Just don't go getting too paranoid on me. I dunno, I had a minor freakout myself on vacation, because traveling with Vincent wears on me, the way he's always automatically treated like just another human being and has to do something 'off' to change that in the slightest, but I'm automatically the 'white foreigner' and I have to work to prove I can at all function as a normal human being, much less be a part of society (and you know how most things come down to, or are grounded in large part by, some sort of social value, from everyday greetings to writing philosophy [if it's personally beneficial, it makes me a better person, with better determined by some kind of value placed on how I act in society; otherwise I want it to be read, and that's social value], which is probably why I get depressed and crazy when I don't read...), since white people are never just part of Chinese society, no matter how good your Chinese is.
Anyway, I felt like this restaurant owner lady was being a bit condescending to me--the details really don't matter--and for some reason it really bugged me at that moment in time. I'm pretty used to that sort of attitude by now, but all the little things, you know, they add up, especially when I'm traveling (why does traveling have only one L? I always want there to be two) and stressed and having to do more in Chinese than I normally would, at places I wouldn't normally go. And I said something, hoping for some reason that Vincent would understand the not-fairness of it.
It's that--the mildly discriminatory, unequal part of it--that bugged me, for once. Sometimes, like when I first came here, it's just about not being able to function at all, but for me at this point, it's like my Chinese is good enough to get by, and that's still not enough. It has to be perfect, flawless, and I'm sure even then, well, it won't be enough to change my skin or my parents. He can mumble things and hardly say anything at all and still be treated like the one who understood and did everything right, and I won't, and that's just How It Is. And of course it's not that bad, it's not like I have hugely negative stereotypes hanging over my head, but nonetheless I can't just be normal, undistinguished, and that's all I want. I don't want people fetishizing me. That doesn't help me feel like a real human being.
Anyway, I wanted him to understand, but he was kind of like what the fuck, and we had this conversation in the street, which of course forced me to dwell on it more than I would have at first. I might have just brushed it off otherwise. One thing he said, of course, was that again, it is not That Bad, I don't have people coming up to me on the street in the country I was born and raised in asking me if I speak English and talking all slow or calling me a chink (I was a bit surprised that people in Michigan actually do these things, but I should know better, and as you say, a few bad apples, always around). And another was even as it was, and even if I wasn't that upset, it shouldn't get to me, I shouldn't feel ashamed or less worthy or whatever, seeing as I was just the same person, I was no less intelligent or talented or anything that really mattered to me. On that count, he's right, and it made me feel better, though I did try to explain a bit more why it was hard to just do that automatically, which I think he got eventually, since he didn't know any Chinese when he came here either, and other things. Some people, like John when he was here...actually I think a lot of people are more sensitive to it than I am, and John was one of them. John made a joke of it, and he'd be all like "That's racialism!" when the waitresses would treat us differently and so on. I thought that was a good way of coping.
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forewarning: I am sick and possibly delusional...that's an exageration, but you know
Date: 2010-10-07 02:17 pm (UTC)Anyway, I felt like this restaurant owner lady was being a bit condescending to me--the details really don't matter--and for some reason it really bugged me at that moment in time. I'm pretty used to that sort of attitude by now, but all the little things, you know, they add up, especially when I'm traveling (why does traveling have only one L? I always want there to be two) and stressed and having to do more in Chinese than I normally would, at places I wouldn't normally go. And I said something, hoping for some reason that Vincent would understand the not-fairness of it.
It's that--the mildly discriminatory, unequal part of it--that bugged me, for once. Sometimes, like when I first came here, it's just about not being able to function at all, but for me at this point, it's like my Chinese is good enough to get by, and that's still not enough. It has to be perfect, flawless, and I'm sure even then, well, it won't be enough to change my skin or my parents. He can mumble things and hardly say anything at all and still be treated like the one who understood and did everything right, and I won't, and that's just How It Is. And of course it's not that bad, it's not like I have hugely negative stereotypes hanging over my head, but nonetheless I can't just be normal, undistinguished, and that's all I want. I don't want people fetishizing me. That doesn't help me feel like a real human being.
Anyway, I wanted him to understand, but he was kind of like what the fuck, and we had this conversation in the street, which of course forced me to dwell on it more than I would have at first. I might have just brushed it off otherwise. One thing he said, of course, was that again, it is not That Bad, I don't have people coming up to me on the street in the country I was born and raised in asking me if I speak English and talking all slow or calling me a chink (I was a bit surprised that people in Michigan actually do these things, but I should know better, and as you say, a few bad apples, always around). And another was even as it was, and even if I wasn't that upset, it shouldn't get to me, I shouldn't feel ashamed or less worthy or whatever, seeing as I was just the same person, I was no less intelligent or talented or anything that really mattered to me. On that count, he's right, and it made me feel better, though I did try to explain a bit more why it was hard to just do that automatically, which I think he got eventually, since he didn't know any Chinese when he came here either, and other things. Some people, like John when he was here...actually I think a lot of people are more sensitive to it than I am, and John was one of them. John made a joke of it, and he'd be all like "That's racialism!" when the waitresses would treat us differently and so on. I thought that was a good way of coping.