American Racism from a Visitor’s Eyes
Reframing my experience from a 4-day visit to a 1-year stay
One evening in 2010, I was due to board a 7 PM flight from Pittsburgh airport to Newark airport. I was returning to Netherlands from a 3-day visit followed by an extra long layover at Newark.
The flight was delayed until further notice, and finally at 11 PM ready to board. Knowing my itinerary of thousand of miles beyond Newark, the airlines gave me an option to take the earliest flight the following morning with an overnight hotel stay. They issued me a voucher for Hotel H whose sign I saw at the airport. I dragged my feet with my unchecked baggage to the hotel through a connecting bridge.
After I showed the voucher to the hotel receptionist, she told me that it was for another Hotel H with fewer number of stars that is located away from the airport. I had to take a shuttle bus. I asked where I could take the bus from. She said, “You have to walk back to the airport.”
I asked whether the shuttle still ran at that time or not (in Netherlands nothing runs 24 hours). Too tired, I was ready to stay at that hotel if I missed the last one. She gave me a card. “Here is the driver’s phone number. You can check by calling him.”
I politely ask, “Would you help calling the driver? I am not from this country, only visiting. My phone only works for SMS text.” I forgot that I wasn’t her customer although it is the same Hotel H brand.
She was making faces, started shaking, holding the phone on her desk, picking it up and putting it down again with force. I sensed that she wasn’t trying to call the driver but someone else. Finally she said, “It runs 24 hours. You will definitely find him at gate #1.”
I thanked her and left the place immediately, confused by her reaction. My tired brain thought probably the receptionist was as tired as I was. It was almost midnight.
This event came back vividly to my mind as I was following the Philadelphia Starbucks incident. Using my current frame of reference, it seems like the Hotel H receptionist was overreacting like the Starbucks worker who called a police to arrest two black men for sitting around without ordering (it turned out they were waiting for a friend).
I am light brown, looking like Asian or Hispanic depending on which angle you look at. I am a small woman, obviously not physically menacing, but asking questions (let alone arguing) would probably get someone to call some officers.
I read about a black woman arguing at a check-in desk and the airport worker immediately summoned security officers. She was in tears, because the “white” man before her was arguing rudely for 20 minutes and no officers were called.
The source of such an overreaction behavior is unconscious bias. Black and brown humans in USA (I dislike the term “People Of Color” because the “white” humans are actually pink, while true white skin belongs to K-pop stars) are not discriminated because of merely their skin colors. It’s because skin color is associated with socioeconomic class. This association is still true as of today, so many years after slavery of African migrants was discontinued. It’s unlike the fair skin bias in Asian countries (it used to belong to the rich class who didn’t get tanned from working under the sun), because the class association no longer applies.
The Starbucks worker saw the two black men as potential criminals due to the association with low socioeconomic class. The hotel receptionist saw my light brown skin unqualified for a 4-star hotel. The check-in desk worker didn’t take a chance to continue interaction with the black woman and decided to use force.
There seems to be a lower standard of service to black and brown customers. Wait, I am exaggerating! I hardly have any bad service since I came to actually live in this country. I never got discriminated because of my skin color. That hotel receptionist was just tired, really.
What if I regard anyone’s skin color discrimination cases as exaggeration, too? Now it’s like I dismiss a blind person’s claim of not seeing anything, or a war veteran’s claim of seeing dying children. There! I can’t simply dismiss other people’s experience whose condition I don’t share, because I cannot prove it.
The Starbucks case helps us see that skin color discrimination is real. It was witnessed, meddled with, video-recorded and uploaded to the internet for all of us to see. Sadly, some people assumed that the recording started after something bad was committed by the two black men.
Who are we to dismiss other people’s experience? Have you tried being in their shoes by borrowing their skin colors while walking in public?
Why do we take part in perpetuating the ignorance? Without recognizing the unconscious bias problem, we would not start trying to solve it.
If I were a pink human of this country, it is my job to increase awareness of such cases. It is a way to spend my privilege. What is the use of a privilege if we keep it safe in a locked closet and let it out only at exhibitions?
I’ve lived in a predominantly “white” country where my appearance wasn’t associated with any class. I was simply of a different culture. Similarly as a temporary resident of USA, I easily chose not to be affected by the local society’s class system. I am of a different culture, so I don’t subscribe to the American class system.
I face the privileged (pink) members of this society with dignity. As a “non-white”, I might choose the path of mimicking their display of superiority and pretending to be one of them, but instead I chose to pay attention to the underprivileged (black/brown) ones. I’ve read some stories to understand their struggle of facing inferiority attached to their difference, to the extent of losing their dignity because of society’s conditioning.
The obvious difference in privileges makes it difficult to have a healthy discussion about race equity. For example, a “white” philanthropist is regarded as perpetuating white savior complex. A “white” teacher saying “I look past skin colors” is accused of denying that racism exists.
Let’s look at the work of Nate Howard, a young American whose TEDx talk inspired me in 2014. He is asking black and brown humans to not fight the old but to focus their energy to create the new. He created a youth movement to teach students to tell their stories before others tell it, such as “the oppressed”, “inferior members of society”, “your problems came from slavery”, or letting the way they dress, look, talk get associated with inferiority.
I wish for the underprivileged ones to stop feeling oppressed, to tell their original stories of dignity, possibly similar to the way I refuse to subscribe to the local class system. Nate phrased it like this, “you fall victim of a system that makes you feel oppressed”.
I wish for the privileged ones to stop being ignorant about (let alone abuse) privilege. To change the world, focus on the new. Unconscious biases can only be killed by repetitive exposure to certain stories. Let’s respond to stories that help transcend our biases.
This post was edited to include Twitter stories on the #LivingWhileBlack hashtag.
