Yu Wenji visits Hanny Dayan in Rehavia:
"'The physicist raised her drink. 'Mazel tov. I don't know what they say in Chinese.'
"Yu smiled a bit. 'Kan bei, in my part of the country.'" (p. 62)
When a Vietnamese man was visiting us, I made some tea. Sheila sipped from her cup and said, "Nice cup of tea, Paul!" From then on, whenever our guest drank from his cup, he smiled at me and said, "Cup of tea, Paul!" Generalizing from that single instance, he had deduced that it was customary to say, "Cup of tea, -!" whenever taking a drink of tea.
Another South Asian couple looked at a house for sale on our street but decided against: "Too many India man!"
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If not Indian, was this couple from Burma or Cambodia?
Quite a lot of ethnic Cambodians and Vietnamese Americans in the US, descended from exiles and refugees.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Can't remember. Anyway, wanted to keep it vague in order not to implicate any one group in racism against any other.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Understood. But plenty of Asians are as racist as anybody else.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Indeed. Some of us try to help immigrants against the racism they encounter on arrival here and some of the immigrants import their racism! I was horrified by Poles who "knew"/were convinced that no black people were any good. Their certainty was frightening.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
A bit surprising. Considering how few blacks there are or were in Central/Eastern Europe, I would have thought the Poles would be more curious about them than any other kind of feeling.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But these Poles were in Manchester. My mother reported the same about her upbringing in the West of Ireland: virulent anti-black racism, which she retained throughout her life.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And of course such prejudices are absurd, regrettable, and wrong!
Ad astra! Sean
Human beings are inherently tribal: and the tribes define themselves -against- each other. There is no ‘us’ without a ‘them’. Trying to change that is like trying to outrun your own sweat.
It’s a condition to be managed, not a problem to be solved. Confusing problems with conditions is a category error fraught with uniformly bad consequences, ranging from farce to tragedy and back.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. Stupid prejudices can only be managed, not "solved." And I don't claim to know how best to handle conditions like this. Because such prejudices will vary in the harm dome from time to time and place to place.
Ad astra! Sean
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