During my many travels, I have found that especially travelers from strongly collectivist backgrounds sometimes fail to adjust to new environments. Whether they are Indians from India or Indians from the United States, whether they are Asians from China or Asians from Britain, the collectivist nature of their mother civilization has still left an indelible impression on their thinking.
This inability to adjust, I believe, rests on the false assumption that one’s own life experiences must be universal and that, therefore, the other must change his ways to be assimilated into our collective. If the other refuses to do so, and if he happens to be white, he is being ‘racist’, i.e. rebellious. Since a collectivist has been conditioned to believe that his own culture is the Right One, he cannot adopt new ways that either differ or even contradict his own.