So this woman just started to talk to me on the T this morning, asking me where I'm from. When I told her Canada, she started telling me about her experiences in Quebec. Then she asked me where I'm really from. Trying not to get offended because of her assumptions, I told her I was born in Taiwan. She proceeded to ask me where Taiwan was, since she has only heard of Thailand.
Me: Off the coast of China.
Her: Thailand?
Me: No, China. It's an island South of Japan.
Her: *blank look on her face*
Moment of silence
Her: You know half of my family is Asian...I'm not kidding
Me: *blank look*
Her: My brother married a woman from Thailand.
Me: *blank look*
Her: His kids look completely Asian.
Me: *blank look*
Her: They look really beautiful....but you know I'm just worried for them, because, well y'know racism and all....
Me: *stare*
Her: Yeah, the other day, I heard the most racist thing...well, I'm not going to tell you, it's just horrible.
Me: It happens. *turns away*
It's an awful thing, people who are racist without really knowing it. It's not a horrifying KKK racist, just a result of ignorance, but then again, isn't all racism a result of ignorance? What's worse, being racist and knowing it or being a racist with the belief that you're the complete opposite?
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4 comments:
We're all racist. every one of us.
this lady is prob more racist than i am though. lol
i think for her the racist thing is harder to define. The conversation showed that she believes that non-white are treated as the lesser races but she believes that she doesn't do that herself. So all in all it depends on where her assumptions came from, it seems to me that she believes non-white people are not real americans, or canadians for that matter, and i personally believe that her assumption is based on her underlying subconsciousness that she thinks white ppl are better than non-whites.
Wow. She is either ignorant, or a racist, or - dumb. (or two of the above)
but yeah, I think racism exists everywhere, or like you said, being ignorant and thinking you're better than certain people. I think I can say I am not a "racist" but I definitely do think that the general "certain group of people" are better than the general "some other certain group of people" (no specific examples come in mind at the moment) but yeah, I supposed that's actually racism in a different way.
You can say that all people are racist these days because of the changing definition of racism. Now, if you were to make the categorical assumption that a black male looking like a thug had a high likelihood of robbing you, you would be racist. Statistics though would back up the claim though that the probability of the assumption was true.
If you were to keep an eye on a turbin wearing guy on an airplane, you would be consider a racist.
The fact is that people need to categorize people and make assumptions about people. It helps deal with situations properly where many facts are unknown and this is the best way to deal with them.
So this lady, going into this conversation already has the notion that "poor Asians, they have it tough, especially those poor poor people in Thailand." Then that is not racist, that is just her way of dealing with what she knows.
Ignorance, uhmmm...sure.
But that is like someone from Latvia having a conversation with you.
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