I've been sitting on this post for a while now. I've hesitated in posting it, partly because I'm still working out my thoughts about it, and partly because it feels like pointless complaining. It probably is, but ... awareness is the first step leading to prevention, right?
Just recently, I was at the grocery store, picking up stuff to make slow-cooker chicken and rice ("Leta's favorite hot dish" as it's known in my family, similar to my brothers' eponymous fave mom-cooked meals: "Ryan's favorite hot dish" and "Evan's lentil chili"). It is about as Midwestern as you can get, except for maybe Tater Tot Casserole.
As I was looking at almost-stale loaves of bread and dented tins of soup in the day-old clearance section, a rotund, Caucasian, white-whiskered, middle-aged man came up behind me and said without preamble, "Konichiwa!" He then proceeded to speak about four or five more sentences of what I assume was proper Japanese. I planned on just ignoring him, but my damned politeness kicked in after a few seconds of silence, and I burst out, "I don't speak Japanese" in as robustly a native-English-speaker-accent as I could manage.
He promptly switched to Chinese, which I only recognized because he included "xiexie," a phrase meaning "thank you" that my best friend has added to her daily vocabulary since her semester studying abroad in China a few years back.
I wanted to walk away, but I also wanted to be able to browse the day-old shelves in peace. All I wanted was to stand there and debate with myself over the pros and cons of buying discounted cookies.
Instead, I was being sucked into a conversation (yet another conversation) about my race / heritage / background / culture.
"No, I don't speak Chinese, either," I said shortly, hoping my terse tone and lack of eye contact and generally stiff body language would deter this man from his current efforts to ... whatever he was trying to do. Show off his language skills? Make a friend (by making assumptions - presumptions - about her history)? Connect with a stranger (in a vaguely intrusive and mildly offensive manner)? The thing is, I'm sure this man's intentions were kind and friendly. I'm sure he thought he was being inclusive and interesting.
But the fact remains that he, seeing an Asian woman, assumed that she A) spoke a different language and B) wanted to stop and have a conversation with a complete stranger in the midst of grocery shopping.
I wouldn't have been upset if he'd treated other people who were browsing the day-old bakery aisle the same way, like if he'd gone up to the woman next to me who had dark wavy hair and a strong nose and started speaking to her in Italian or something. It would have been the same casual stereotyping, but at least I would know it was universal for this man.
Listen. I'm not saying I don't like talking with strangers. Sometimes, I really enjoy it. Some of the most interesting conversations I've had have been on airplanes or public transit, striking up impromptu chats with the people around me. I once spent a good four hours having an astonishingly fascinating conversation with a guy as we sat on a train from Illinois to Iowa. I think I shared more with him and learned more about him than I shared with or know about some of the people I went to college with.
But the thing is, those conversations started from a shared experience: waiting for a bus to arrive, flying to the same location, getting caught in the same unexpected rainstorm. They started with eye contact, shared looks of impatience, resigned shrugs, sheepish grins. The basic formalities of invitation were made, and conversations grew up naturally, springing up suddenly like dandelions.
The conversation the man in the grocery store was different. It started with an intrusion, a voice speaking to the back of my head. It started with a minimization of my autonomy and uniqueness as an individual. Someone looked at me, saw dark hair and almond eyes, and boiled me down into "speaks an Asian language" or "is not an American" or "would be really pleased / surprised / impressed that I can speak her language."
Also, the general blindness of the differences between the residents of Asian countries is tricky. As someone not raised in Asia, I'm just as ignorant. But - I also wouldn't just pick a language and start speaking, hoping it's the right one. Because I understand that that would be rude, or potentially even offensive.
A big part of me was tempted to just start speaking in German to the man. Nothing about him really screamed "German" but it's definitely likely that, as a white American, at least some of his ancestors were German, right? So it would make total sense to spit a bunch of friendly, well-meaning mothertongue at him. And if that failed, I could just switch to French! And then maybe Polish, or Italian, right? It's gotta be one of those!
But instead I just smiled thinly and walked away.
About a month ago, I was waiting at a bus stop and was reading a book to pass the time. A woman and her boyfriend were noisily gossiping together. I focused harder on my book, in part to not appear to be eavesdropping (not that I think the couple would care), and in part to divorce myself from the environment (since I don't really like listening to gossip). But suddenly I found it impossible to ignore the couple, because the woman was leaning over and almost-shouting a question in my direction.
"Where are you from?"
"Here," I said, knowing if I stayed silent it would just prompt more questions and possibly hostility from this boisterous woman.
"Oh." She was quiet for a moment. I thought maybe she'd reflect on the fact that barging in on a stranger's reading and demanding personal information from her might be a weird thing to do. Unfortunately, she seemed to just be taking a minute to figure out how best to get the information she wanted out of this apparently-dimwitted Asian.
"So, like, what is your nationality?" she asked, obviously pleased at the specificity of her question. Now she'd get the answer she wanted!
"I'm American."
"But, I mean, your ancestors. Where are you from?" she clarified, drawing out the from in almost exactly the same way the guy in the above video does. "Frommm?"
I turned back to my book, tired of being polite. "Korea."
The woman laughed delightedly. An answer! "I knew it!" she said, unknowingly mimicking the video again. I couldn't believe it. "I knew you had to be Korean! You have such pretty eyes."
Perversely, the compliment just made me furious. She liked my eyes? Because they're uniquely pretty eyes, or because they happen to be almond shaped? Would my eyes stand out from any other Korean woman's eyes? It felt like a comment like "Your people have such a rich oral history" or "You're all such hard workers" - meant to be praise but feeling so alienating. And not terribly complimentary, because I have no control over how my eyes are shaped.
If someone compliments my clothing or my hairstyle, I'm okay with that. They're conscious efforts I make - my style is a personal expression I'm actively sharing with the world. I actively enjoy when someone notices my glasses or tells me they liked something I wrote. I don't even care when someone compliments my skin (it's happened) - part of its clearness and evenness is genetic, but it's also partly due to my beauty regimen (i.e. I don't wear makeup because I think it ruins skin), so I'm gratified when someone notices.
But my eye shape has literally nothing to do with me as a thinking being. It's not an accomplishment to look Asian when I was born Asian. Compliment my hair because I woke up and styled it. Compliment my handwriting because I had some say over how it looks. Compliment my ideas when they're praiseworthy. But waiting to tell me I have pretty eyes until you clearly establish my race (thereby implying that it's my ethnic background alone which makes them pretty) is ... not a compliment. Or, at least, it doesn't feel like one.
Again, it was this unthinking removal of my individuality.
I don't have any real conclusions to draw. I think I'll continue these thoughts in another post, or maybe a few others. Mostly I just needed to say it, to work out what I think about these things. It's both fascinating and infuriating.
More complaints/introspection to come.
As I was looking at almost-stale loaves of bread and dented tins of soup in the day-old clearance section, a rotund, Caucasian, white-whiskered, middle-aged man came up behind me and said without preamble, "Konichiwa!" He then proceeded to speak about four or five more sentences of what I assume was proper Japanese. I planned on just ignoring him, but my damned politeness kicked in after a few seconds of silence, and I burst out, "I don't speak Japanese" in as robustly a native-English-speaker-accent as I could manage.
He promptly switched to Chinese, which I only recognized because he included "xiexie," a phrase meaning "thank you" that my best friend has added to her daily vocabulary since her semester studying abroad in China a few years back.
I wanted to walk away, but I also wanted to be able to browse the day-old shelves in peace. All I wanted was to stand there and debate with myself over the pros and cons of buying discounted cookies.
Instead, I was being sucked into a conversation (yet another conversation) about my race / heritage / background / culture.
"No, I don't speak Chinese, either," I said shortly, hoping my terse tone and lack of eye contact and generally stiff body language would deter this man from his current efforts to ... whatever he was trying to do. Show off his language skills? Make a friend (by making assumptions - presumptions - about her history)? Connect with a stranger (in a vaguely intrusive and mildly offensive manner)? The thing is, I'm sure this man's intentions were kind and friendly. I'm sure he thought he was being inclusive and interesting.
But the fact remains that he, seeing an Asian woman, assumed that she A) spoke a different language and B) wanted to stop and have a conversation with a complete stranger in the midst of grocery shopping.
I wouldn't have been upset if he'd treated other people who were browsing the day-old bakery aisle the same way, like if he'd gone up to the woman next to me who had dark wavy hair and a strong nose and started speaking to her in Italian or something. It would have been the same casual stereotyping, but at least I would know it was universal for this man.
Listen. I'm not saying I don't like talking with strangers. Sometimes, I really enjoy it. Some of the most interesting conversations I've had have been on airplanes or public transit, striking up impromptu chats with the people around me. I once spent a good four hours having an astonishingly fascinating conversation with a guy as we sat on a train from Illinois to Iowa. I think I shared more with him and learned more about him than I shared with or know about some of the people I went to college with.
But the thing is, those conversations started from a shared experience: waiting for a bus to arrive, flying to the same location, getting caught in the same unexpected rainstorm. They started with eye contact, shared looks of impatience, resigned shrugs, sheepish grins. The basic formalities of invitation were made, and conversations grew up naturally, springing up suddenly like dandelions.
The conversation the man in the grocery store was different. It started with an intrusion, a voice speaking to the back of my head. It started with a minimization of my autonomy and uniqueness as an individual. Someone looked at me, saw dark hair and almond eyes, and boiled me down into "speaks an Asian language" or "is not an American" or "would be really pleased / surprised / impressed that I can speak her language."
Also, the general blindness of the differences between the residents of Asian countries is tricky. As someone not raised in Asia, I'm just as ignorant. But - I also wouldn't just pick a language and start speaking, hoping it's the right one. Because I understand that that would be rude, or potentially even offensive.
A big part of me was tempted to just start speaking in German to the man. Nothing about him really screamed "German" but it's definitely likely that, as a white American, at least some of his ancestors were German, right? So it would make total sense to spit a bunch of friendly, well-meaning mothertongue at him. And if that failed, I could just switch to French! And then maybe Polish, or Italian, right? It's gotta be one of those!
But instead I just smiled thinly and walked away.
About a month ago, I was waiting at a bus stop and was reading a book to pass the time. A woman and her boyfriend were noisily gossiping together. I focused harder on my book, in part to not appear to be eavesdropping (not that I think the couple would care), and in part to divorce myself from the environment (since I don't really like listening to gossip). But suddenly I found it impossible to ignore the couple, because the woman was leaning over and almost-shouting a question in my direction.
"Where are you from?"
"Here," I said, knowing if I stayed silent it would just prompt more questions and possibly hostility from this boisterous woman.
"Oh." She was quiet for a moment. I thought maybe she'd reflect on the fact that barging in on a stranger's reading and demanding personal information from her might be a weird thing to do. Unfortunately, she seemed to just be taking a minute to figure out how best to get the information she wanted out of this apparently-dimwitted Asian.
"So, like, what is your nationality?" she asked, obviously pleased at the specificity of her question. Now she'd get the answer she wanted!
"I'm American."
"But, I mean, your ancestors. Where are you from?" she clarified, drawing out the from in almost exactly the same way the guy in the above video does. "Frommm?"
I turned back to my book, tired of being polite. "Korea."
The woman laughed delightedly. An answer! "I knew it!" she said, unknowingly mimicking the video again. I couldn't believe it. "I knew you had to be Korean! You have such pretty eyes."
Perversely, the compliment just made me furious. She liked my eyes? Because they're uniquely pretty eyes, or because they happen to be almond shaped? Would my eyes stand out from any other Korean woman's eyes? It felt like a comment like "Your people have such a rich oral history" or "You're all such hard workers" - meant to be praise but feeling so alienating. And not terribly complimentary, because I have no control over how my eyes are shaped.
![By Sarang (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Epicanthic_KR04.jpg) |
| (not my eye, btw) |
But my eye shape has literally nothing to do with me as a thinking being. It's not an accomplishment to look Asian when I was born Asian. Compliment my hair because I woke up and styled it. Compliment my handwriting because I had some say over how it looks. Compliment my ideas when they're praiseworthy. But waiting to tell me I have pretty eyes until you clearly establish my race (thereby implying that it's my ethnic background alone which makes them pretty) is ... not a compliment. Or, at least, it doesn't feel like one.
Again, it was this unthinking removal of my individuality.
I don't have any real conclusions to draw. I think I'll continue these thoughts in another post, or maybe a few others. Mostly I just needed to say it, to work out what I think about these things. It's both fascinating and infuriating.
More complaints/introspection to come.
This sounds pretty fucked up.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I had a brief conversation with a middle-aged woman, at the grocery store, about almond-milk. Fortunately, it wasn't charged with any sort of race/gender-related tension. Just some lady who wanted to confirm my suspicions about whether it was worth trying the sweetened kind (because comfort food).
I find myself doing that thing that I hate when people do (re: my last blog post), but I'm wondering where that second person was coming from (the first, as you wrote, sounds like a guy with a sad idea about how to win friends and impress people... with casual racism). I'm not sure if it's introverts or smarty-pants-types (how do you pluralize smarty-pants?), but I've noticed some people are able to have a thought and not immediately vocalize it, whereas other people seem to lack either that ability or inclination. I don't mean that in a way that excuses them saying shitty things, or that implies that the rest of us are just better at concealing our racism, but just as a wild guess at why someone might think that's an appropriate question/"compliment" to toss at a stranger (which is to say, they may not be the sort of person who considers whether or not what they say is appropriate).
Also, I want to make fun of you for using the term "hot dish" (like some common Minnesotan) but I'm resisting that urge, because I don't want to seem insensitive.
I think vocal filters are taught - although I'd agree that introverts tend to innately understand the value of not saying everything that comes to mind. The interruption coupled with the casual racism was hugely irritating, especially since it was couched as a compliment. However, the racism would have been just as irritating had it come from someone who'd taken the time to appropriately start a genuine conversation. But in that case, it would also allow for me to come back and constructively mention something about how the compliment was a bit insulting. The lack of context of the real way it happened was kind of like street harassment - it didn't allow for any kind of actual dialogue. It was just a one-sided intrusion.
DeleteAlso, whatever - hot dishes are freakin' amazing.