Thoughts on Discrimination
This is not the average blog post on Blogsessive and it’s not going to become a habit approaching such matters. Ramblings are not what I love doing. This is merely a way to express my concerns about online discrimination. My thoughts about certain things that many people take for granted while other wish they could do or have.
Ever since I started in the online business I had to face certain fears and concerns that the international public had about eastern european people, people coming from the ex-soviet block. More specific, we Romanians have been seen in every movie or TV news as orphans, beggars, gypsies and fortune tellers. Believe me, that stamp is quite hard to fight sometimes.
When the internet era came along, we had to fight one more prejudice: the Romanian hacker. It would be hypocritical of me not to admit that we had (have) our share of “hackers” and lowlifes trying to scheme other honest people in the online environment. But are we all hackers? Are we all gypsies? Beggars? Orphans? NO!
Is every Arab a terrorist? Is every black man a drug dealing gang-banger? Some people can’t help thinking that they could be.
That’s prejudiced. And prejudice leads to mass discrimination.
You might wonder where did this blog post came from? What does it have to do with Blogsessive?
In just about a couple of weeks, Blogsessive is going celebrate its one year anniversary and I with it, along with you all. And since SitePoint have such an amazing offer, I’ve decided two take the offer for 2 reasons:
- 100% of the sales go to the Victorian Bushfire Assistance Fund;
- I wanted to offer the books as gifts here with the 1 year anniversary.
But wait a second. I cannot buy them. I’m from Romania. My credit card smells of hacking intentions and my PayPal account uses fake virtual money. My question to you dear folks is: If PayPal trusted us to do business, isn’t it discriminatory to think otherwise?
I know the answer. Freedom of choice. You choose to do business with whomever you want. Still, that doesn’t help me feeling a bit frustrated, feeling helpless being considered a thief without ever being charged of anything. Can’t help feeling sad for putting the best I can here on Blogsessive and never asking for anything in return and being denied the right to buy a PDF book.
And their service is not the only one with this kind of country based judgment. There are hundreds more services that we would love to join, use, contribute to, but we can’t.
Yes! We Romanians have hackers among us. Germans have them too. British, French, Indian, Chinese Americans, they all have them. But you choose your battles carefully.
Well my friends, the battles should not be carried with a nation, any nation for that matter. The battles should be carrier with your own security systems and the security of the services you use.
Bad will and skills to do bad things can be found in any place of the globe, and if your service or the services you used are not prepared for “Romanian hackers”, why would they be against anyone else?
Meanwhile, I can deal without that PDF book, and I’m still proud of being Romanian for at least one thousand reasons from past history to present. And I’m still thankful that this blog gave me the chance to meet so many wonderful people from allover the world – YOU!
My apologies to those looking for another “blog tips” post. The one that should have went public is still in the drafts, almost finished, as I really needed to take this of my chest, hoping that you the one who reads this will see things a little bit more different from now on.
Stay safe, helpful, open-minded and blog on!
PS: If you have any thoughts on the topic of discrimination – any kind of it – would love to read them in the comments section or in a blog post on your own blog.
-
- Spread the love!
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
- Delicious
- Free, fast RSS updates?
- Join the 2,141 subscribers NOW!
Try living abroad as a Romanian, especially in countries that had some experience with the said gypsies etc. I could not find a room to rent in France because I was Romanian. The moment I called and they heard me speak the room was suddenly “taken”.
Or try running a business in a Commonwealth country while having a Romanian (or any Easter European) accent. I can’t even tell you how many leads I lost because I’m not a native English speaker.
Discrimination is well and truly alive, everywhere. Nothing much to do but persevere and try to not get depressed.
Si din cand in cand poti sa-i injuri putin de tot neamul, ca si-asa nu te inteleg
Ema, I can only imagine how hard it must be for some people, you included, trying to build a life and a business in the “unknown”, but I think that you managed quite well.
Indeed, sometimes the better thing is to just let it go. But it has that power to hit you again, and again when you least expect it, against everything that you do to prove otherwise.
PS: Exista Google translate si nici nu-mi sta in fire.
Things are even worse than presented, even in “civilized” countries like Germany. It’s like some people stop thinking when it comes to this. I had my share of such incidents because I am a romanian but I more or less expected it.
The bad thing is, people here acted really weird towards my girlfriend. She is native, speaks the native language with the native accent (which you can’t really get if you are a foreigner) and still, she had a lot of problems just because her name does not sound german. It’s ridiculous how stuck up some people can be.
But what can you do, this is the world we live in.
I’ve heard of such incidents, experienced some and was also surprised of how open minded other people can be. It’s annoying, depressing and unfair. But everyday I choose to trust the good side in people and hope things will eventually change.
I just hope we gradually move towards a world that is truly in-discriminatory. (Is that a word? – English is a second language to me.)
In some ways I think blogging helps people see that race/culture/whatever you want to discriminate against doesn’t really matter…If I come across a good blog like yours I don’t think, geez, where is this person from? What color is their skin? Are they male/female? Are they straight or gay? What’s their religious viewpoints?
Anyways, if it helps you feel any better, I never heard there was anything “wrong” with Romanians
Chelle, so true! Even more in the online environment discrimination should be long forgotten. Anyway, I’m glad you haven’t heard the “bad publicity”. I know it should like a cliché, but you need to live it to feel it.
Vyoma, it should be about time for a change.
Alina, choosing to only see the good side means ignoring the bad side. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, you know that.
Stefan, recent history between romanian gypsies and Germany hasn’t helped in any way. Back in the ’70s and even up to early ’90s Germans and Romanians got along extremely well, exchanging students, hard-workers, technology and enjoying eachother’s touristic sites. Now… I’m even ashamed to think about what leaves Romania for Germany. The unfortunate fact is that it cannot be controlled, not without some bold laws.
Alex: I know, the romanian gypsies issue didn’t help at all but that’s not all of it. Some people here are just too reluctant to foreigners, romanians or not. And that’s especially true for the older people.
Chelle: Actually, I think there is nothing wrong with us per se, we are just people like everybody else with our goods and bads.
Truthfully, if you were doing business in the U.S., you’d be fine because most people under 30 have no idea where Romania is, let alone have heard of it, and most people over 30 only know about Nadia Comaneci and the 1976 Olympics. I’m online all the time and I’d never heard about Romanian hackers; it must be different trying to do business in Europe. At least it’s not as bad as the press Nigerians get.
Still, I do know some things about how discrimination goes, and I don’t like it one bit myself, so I easily sympathize with you on this issue. I can’t believe another country would think your money isn’t any good; a credit card is a credit card after all. That’s just not right.
Mitch, I’ll take your word for it as what concerns the population not knowing about Romania. My examples were media-related. Media knows us for Dracula, gypsies and orphans, which is not right.
And indeed, I for one am thankful to Nadia for being such an amazing ambassador for Romania in the US. She managed to open a few eyes and minds.
Alex, I’m sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience trying to purchase a book. People are ridiculous, and it’s hard to keep a smiling face at times. I can’t relate to being Romanian in another country (My ancestry is French and Czech, and I’m a native English speaker), but I do get the occasional dirty look for my sexuality. For whatever reason, even in the 21st century people can’t stand to see two men holding hands in public.
It’s unfortunate, but the times are changing (rapidly). I only hope all the discrimination dies off in the next couple decades. I would love to live to see a day where everybody gets along.
i understand what you are talking about, we can’t use paypal in egypt to either send or receive money!!
Alex,
Thank you for sharing your experience! I can relate on several levels since I’m Black, Jewish, Biracial, a female and young (under the age of 40 in the IT field).
How you speak of Romanian hackers, I often have to remind people in the States here that a majority of spam orginates right here. There are not many Nigerians in Nigera with mail servers asking you to deposit checks on their behalf.
I am proud to utilize software from developers all over the world. Activecollab is in Serbia, Remember the Milk is in Australia, WordPress Theme designer Justin Tadlock is in Korea and the list goes on. The frustrating part to these developers is what you speak of: finances – being able to sell their products and services utilizing payment systems that discriminate based on their location.
I am guilty of what you speak of. At one time, I was getting so many probes on my main website from IP addressess from Russia that I blocked out the entire .ru domain. A year later, I realized that wasn’t fair and removed the block.
I use your SimpleBalance theme on my blog and enjoy the design, flexibility in the theme options and your code. I’ve spent quite a bit of time customizing the functionality to fit my needs.
Keep up the good work. Challenges in life can often present unique opportunities.