What do you do? What’s your religion?Are you part of my clan?
Your brain keeps asking, “Friend or foe?” And it affects your everyday interactions.
I left El Paso, Texas, on July 4, 2000. Four days later, I was in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. I went from a city that was over 85% Hispanic to a little town that was 98% white. While I spoke Spanish 99% of the time in El Paso, I spoke English 99% of the time in Waynesboro. In El Paso, most professionals in public services and businesses looked like me and spoke like me. In Waynesboro, not so much.
But there would be an even bigger cultural clash later on, when I went to school for my master’s degree in epidemiology and biostatistics. I attended a university in Washington, DC. One of the first questions asked of me was, “What do you do?” It was almost a joke among us who were not from the region, where we would mockingly greet each other with “what do you do?” instead of “how do you do?” Most people seem to ask this question out of habit.
However, there are plenty of people who ask questions like these, not out of habit, but out of necessity. They need to identify with you to feel safe around you, because their brain does thousands of calculations a second to assess threats. It makes them feel at ease to know you’re like them, or close enough to be a…
