Reconciling Casual Racism
When you think someone is being racist when do you walk away and when do you challenge them?
Being someone who’s experienced racism for being East Asian from a young age, your mind is set to red alert a lot of the times. It constantly scans the environment for the next time it will happen because it is random and uncontrollable. So your Monkey mind will look for this perceived threat.
I went to the shops today and there was a scrawny, chavvy man at the car park. I said hi to him and he said hi back, and he was hanging out with these two young kids. As I went round the corner, he started saying to these two young kids a bunch of ethnic slurs and mimicking Asian languages and tones.
I stopped for a second to decide if I was going to challenge him, but I was around the corner 5 meters away and out of sight. He wasn’t talking to me directly. He was trying to make these kids laugh.
After I went to the shop I came back into the car park and he was still there. He didn’t look over at me once, didn’t make eye contact. I got into my car and slowly drove away expecting him to shout something, he never did.
I spoke to my friend about this and me and him had a similar take. Everybody makes silly jokes and maybe the perceived racial slurs were just him trying to be funny to those kids, the fact that he didn’t do it to my face when I was in the car park indicated he wasn’t doing it to be confrontational or necessarily attacking me.
I think when you are confronting racism 1.) it needs to be safe to do so 2.) it needs to be a direct attack.
What emotions were in play?
Well I definitely felt disrespected, ridicules, provoked which all fall under the banner of angry. Which makes sense, if you feel like someone is ridiculing and disrespecting your ethnicity, even if it wasn’t to your face it would make a lot of sense. There is a feeling there that some sort of boundary has been broken and you needed to defend yourself.
Anger isn’t always a bad thing, if you were with someone like a younger sibling or child and someone threw a rock at their what would be an appropriate emotional response? Anger. What would happen if you couldn’t feel anger? Well you probably wouldn’t effective protect your sibling or child. So it is perfectly appropriate in many instances.
Was my anger appropriate in this instance? I think so. I could be wrong. But I think the I also took the appropriate response by letting it slide. If I run round and attack every person for their own private conversations I would probably never make it to the shop.
The Ego
Another perspective, in the words of Eckhart Tolle, it is just an illusion. The mind, the ego, the voice in the head that is offended is an illusion. Who is offended? Who is the “I” that is offended? It just is. That was a mere soundbite in the grand scale of things. It, in some ways, is neither right or wrong, good or bad. What difference is it to the chirping of a bird other than the meaning that we give to it. I am not entirely sure I am convinced of this argument but it is an interesting perspective non the less.
Conclusion
Being someone who went through some traumatic racism as a kid, being physically attacked, spat on and bullied for my race I can understand see how my mind might be triggered by that situation. But I’m glad I had the wisdom to choose peace in this situation. I think navigating when to stand up for yourself and when to accept it is a lost cause or simply not worth it is an ongoing process. ~But every day I’m getting wiser.
