East is East, and West is West - and You and I are We

When it comes to opposites - regardless whether they are due to religion, countries of origin, gender or other differences - a lot of people feel about them as they read in Kipling's poem "The Ballad of East and West":

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment seat;

- and doing this, it is absolutely without importance whether they know the individual to which they thereby compare themselves.
But in that way, we not only neglect to acknowledge the indivitual, we also neglect the following two lines in the poem:

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

- that is: when two persons stand face to face, it is no longer possible to generalise. At this point, there really are only two individuals - who of course have their differences, but that should not be reason to let them be subject to generalisations; they should be seen as very special human beings - both of them.
Just as we ourselves like to be treated as individual human beings, we have a special duty to threat the people we meet in the same way.
(Translated from Øst er øst, og vest er vest - og du og jeg er vi, originally published May 1, 2018)