Different, Not Wrong: Why Cultural Differences Deserve Respect

1Before you read

1. Think of a custom that visitors to Rwanda might find surprising. How would you explain it?
2. Is it ever right to criticise another culture's custom? Note your answer; you will return to it.

2Reading: Different, Not Wrong

1 Aline had been working in a laboratory abroad for three weeks when her supervisor asked, kindly but directly, whether she was unhappy with the project. She was astonished. She had worked hard, arrived early and never once contradicted him. It took a long conversation to find the cause. Whenever he spoke to her, she lowered her eyes, as she had been taught to do before an older person. To him, a student who would not meet his gaze seemed bored, or even evasive. Two respectful people, each behaving well by the rules they knew, had misread each other completely.

2 A model often used to explain such moments compares a culture to an iceberg. Above the waterline are the things a visitor notices at once: food, dress, music, language and festivals. Below it, far larger and largely invisible, lie the assumptions that give those things their meaning: how a society thinks about time, age, privacy and family duty, or how close two people should stand in a conversation. Most misunderstandings happen below the waterline, which is precisely why they are so difficult to spot.

3 Faced with an unfamiliar custom, our first instinct is to judge it by our own. Social scientists call this ethnocentrism: treating the ways of one's own group as the standard against which all others are measured. It is a natural reflex, but a costly one, because it turns a difference into a defect. Eating with the right hand is not less civilised than eating with a fork; arriving exactly on time is not more virtuous than arriving when the gathering has properly begun. They are different answers to the same questions.

4 There are at least three reasons to replace that reflex with respect. The first is practical. Study, trade, diplomacy and tourism all depend on people from different backgrounds working together, and a guest who feels judged does not return. The second is moral: every culture carries the accumulated experience of the people who built it, and to dismiss it is to dismiss them. The third is that difference is a resource. A society that pays attention to other ways of living gains new ideas, just as a farmer gains from knowing more than one way to protect the soil.

5 Respect, however, is not the same as approving of everything. Some practices, in every part of the world, harm the people who live under them: marrying off children, denying girls an education, punishing people for who they are. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, states that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights". A useful test, then, is whether a custom protects or damages the dignity and safety of the people it affects. Respect for a culture never requires silence about harm done to a person.

6 In daily life, respect is less a philosophy than a habit. It means asking before assuming, observing before acting and, when something seems strange, describing what you saw before deciding what it means. "She didn't look at me" is a description; "she isn't interested" is an interpretation, and it may be wrong.

7 Aline now begins every new working relationship with one sentence: "Where I come from, lowering my eyes is a sign of respect." Her supervisor laughed when she first said it, then told her about his own first week in Kigali, when he had been puzzled by how long greetings took. The difference had not disappeared. It had simply become a conversation instead of a problem.

Aline is an imagined student. The quotation is from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

3The culture iceberg

4Comprehension

1. Why did Aline's supervisor think she was unhappy? (paragraph 1)
2. Name two things above the waterline and two below it, according to paragraph 2.
3. Why, according to the writer, are misunderstandings "so difficult to spot"?
4. Explain in your own words what ethnocentrism is and why the writer calls it "costly".
5. List the three reasons the writer gives for respecting other cultures.
6. What test does the writer propose for deciding whether a custom deserves respect?
7. In paragraph 6, what is the difference between a description and an interpretation? Give an example of your own.
8. How does the final paragraph show that the misunderstanding has been solved, although "the difference had not disappeared"?
9. The writer says respect "never requires silence about harm done to a person". Do you agree? Give a reason and an example.

Show answersHide answers

1. Because she lowered her eyes when he spoke to her; to him, avoiding his gaze seemed bored or evasive.
2. Above: any two of food, dress, music, language, festivals. Below: any two of ideas about time, age, privacy, family duty, how close people stand.
3. Because they happen below the waterline, among hidden assumptions that people do not notice or talk about.
4. Judging other cultures by the standards of your own. It is costly because it turns a difference into a defect: we see other people as wrong rather than different.
5. It is practical (study, trade and tourism depend on working together); it is moral (a culture carries the experience of its people); and difference is a resource (it brings new ideas).
6. Whether the custom protects or damages the dignity and safety of the people it affects.
7. A description says only what happened; an interpretation says what it means and may be wrong. Example: "He ate with his hands" (description) / "He has bad manners" (interpretation).
8. Aline explains her custom at the start, and her supervisor shares his own puzzlement; they now talk about the difference instead of misreading it.
9. Open answer. A good answer takes a position and gives an example, for example child marriage: respecting a community does not mean accepting harm to a girl.

5Vocabulary in context