Race matters

The Friday June 24th post at Waiter Rant got me thinking about something I've considered for some time. To summarize his post, he confesses to a misunderstanding that makes him appear racist.

Although I'm as white as they come, I feel somewhat qualified to address this, being married to a Chinese man, mom to two biracial daughters, and having lived as a minority in another culture for three years.

The truth is, I think we all harbor racist tendencies. For most people, these are probably not intentional or intended to be hurtful. As humans, we tend to make generalizations, and the easiest kind to make is based on what we see. Skin color is a noticeable visible difference between people. I will confess: when I am driving in downtown Indianapolis, if I see a black man near my car, I will automatically check to see if the car doors are locked. And I'm ashamed every time I catch myself doing it.

I even still make generalizations about Chinese people, though my husband sometimes encourages this with his own generalizations about his race. We both agree that Chinese (mainly immigrants, not Chinese born here) tend to be late.

I've been affected by racist attitudes myself. A minor one that drives me crazy is how Chinese (again, immigrants) tend to refer to anyone who is not Chinese as a "laowai" or "waiguoren", which means foreigner. This is true even here in the United States, where I will sometimes hear Chinese friends talking about some or other waiguoren. If my husband is in hearing range, he will quickly chime in and say "zheli, ni shi laowai!" (Here, YOU are the foreigner!). Sometimes I have used this in a teasing voice with my own Chinese friends when they do this. Some of them just look at me blankly as if they have no idea what I am talking about. My point is not who is or is not a foreigner; it's that Chinese tend to think of anyone who is not Chinese as an outsider. That is literally what "waiguoren" means...outside-country person.

Living in China I experienced some racist attitudes as well, most of them relatively benign. But one in particular I will never forget. A few days after we were married, we were traveling by bus to a nearby town to visit friends. A middle-aged man kept staring at us and finally asked Leo if he was my interpreter (something we got quite a bit). Upon hearing that I was his wife, he asked something very odd: he asked Leo if his parents had adopted me some years ago. From other stories I had heard, I knew that in Chinese culture, a blood son will sometimes marry an adopted daughter out of duty or pity. Before Leo could recover enough from his shock at the implication, the man went on to warn Leo that his life would be extremely difficult and full of problems because he had married me, a foreigner. At that point, Leo basically told him to shut up, because he had no clue what he was talking about.

Even though that incident stung, I eventually came to realize that the man's attitudes were based on ignorance. All racism is, really. Whether it's ill-intentioned or simply based on assumption and stereotype, racism exists because of lack of understanding of other races and cultures.

I don't discount that hate exists. I know it does, and sadly, it will as long as this world exists simply because evil exists. But as long as those of us who are merely ignorant of other cultures continue to try to learn, I do believe hate will be less.

And to anyone who is not white who may be reading this: please accept my apology for the times I act out of ignorance and fear of what I don't know or understand. I'm still learning, and I know I will be my whole life. But I'm trying. I think at least admitting that we each sometimes still have racist attitudes is the first step towards change, because if we don't admit this, we are saying we have nothing left to learn about people who are different from ourselves.