Benefit of doubt

Few days back, on the yahoo mailing group of Indian students at my university, somebody forwarded a link to the videos of an MSNBC show that helps nab sexual predators. In this show, they use a decoy who chats with people pretending to be a 13 year old female and then invites them to a house for sex. The clip forwarded had two Indian software engineers from the Silicon valley who showed up at the house (for sex with a 13 year old!). One guy on the group felt that this was an attempt to defame the Indians since some people are not happy with Indians taking their jobs. He felt that this is not typical of Indians, and so the fact that they showed only Indians is defamatory. It had to be pointed out to him, by the sender of the email, that there were many more videos on the website covering all kinds of people. The sender had just chosen to forward this one clip as an example.

This first reaction of paranoia, that the other guy is at fault, is somehow trying to do you harm, is a very dangerous thing. In some way or another, this kind of attitude is at the root of lots of problems. It is very imperative that before blaming others, you get your facts right and, please, always give the other person the 'benefit of doubt' about his/her intentions. It seldom helps if you blame others as a reflexive action.