“No, don’t tell me that’s not what you really think in America. I read your media.”
This message was delivered by my professor in a clear, confident voice. I sat in a classroom in Madrid, a few days after the November Paris attacks, finding myself suddenly without a retort. I was struck dumb — my mind kept twisting, turning over Spanish words that would arm me to pick apart his argument. The problem was: I couldn’t find any.
The attacks in Paris were felt deeply in Madrid, which had suffered from the 2004 Atocha train bombings. In most classes that week, we took some time to discuss our opinions on the matter.
However, this was different. Here the personal intentions of an entire group of individuals were brought under intense political scrutiny. He began by asking a few questions about what we knew about Islam, with the clear presumption that none of the students were Muslim. When we answered, he took those facts and crafted arguments against Muslim presence in the West, citing the Paris attacks. With his cutting words he casually made sweeping, generalizing and inaccurate assertions about a global religion.
All I could think about in that classroom was the power of words. For better or for worse, the freedom of speech we hold so dearly can wield such force; in a matter of minutes, this particular speech swept over millions of individuals with a single brush, without much reflection on the way these words could shape action, policy and attitudes if accepted whole.
I protested, and he had responded with the above message — that he believed that Americans sympathized with this view. He read our media, he watched our politicians and he heard about our social media. He heard only loud voices that sympathized with his suspicions. How could we even argue that these sentiments were foreign to us?
I realized that I wasn’t lost in a cultural gap. On the contrary, it hit me that this person was sharing these sentiments with this small group of American exchange students precisely because he believed us to be the most receptive audience. After all, “he knew our media.”
I walked on the metro after this class angered, lost and reflective. What he’d said had gotten under my skin. I watched in the coming days as “Refugees Welcome” signs were taken down, but also listened as voices called for measure, compassion and thoughtfulness in such strained times. I had confidence that the same conversations were taking place at home.
But I saw little evidence of them. Newsfeeds online and article queues were filled with simple and broad messages, favoring the radical. Overwhelmingly, the trend was that thoughtful people declined to publicly voice any opinion at all on complex issues. It was the loud, less informed voices that rose to the top. And those voices are too often heard across the world.
