Sometimes my greatest wish (which is also my greatest fear) is to be able to see myself how the world sees me. I dunno, I think I know too much about myself to accurately characterize myself.
What got me thinking about all this was that lately I’ve noticed that random people say shit to me that reflects a snap judgment on their part. Mostly stuff that has to do with me being Asian.
Like when I was in Whistler on my trip to BC, Canada, I swear to jeebus at least five random whiteboy snowboarders said either ‘Ni hao!’ or ‘Ching ching chong!’ or something to that effect as we passed each other on the ski lift. The other day I was fixing my bike outside my apartment and some dude walked by and said, in horrible Mandarin, ‘Are you Chinese?’ The only reason why I knew what he asked was because I took three semesters of Mandarin in undergrad (and the only reason I took three semesters of Mandarin in undergrad was because my school had a foreign language requirement and they didn’t offer Korean). To that I replied, ‘Uh, no, I’m not Chinese…’ And he said, ‘Where are you from?’ and I said I was Korean-American. Okay. Then he said, ‘Well, welcome to this country!’
Seriously?
I was like, dude, please tell me you’re joking. So I said, ‘Thanks… I’ve been here for 24 years’.
The funny thing is, this kind of thing happens relatively frequently, and I react differently every time. Like, with the snowboarders, I thought it was funny, and I laughed. But with the other dude, I was annoyed as hell. Similarly, one of my patients the other day was a middle-aged Korean woman (who totally reminded me of my mom, funnily enough), and she thought I was Chinese, but I was neither amused nor annoyed; I just thought it was interesting.
(I should clarify, though, that she actually asked me my ethnicity in a logical way at a logical point in the logical conversation we were having, as opposed to the other two instances in which people were basically yelling random things at me based on one look.)
Snap judgments sometimes work to my advantage. Like last week, when I lost my train ticket and I had no cash on me and I was pretty sure the conductor would kick me off the train for not having a ticket (and for such a lame excuse), but when I explained the situation to him, he said, ‘It’s okay, ma’am. We’ll get you home. You look like an honest person’ and let me ride for free.
Aw.
(So my snap judgment of him was that he was a nice conductor who was sweet and grandfatherly, which may or may not have been true.)
In general, it doesn’t really bother me when strangers make judgments about me based on my appearance because (1) they’re strangers; they don’t know me, and (2) it’s pretty fun to dispel and disprove those judgments, especially the ‘innocent Asian girl’ ones. The Korean / Chinese one is more funny than anything (I mean, hello, my eyes are slitty, not slanty), and, I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I see yellow people with black hair and I can’t tell if they’re chinks, japs, gooks, something else entirely, or a permutation of any of the above.
And anyway, I AM a bad driver, I’m good at math, I play the violin, I like Korean food, et cetera ad nauseum whatever… so sometimes stereotypes are true. (However, I tip well, I hate anime, and I have never listened to K-pop or J-pop.) Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, I guess, and everyone has their preconceptions about other people, and I suppose I just have to accept that, as both a judger and a judgee.
(Heh… ‘judgee’... sounds like a squeegee for judges!)
You just have to watch out to not let those snap judgments become, well… not-snap-judgments (prejudices, if you want a real word and not the third-grade level words I make up). How many people do you know who you initially had a completely different impression of? When I first met my BFF, I thought he was gay and Mexican. (He’s neither.) Another of my good friends I thought for MONTHS was a snooty uptight boring asshole, and now we hang out every week. One person who I thought would be a lifelong friend ended up being completely flaky, dishonest, and disrespectful.
(Now that I think about it, maybe those aren’t necessarily snap judgments but just lack of intuition on my part…)
Anyway, whatever. I don’t really have a point. I guess I’m just getting old because I get cranky about things that never used to bother me anymore. But at least my boobs are still above my belly button and I don’t pee my pants (much).
Eunice
I don’t get confronted with those stereotypes (or mis-stereotyping) that much, though it could be because of the huge Asian population at our school. Actually, I’ve gotten judged because I am a Korean-Canadian. Storytime.
We have a largely visible immigrant/visa student population of Asians (FOBs, as we say), and well, you can sort of tell if someone was born in Canada usually by the way they dress. I dress ‘Canadian’ and FOBs dress a ‘certain’ way. Anyway, I was walking into a building, and there are these two Korean males smoking just outside the doorway. They were discussing something (in Korean), and as I walked by they made a mean comment about my clothes (uhm. ... Seriously?). I stopped, and spoke back to them in Korean. Pretty much told them to fuck off. Surprised they were. Moral: Just because I was born here, it doesn’t mean I don’t understand you, bumholes.
Sorry about the length! Anyway, you’re right. Snap judgments should not become prejudice.
Marianne
That’s nuts man. “Welcome to this country”? Fucking ridiculous! Did he apologize when you told him you’d been here 24 years?
Houston has a huge population of Asians, and I grew up in an international school, so I’ve never experienced anyone calling me out on my race. Though there was a guy who came up to me as I was getting in my car outside the drugstore yelling “Heyyy, Kristi Yamaguchi!” but I just thought that was funny.
Jessica
I get ‘snap judged’ (?) quite frequently as well for anything and everything you can stereotype a ‘black female’ for. It happens so often that I can’t afford to be mad about it every single time, so I laugh it off or ignore it, depending on the person/situation. Because I have to be especially careful I don’t get stereotyped as ‘the angry black girl’.
When I first moved to the suburbs from the city, my majority white classmates asked me, quite sincerely, if I had ever been in a gang or shot at. And because I’m Jamaican-Canadian, if I had ever smoked weed. I had to endure dumb questions like that for the next five years.
And seriously, I can only be called, ‘sister’, ‘girlfriend’ or ‘homegirl’ so many times by so many random people before I am forced to pop a cap in someone’s ass.
Amber
Hey, I’m Amber that comments on your flickr sometimes. Anyway—I can’t believe there are people still out there that do (and forgive me for this completely politically incorrect word) RETARDED stuff like that.
Also, were you implying that Asians generally don’t tip well, because I find it to be the complete opposite. We actually prejudge Asian guests and assume they tip well. So you are actually true to that stereotype. :)
I’m a redhead and I’m true to a couple of stereotypes (I’m a little kooky, but I’m not psycho).
The way I see it, you have a great sense of humor and understanding about this whole topic. I hardly ever comment, but I am a frequenter (made that word up) and just had to say something this time. You crack me up.
Lizsu
what a terrible thought! be grateful that we are spared the idiocy of the minds of the random passerbys ;P
Marianne
Oh, in the same day I first commented on this post, a nurse asked me, “Do you speak English?” after I merely nodded to one of her questions. Nice!
Heather
Wow. I’m amazed at how rude people can be. I’ve never had anything quiet as a extreme as your examples, but I’m sure most people make snap judgments just because they feel they can. Human nature to be ignorant. Being semi-intelligent or at least having the common sense to think before you speak is the real challenge it seems.
dv
urgh, people can be such douches sometimes. i’ve been fortunate in that i’ve only encountered racism a few times in my life. once in junior high while waiting in line for a movie, a couple of kids behind my friend and i started chanting “ching chong chong” and that surprisingly didn’t bother me.
what did bother me was an instance in high school when i was walking to my car, a truck sped by and some skin-head looking kid stuck his head out of the car and yelled out to me, “YOU’RE ASIAN!” had he had a speech bubble over his head, i imagined it would’ve read “YOUR ASIAN” ... heh. what bothered me about that was that he intended it to be some kind of insult, but instead it was as though he was telling me something i didn’t already know because honestly, up until that point in my life i thought i was Scandinavian!
oh and it sort of bothered me that there wasn’t a tree branch conveniently placed beside the truck to whack him in the head.
Regine
Pardon my ignorance,but I had to google the difference between slitty eyes and slanty eyes, and google returned all kind of weird stuff. So I’m asking you hoping to get an answer…WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? Do Chinese, Japanese and Korean have different eye shapes? Thank you!
I have to say the last dude was rather silly, but the white snowboarders even worse.
I’ve experienced similar things too, and it’s incredible how ignorant people are. What do they do at school then?
Barron
My brother and I were in NYC once and some homeless dude asked, “Are you Korean?” and my brother replied, “We’re surfers.” I still wonder why he said that.
midori
loved this post
ari
i had a similar experience just yesterday and had to comment on this post.
i was pulling files in court when a lawyer asked me, “can you pull ‘bear’ for me?” (bear was the last name of his client.) but it was so noisy that i misheard him and replied, “how do you spell ‘pullbear’?” he said, “the regular way. i don’t know how they spell it in japan…” it took me a minute to process that what he had said was racist.
even now, as an adult, i’m not sure how to react to such comments that, as a child, i’d be too nervous to challenge. i think the anxiety of confronting someone about their perhaps unintentionally racial remarks stops me, but mostly it’s because i know ignorant people will never change.