“So you live in Mauritius”. The man at the dinner party appeared pensive, as if he was searching his memory for suitable things to say about the country. We expected the usual everyday poetry about pristine beaches, marvellous food and adventures on catamarans. Instead, our pensive acquaintance offered this: “I heard that it’s impossible to work with Mauritians… It must be tough”. 

It is tough. Tough in the sense that it would be easier to spend our days in a hammock, sipping on pineapple juice with a copy of Weekly in our hands. Assuming that our acquaintance didn’t have that blissful scenario in mind, I pried. “What do you mean?”

My acquaintance has close ties to a European factory owner who had outsourced part of the production to Mauritius. The project was cut short prematurely since the Mauritian workers, according to him, were “too dumb and lazy”. Workers in Europe, he tried to argue, are more devoted to their jobs.

Often, the best strategy when a person fires off an irrational argument is to let him carry on until he digs his own grave and suffocates in it. “Why do you think that Mauritians are dumb and lazy?” The acquaintance looked surprised at having to provide an explanation. “They jump from job to job… Maybe it’s something in their genes,” he tried, revealing that he didn’t quite believe his simplistic pseudo-explanation himself.

“The failure to contextualise often leads to dangerous misconceptions.”

I saved the poor chap from his ignorance by introducing him to a (for him) unknown concept: contextualisation. “Mauritian workers are paid local salaries, meaning around Rs7,000 – 8,000, with no paid vacation during their first year of service, right?” Affirmative answer. “And their European counterparts earn competitive salaries that allow them to travel, at least five weeks paid vacation, gym membership and time for exercise during their ordinary working hours, plus more than a year of paid parental leave and the opportunity for flexible working arrangements?” “Of course they do.” “So, who do you think is the most likely to want to hold on to their jobs?”

The failure to contextualise often leads to dangerous misconceptions based on a people’s countries of origin, culture and even skin colour. It is when we ignore that there is such a thing as a society – and that our opportunities and circumstances are neither the same nor equal – that we resort to stereotypes, turning ourselves into prejudice factories. And the prejudice we create can survive ad infinitum. For centuries, people of a certain skin colour were denied access to positions of influence and education. As a consequence, the simplistic out-of-context conclusion was drawn that they were supposedly less intelligent. Although scientists have for a long time dismissed the rubbish notion that IQ is linked to skin colour, a study from the University of Chicago showed that even today, children say in experiments that white Barbie dolls are smarter and prettier than black ones. 

Prejudice and racial biases are lethal infections but, as long as we have the antidote – contextualisation – we can win at least the open-minded debaters over to our side. 

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