| SHU-A1-GS Practice of Leadership George Seraphim Ambassador Kamal January 27, 2001 Dialogue amongst Civilizations A dialogue amongst civilizations is trying to educate and help people overcome various prejudices and preconceived “pictures” and stereotypes that they are bombarded in daily life with. These stereotypes are slowly spreading and fading out but they are still very much existent. The dialogue is “a process to replace hostility and confrontation with discourse and understanding, to examine both the different and shared values in today’s cultures, and to better understand how increased globalization will affect and alter the basis for relations among nations and peoples.” Growing up in a Mediterranean island, the island of Cyprus, and currently living in the United States and studying at a university, helps me look at all these various prejudices and stereotypes that exist. A lifetime dream of mine was to move to the United States of America, go to school there and also play my favorite sport of basketball. When I was only 15 years old I had the opportunity to move to Ruston, Louisiana and play basketball with a scholarship. This was my dream come true. I had always heard how great America was and saw the movies and the tall buildings and all the good things about it, the things that the media permits to travel across the world. Allowing me to move to the US and making this decision was very hard for my parents because they also knew that along with all the good things and opportunities America would offer me, at the same time I would be exposed to bad things too. Living in the only European divided country and having many problems with the neighboring country of Turkey, a mandatory military service was at stake. So I knew that sooner or later I would have to come home and serve my military dues. That did not stop me from coming to this “wonderful” land of opportunity! Once I arrived in Louisiana, things were a little different than what I expected. Ruston was a small town with a population of 30,000 people. I did not see any tall buildings or large cities or any of that. Instead I saw a lot of countryside, cows, farms, chicken houses, horses, rivers, lakes. It was similar to a western movie with Cowboys and Indians. And on top of all this the people had a completely different accent than the one I saw in the movies or the one I had heard from any Americans I had ever met, thus making it difficult for me to understand what they were saying. So my first impressions were not what I expected but I still was looking forward to going to school and seeing what Americans of my age were like. And once school started things got much better. But I felt like that the stereotype of an “American” was wrong. They were just regular people and knew nothing more than I did and I was better in basketball than every single one of them. But the ignorance of these people is what amazed me. Almost no one that I met and asked me where I was from knew where my country was. I thought that was horrible. I had to explain where my country was every time I met someone. Very frustrating. Another thing is that I had heard that America was known as a “melting pot” due to its vast diversity and mingling of people. But again this was not the case to where I was. Everyone in my school was white like me and there were only around 5 Indian students and NO black students. Yet the town I was in had a few black people in it and the surrounding schools were mixed, my school was an all white high school mainly justified by the locals as being a college preparatory high school. About three years later and after serving my military dues I moved back to the USA to continue my studies but this time at a completely different area, at Seton Hall University. Seton Hall was a very diverse environment with people coming from all over the place. People actually knew where my country was and the tall buildings were a few minutes away, NYC. I tried to interact with different people when I came here but I noticed that most people stick with their own. The Latinos stick with Latinos, the Martin Luther King scholars are another group, fraternities and sororities another one etc. I believe that there would be a better understanding between these different groups, if there was more interaction and dialogue between the various students at Seton Hall University today. We should study and learn about ones own culture, as well as learn about the other cultures on campus, in order to enable students from different cultures to interact on all levels. The UN proclamation of the year 2001 as the Dialogue amongst Civilizations is a brilliant project because there is need in this world and especially this country as people interact with each other. Contact between various peoples is becoming frequent and understanding one another’s culture will lead to good relations amongst people and help prevent future conflicts. |