Learning about ethnic hatred
From October 6-27, I was traveling through the Balkans, which was the case study for my Peace and Conflict Resolution class at AU. One of our stops was in Novi Pazar, a small city in southern Serbia that is near the border of Kosovo. While in Novi Pazar,we spent a few hours one afternoon talking with students at a university. A few girls from my class, myself included, spent most of the time talking with a girl named Hanna, who was a few years older than us. She was born in Bosnia, lived most of her life in Pristina, Kosovo, and now lives in Novi Pazar. She is part Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim), part Macedonian, and a few other things. During our talk, she told us how hard it was for her to grow up in Pristina as a girl who wasn't ethnically an Albanian or Serb. Kosovo's population is 90% Albanian and 10% Serbian. Even when she was a young child in school, she felt pressured by both ethnic groups to "take their side." She didn't want to choose one side and hate the other, so she tried to be neutral and get along with both. As a result, she never felt like she fit in. She never felt comfortable or accepted in Pristina, simply because she wasn't Albanian or Serbian, and she wouldn't pick a side.
After hearing this, I saw how lucky I was to have been born and raised under the American cultural values of tolerance and the acceptance of ethnic diversity. I'm not saying Americans can't be intolerant or narrow-minded when they interact with people of different ethnicities, but we are not taught to hate someone simply because they're a certain ethnicity. In fact, America often celebrates the fact that it's a cultural melting pot. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia and the impending wars in the 90s, many (not all, but a lot) Serbians, Bosnians, and Croatians hate each other simply because of differences in ethnicity. After my conversation with Hanna, I appreciate on a whole new level being raised in a culture that can celebrate ethnic diversity.