I've been told that people living in the South Island, especially Christchurch tend to be more vocal in their dislike for foreigners. Personally, I've not had any encounters here in Auckland. There will be the odd occasion when the locals here make you repeat yourself but I'll put it down to me not speaking in a Kiwi accent or me speaking too softly, so I speak up, I enunciate my words clearly, and they have no excuse not to understand me.
I feel really sorry for the lady who has written the article below. I can't imagine how it's like living in a place where you encounter racism on a regular or worse, daily basis. Still I would like to visit Christchurch someday and see firsthand for myself if it is really that bad there. If strangers really yell rude names at you on the streets and throw things at you just because of the colour of your skin. That being said, the below article is only one side of the story. Read with an open mind.
The article:
"I have been making posts in different areas of the forum referring obliquely to the problems we have faced in Christchurch. It appears to have made some people uncomfortable, so I would like to lay out the specifics in this long post rather than leave it at what some may consider an unframed accusation.
This is the 8th country I've lived in, and I have visited around 40 in my 32 years. Yes, discrimination based on every conceivable thing is a universal human failing. But as societies grow in complexity, people learn to act more tolerant than they perhaps feel, and learn to hide their prejudices as societal norms increasingly make taboos of sexism, racism, homophobia etc. Indulging in open expression of bigotry marginalizes individuals in most developed nations, particularly in major economic centers. It rightly marks that person as a bad investment, as it were; the consensus is that someone so incapable of making basic rational evaluation of people's worth is equally incapable of adding greater value to the school, workplace, neighborhood or society.
In the almost 6 months that we've lived in Christchurch, we've found it to be a bigoted place with very little social pushback against bigotry. Before you hit the 'reply' button for a rebuttal, let me repeat: WE have found it to be a bigoted place. If you've found it to be a warm, fuzzy place of smiles and puppies, that's very nice. For you.
Now if you're one of those people who were about to rebut, you're probably thinking, "well, I'm sure it's not Christchurch, it's YOU." You would be half right. Part of it is me. I happen to be Japanese, so Christchurch shows me a very different face than what a Caucasian person might see. Let me tell you what that means in specific terms.
I will walk up to a store counter, smile, and ask in my native American English if I can give them money for their goods or services. The clerk will not smile back. S/he will not make eye contact with me, or ask me how my day is. If my Dutch-German partner is with me, responses to questions I ask will be directed at him. The change is often handed to him, even though I am the one standing at the counter and he is off to the side. In some stores, I—and other Asians, Middle Easterners and Africans if there are any—am kept waiting while Caucasian customers who came before us are served. I would conservatively estimate that this kind of thing happens 6 out of 10 times I patronize businesses here.
I will be out walking, and people in cars will yell the kind of racist epithets I've only previously known in period-piece fiction at me. They yell as they zip by on bicycles. People block my way on sidewalks, snickering.
I've lost my privacy on the streets, even what little we have as women in the States. Don't underestimate the sheer drag of being glared at, frowned at, muttered about or looked up and down until you run the gauntlet yourself. When you were a teenager, was there a store you and your friends hated because the people there assumed all teens were shoplifters? That's what it feels like, except I also wonder if someone's going to run me over or sucker-punch me.
Whenever the issue of anti-Asian behavior comes up, whether it's in forums like this or in Kiwi newspapers, it seems that all I see are excuses for the perpetrators. It's just ignorance, not racism. Kiwis are just outspoken, none of this PC nonsense. It's the Asians' fault for not speaking English. For hanging out with just their own kind. For not 'embracing Kiwi values'.
According to this argument, those 2 bicyclists last month who called me "chop suey" and wondered out loud why I was in their country just had a bad case of ignorance. They weren't racists, you see. You have to go all Missisippi Burning and kill people to be actual racists. The implication is that I should get over the sense of, oh I don't know, mortal danger from 2 irrational and aggressive men who appear to hate me and call me funny names that don't seem so funny coming from their mouths. And true, nobody could fault the carful of guys that kept pace with me along Cashel during the afternoon rush, yelling "Hey Chiiiink! Chink girl!" for being feminist-whipped politically-correct nancyboys. Kudos to all the idling commuters who managed to keep their cool within full earshot of this too. It's odd how the calm that had withstood overhearing someone threatened with what sounded an awful lot like gang rape should crack upon hearing the 'Chink girl' tell the fine young men what they could do to themselves. They looked shocked—shocked!—that I would use such language. I guess I failed that Kiwi values test, huh?
Lest you think all the glory belongs to boys with rides, I'd like to give a shout-out to the middle-aged store owner who stuck his palm within an inch of my face and enunciated "Clooosed. Cloooosed!" after I asked him what time they would open in the morning. Or the ladies at a Postshop whose chatty, laughing day I somehow always manage to ruin just by showing my mug. I'm like Kryptonite! I have other exciting powers too, like inducing nervous giggles in people who presumably can't reconcile my appearance with my native English. My favorite superpower is making children goggle at me fearfully and run away when I smile or wink at them.
You know, I have two nephews and two nieces, Japanese and Caucasian, all under 12. I love being an aunt. I knit them cool sweaters, know all the good stuff online, and am the queen of cakes and strawberry cream. Here, mothers with young children shoot me unfriendly glances and step in between me and their kids at restroom sinks. They must do it out of instinct that I find too hideous to contemplate.
This is my everyday life here, in lovely Christchurch where the NZ government was so eager for a couple of well-educated technologically savvy Americans to settle. I can literally count the number of locals I deal with who act normal towards me on one hand. My partner has taken on a lot of the interfacing because of the unpleasantness, and he worries that I may be in actual danger after hearing Asian-Kiwis casually discuss being assaulted.
After a particularly demoralizing day, I found myself facing a young Asian clerk with accented but fluent English at a burger place. The store wasn't crowded, and on impulse I asked her how long she had been in the country. She had come over from Guangdong 5 years ago. Did she feel that people here were—kind of racist? She scrunched up her face a little and nodded, reluctantly. "People yell things, say things all the time. It happened on my first day in New Zealand and it made me cry. But you get used to it." She looked about 17, but was probably 24. "I don't even notice it anymore."
No comments:
Post a Comment