There's Something to the Saying "Nice Guys Finish Last"

Hopefully our family will never understand discrimination to its fullest extent, but every once in a while, we do experience something just because of our nationality. Being, in particular American, we are sometimes even told by the people here that they do not like us. When we ask why, there are different reasons given. Among the top reasons given are the following:

1. America needs to stay out of other country's affairs. By this, the people here are usually referring to Iraq, the war there and other similar incidents in the world.

2. America needs to do more in certain incidents in the world, such as the situation in Libya. (This is funny because it is a direct contradiction of #1.)

3. The people in America are rich. A lot of people here see America as a very rich nation, and the American people are sometimes portrayed as spoiled and wasteful, and that they are uncaring to other countries and the problem of poverty.

4. Americans hate Islam and anything to do with it.

I am not writing this blog-post to make you feel sorry for me or to even make you think bad of the people here. The people here are a lot like us, and when you get to know them as well as we have, you start to understand that. Like us, they believe what they are taught, their media is a little biased, and they are scared of what they don't know and understand.

While discrimination usually happens because of the bad thoughts someone has towards others, we actually felt "discriminated" against because of good thoughts someone had towards us. We were sitting at a coffee shop that we frequent quite often. Our son was getting a meal from another restaurant and was going to meet us at the coffee shop. Well, when he arrived with his meal, we were told we could not bring the food onto the grounds of the coffee shop. Now, we would have had no problem with this, but we see the nationals here do it ALL OF THE TIME. When Tim confronted the manager with this, he denied it. After a few minutes of talk back and forth, the manager finally admitted it. He actually said that the people here are too hard to deal with. If confronted, they are totally unpredictable to how they might react. Tim tried to tell him how discriminating that was; that this guy was actually forbidding us to do something they allow others to do because "we were nice people". It isn't like we were dealing with a manager we had never met before either. We have gone to various branches of this coffee shop for at least 7-8 years, and we have known this young man from the very beginning. I think it would have been easier dealing with a complete stranger than with someone we have known for so long. Well, I am disappointed, because we told them we would no longer return to their establishment if they could not be just and fair to everyone, but I am not disappointed about being discriminated against for being "nice people".