That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
That Girl from Derwent is having a few difficulties facing up to the facts of her looming graduation.
Just recently I was back home for a weekend and, to be nice, I thought I’d take the boyfriend home with me. Why not, you might think, after all, what could be better than a relaxing few days with some of my favourite people all in one place?
Well, as it turns out, my hometown happens to be home to some pretty bigoted people. On the first day we were there, we had just walked down to the shops to get something for lunch when my boyfriend gets told to “f*ck off back to [his] own country”. Needless to say, he was not impressed.
Neither was I, but what really got to me was that I could not understand why this woman had said it. We hadn’t been doing anything that might have offended her; we were just walking down the street. And anyway, anyone who has ever heard my boyfriend speak would realise he’s lived in England pretty much all his life. So which country is he supposed to go back to?
Instead of getting frustrated and irrational, I decided to think about what possible causes this woman could have had to hate an ethnic-looking human being so much as to swear in front of her young child (she had been pushing a pram at the time).
1. She has a personal vendetta against Asian people because of a bad experience. Unlikely, given that there are a grand total of two East Asian families in my town, but possible.
2. She was jealous. Aren’t people supposed to hate the people they are jealous of? Yet what had she to be jealous of, when she knew absolutely nothing about the guy? Unless she was having marital or relationship difficulties and the fact that we were wandering around holding hands and looking happy really pissed her off. In which case, why bother with the racist remark? Why not just be generally offensive and be done with it? Which leads me to…
3. She has no imagination. She has heard other people being racist, and just thought, “I’m in a bad mood today and want to take it out on someone… oh look, some happy people, I’m going to tell them to f*ck off” and the racism just came out as an automatic comment. This is disturbingly common, I reckon.
4. She was afraid. Wait, what? Yes, you heard me. Aren’t people supposed to lash out at certain ethnicities because they are afraid of what they represent. Anti-Muslim feeling is more often than not worryingly linked with anti-terrorist feeling. Maybe she has a fear of the Chinese. Maybe she has even thought about this enough to bring communism into the ring and has made an incredibly misguided and out-of-date attempt to be political. Or maybe…
5. She’s just an idiot.
I don’t understand. None of these reasons make sense to me. Surely no one can be that ignorant as to tar everyone with the same brush, think it’s okay to throw racist comments at random strangers and judge people solely by their skin colour and a five-second impression? If she had commented offensively on his clothing I wouldn’t find it so baffling – okay, it’s still idiotic and superficial, but at least clothing is something someone can choose. My boyfriend didn’t choose to have a different skin colour or facial features – it denotes nothing of the kind of person he is or the kind of view he has on the world… so how can people possibly find it offensive?
So anybody out there who actually makes racist remarks, think before you speak. Find a proper reason to insult someone.
thank you for posting this- i experience this all the time too!
I just don't understand racism either - I mean, how difficult is it for people to grasp that we are all exactly the same: we are people. And, yeah, like you say, if you want to bitch about people, at least have the guts to admit that you're just a dick, rather than incriminate them for their ethnicity. Dicks.
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