourists are “victims” of this business profiling, but it still goes to show how people, the world over, make sweeping judgments based on appearances.

Even within the examples given, I don’t fully breakdown the detail of discrimination I use. It is far too complex and involves some intuition. For instance, it is too general to say I am wary of all Vietnamese men. In fact, when in Vietnam, I was unworried about men who appeared wealthy, because I had no reason to believe they would want the $30 I carried in my wallet. Men walking around with their wives or children seemed harmless to me. Taxi drivers, while incredibly annoying, were not a threat to me. We all analyze, even if subconsciously, so many different aspects of people to determine their agendas, to determine if we can trust them.

My favorite part of traveling is interacting with locals. I like to gain a deeper understanding of cultures than what I read in the travel books or see in movies. The differences among people are what make us fascinating, interesting, and worth celebrating. Why would we want to become some homogeneous, boring society? Trying to be “blind” to differences will not solve any problems. Maybe a better solution is to keep our eyes wide open, fully acknowledge then learn about those differences.

It’s okay to have preconceived notions—often, those notions are correct! If incorrect, we at least have an initial basis from which to learn. It’s okay to “discriminate” or “profile,” using our experiences to keep safe from those most likely to do us harm. Let’s get out of our minds this idea that any kind of discrimination and profiling are politically incorrect and despicable.

My intent here is to demonstrate that working toward a “colorblind, gender-blind, age-blind” society is naive at best, potentially unsafe, and hypocritical in attempts to tolerate and celebrate diversity. Additionally, my intent is to show that all of us have experiences that shape how we view others, and that treating groups of people differently isn’t necessarily so simplistic that we should cry “racism,” or “sexism” every time our feelings get hurt. That “discrimination” we all exhibit is often based on a natural desire for self preservation, shaped by our experiences, and has nothing evil or ignorant about it.

What do you think? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt at risk from a person you had never seen before or talked to? When traveling overseas and initiating conversations with strangers or seeking help, do you tend to favor a certain demographic or do you just grab the nearest person, having 100% trust in everyone? Do you think having a personal “profiling” mental database has been helpful to you, or is it something you feel needs to be eliminated from our thinking if we are to have a better society?