Blink Changed My Perspective

People sometimes ask me what I dislike the most about living in Chile, and that answer is pretty easy -- I hate never fitting in. I hate that I can never be treated as a normal resident of this country, one who speaks Spanish, has a Chilean husband, lives and works here. People see the color of my hair and the shape of my face, my blue eyes blink back at them, and they think one thing -- tourist.


On a frequent basis I will say something in Spanish, with an accent yes, but not an unintelligible accent by any means, and the clerk, cashier, secretary, whoever, will ask me to repeat myself three or four times.


Once at Starbucks, I asked for a "cafe frappucino light, tamano grande por favor." The woman behind the counter looked back and me said in English, "I'm sorry I do not understand you." I repeated my order, again, the exact same thing in Spanish." She looked over at her colleague, bewildered. I repeated myself one more time and she hestitantly asked, "Quieres un mocchacino frapuccino QUE?" And at that point S. got fed up and said, "Que es que no entiendes?" And I added one last time, "Quiero un cafe frapuccino light, tamano grande!" The girl finally figured out my order and from then on the rest of our conversation, in Spanish was completely understood by both parties.


This sort of thing happening used to make me furious. I mean, I would be livid, wondering if these people who couldn't understand me were trying to make me feel stupid or were just being downright mean. I thought it was odd that anyone who has previously met me, 99% of the time, can understand whatever I say in Spanish the first time I say it. I've theorized about the subject before, wondering if it's just shock value -- as in, strangers are expecting to hear English come out of my mouth so when I speak Spanish it throws them for a loop.


Turns out, the author of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, says I'm sort of right. Here's a quick description so you have some context of what I'm talking about.

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

He goes on to explain that many of the snap judgments that our subconcious comes to, are manifested conciously and there's not much we can do about it. To give you an example:


I don't conciously dislike black people. If you were to ask me, I'd say I feel neutral about a black person or a white person until I get to know him or her and that skin color doesn't affect my feelings towards the person. However, I took the Harvard Implicit Assocation Test. My data suggested a "moderate automatic preference for White people over Black people," and "a strong automatic preference for Barack Obama over John McCain."


The media, my upbringing, whatever it was that factored in to my social unconscious has made me biased against black people and republicans, even though on a conscious level, I don't think I am. In fact, my heart speed up as I was taking the test...I was sitting there thinking to myself, "Oh my god, I'm fucking racist," My conscious was thinking, "This isn't right. You don't really think black people are bad." And then my subconscious was making me push the button that would relate the word "Evil" with black people before I could control myself. Seriously, take the test, it will FREAK you out.



Anyways, the whole thing made me realize something important. Just like I don't want to be racist, Chileans don't want to misunderstand me. The girl at Starbucks wasn't purposely trying to not to understand my Spanish. It's just that her subconcious has been so conditioned to believe that Gringo = English-speaking that her concious heard nothing but white noise when I was speaking Spanish. After a few minutes, once she realized that I did speak Spanish, she was able to understand 100% of what I said on the first try, even though my accent hadn't changed, the words I was saying hadn't changed, but all of a sudden, because her concious had finally made the switch, we could communicate. That's why Spanish speaking people who already know me, have no problem understanding me. I've also found that people who have been previously prepped, as in, my husband has told them "I'm married to a gringa who speaks Spanish," usually don't have a heard time with my Spanish either. Nor do my gringa friends' Chilean husbands and boyfriends because their unconcious now has probably been conditioned to think that gringas do speak Spanish.


I used to feel that people were actively thinking, "This girl's blond, she must just be another stupid tourist, I bet she doesn't speak Spanish, I won't understand her." And that that was why they don't understand me. But I'm now feeling way more tolerant towards people who expect English to come out of my mouth -- blame it all on their unconcious.


PS. If you take the Implicit Association test, post your results in the comments, I'm fascinated to hear!

PSS. Thanks, Allison, for loaning me the book!

*Updated: In Blink the author speaks of a man who gets a result in the IA test that's totally neutral after he watches black athletes competing in a track and field event. I just went on Youtube, watched two videos of Barack Obama and took the test again. This time my results were: a "moderate automatic preference for Black people over White people," and a "strong automatic preference for Barack Obama over John McCain." Now I'm racist against white people. This is nuts!