Answer:
There was a story they used to tell in Peace Corps training. The goal was to help volunteers-in-training learn to consciously work to understand the perspective of the host-country nationals. The story, from my perspective, clearly draws from the principles of ethnography, but I do not know from where the story first originated. If you do please let me know!
There once was an island with two tribes: The Blue Lens Tribe, and the Yellow Lens Tribe. The Blue Lenses saw everything in shades of blue. The Yellow Lenses saw everything in yellows. These tribes didn’t get along very well; let’s say that they had trouble seeing eye-to-eye.
One day a member of the Blue Lenses decided to try understanding the Yellow Lenses better. She put on a pair of yellow lenses and went to live with the rival tribe for one week.
When she returned, her fellow Blue Lenses were very interested to hear about what she had experienced.
“You know,” said the young Blue Lenser, “it was really interesting because they did and ate and lived very similarly to how we do and eat and live.”
The other Blue Lenses looked around at each other with strange expressions on their faces. The Yellow Lenses were completely different from themselves, that much was clear. But the brave Blue Lens continued with her tale and they didn’t want to miss out on any new, possibly reassuring information.
“After all those same things though, it was very odd after all. Because everything around me was green.”
Explanation:
We all wear our own lenses and they color, or bias, everything we see. We can not take them off, but we can be conscious of them and take them into consideration when we observe others.
