Grew up in Saudi Arab. I had a lot of prejudices. It took a while but now I feel I don't have any left. 1. Blacks - Mostly due to American media, I had stereot

Grew up in Saudi Arab. I had a lot of prejudices. It took a while but now I feel I don't have any left. 1. Blacks - Mostly due to American media, I had stereotyped all Blacks in my head. My second roommate was a black kid and he was a nerd. He hated how blacks were represented in media and especially hated how popular Black artists acted gangster. Getting to know him and his friends really shook off that negative stereotype I had. 2. Jews - Growing up in Saudi, it was easy to assume every Jew is evil. First semester in the US, my best friend was American Jew. Both of us had negative stereotype of each others but somehow we became friends through mutual friends. First, it was mostly political and philosophical debates but turned out we had similar believes. We just called our books/prophets/god by different names. Almost like we were fighting over variable names, not even logic of code. 3. Gays - Being Muslim, I thought being gay was a choice and even if it wasn't a choice, people should not do it. We used to argue that people want to have sex all the time but they got to have self-control. One of my friend in college was in the closet. When he came out, I was really sad. But that led me to discuss this more with friends and read more and realized that it is not a choice. 4. Women - I was hardcore believer in traditional roles. Not only that I really thought logic was not something women are good at. And I thought that women should not do anything too physical. A lot of female friends in college showed me how wrong I was. I met amazing female programmers, I had female friends who were stronger than me. I had female friends who were more well read than many of my male friends and were more fun to discuss deep topics with. 5. My own people - I felt once I got "Americanized" and stopped being racist/sexist, my own people felt very racist and I started to run away from them. I felt alone among my people, my people simply labeled me as I have forgotten my "roots" and my religion. It was very hard but slowly I learned that there many people like me in the Muslim world. I found internet forums for liberal and Athiest-leaning Muslims. And I learned a lot of Muslims act a lot more conservative than they really are especially when meeting someone for the first time.