By Rei Tanotsuka, 3 June 2020
This is another repost from my Quora musings. It relates to my racist experience on a plane and the subsequent response that the racism is due to my PETTINESS AND LACK OF HUMOUR. Don’t worry, it’s summarised here. Enjoy!
Racism against Asians is REAL, and I just found how virulent it is for an Asian person to express her racist experience. Many many people will interject the label “racism”, and haphazardly insert another verb, anything except racism. This is sick, our society is really sick to dismiss another person’s experience JUST BECAUSE they have NOT PERSONALLY experienced it.
Without Rosa’s refusal to move, we honestly would not see Jay-Z’s empire today. We would NOT have had Obama. Yet BOTH black, white and Asians have dismissed the way I handled racism as “achieving nothing”.
For some reason when a black person takes a stand, they are combating racism, when an Asian does it, they are being “hysterical”. I’m sick of the double standard against Asians and if YOU PERSONALLY still think it’s a unicorn, I pray that this happens to you!
Reading skills are on the decline in the West, in addition to the ability to logic. These are some responses to my Quora post recanting my dalliance with racism 2020 style.
There are more. Way more. There are people who, despite me giving concrete details including the name of the airline, flight number, time, date, photo of the racist couple, seat number and stating that an OFFICIAL airline report was made, accuse me of possibly harbouring ill intent for 2 innocent people, publicising an imaginary story for kicks.
Are people aware that if I lie publicly, and write a fictional story that damages another person’s reputation, I could be sued for libel?Do people think I have that much spare change to blow just because?
The people who accuse me of vilifying ALL WHITE PEOPLE do so, even though I inserted this caveat!!
Then towards the end, I even wrote this to re-emphasise my point that bad things happen to ALL RACES.
“Anyway dear reader, we all learn from each other and irrespective of what colour you are, you NEED to impart your negative experiences to make our world better.”
Like Derrida said , the author is dead. Once you write something, irrespective of HOW MANY provisos you put in addition to your main discourse, people will pervert it to suit their OWN BIAS.
People have problems with me typing in bold but why do I do that? Because even then, people MISS the point.
WARNING: the following is a breakdown of logical inconsistencies in my detractors. This is a LONG post. If you are NOT of the persuasion who can read at a level post primary school, PLEASE STOP READING HERE. BYE BYE.
Background:
For those who do not want to read the original post, here’s the summation.
A couple took the same plane as my father in law, husband and I. We LOOK LIKE THE YELLOW KIND OF ASIAN, your standard Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese person.
Female in the racist couple is called Elizabeth, male is called Jesse. This is a picture of the two nouveau racists, and no, you don’t need to be hooded up sporting your lynching tool of choice to be a racist!
We occupied row 43 in the centre 3 seats.
Racist couple sat in row 42, to the left of us in the window and aisle seats.
Without context, completely out of the blue sans provocation, they announced (literally in a big audible voice) that they are (woman) WHITE SOUTH AFRICAN, and (man) WHITE AUSTRALIAN, upon arriving to their seats. Everyone was quiet because NO ONE CARED, including me at that point. I only felt strange, like WHY would anyone say this?
On the plane that day, especially in my section in the rear, contained a disproportionate number of either (I don’t have official information) Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, or Asians genetically from that region. They could have been Malaysian, or Australian citizens.
The only white people I could detect was an Asian woman, white man family sitting behind us, a white Australian woman and her Indian heritage Australian boyfriend sitting next to our section, and another white couple a little further ahead of the racist couple. Most people were “coloured” to put it bluntly.
In row 42, the middle section (directly in front of us and next to the racist couple) was a Muslim family comprising of an adorable 3 year old girl (looks to be around 3), her mum and grandmother.
Elizabeth and Jesse had around 2 drinks, a bloody Mary and I think wine, but it wasn’t excessive because the other white women /Indian Oz bf couple had the same amount of drinks, yet they were perfectly sober. These 2 couples, though strangers became “plane friends” for a brief second.
After these drinks Elizabeth and Jesse started petting and making out in front of the 3 year old Muslim child and her guardians. I didn’t have problems with this, though I felt it was inappropriate culturally and for the simple fact that a child was literally seeing the man nibble his girlfriend’s face. They also made “squishy” sounds for added effect. However, this has ZERO ramifications for me and it’s not my duty to fight someone else’s battle.
After the main meal, hot snacks were given. Because I ordered special meals for my father in law (FIL), he got his snack first. Elizabeth, after the flight attendant left, took my FIL’s snack. She just snatched it without asking if she could have a look or something else. She literally stole his snack in front of him like he was invisible. She then squished it, juggled it in her hands a few times and haphazardly dumped it back on his tray. Now remember, her hands had been touching her boyfriend’s erogenous zones, where abundant bacteria resides!
Then I tried to get an explanation. I said politely at first “Excuse me”. I was ignored 3 times.
Then I shouted “Oi drunk woman!”, and her boyfriend answered on her behalf.
However, I didn’t want to speak to the boyfriend because it had nothing to do with him. I said I wanted to speak to her.
She then looked at me with a grin on her face, wide eyed and kept saying “I can’t understand what you are saying.” Then she started to exaggerate her speech by mouthing it slowly and breaking into a condescending laugh. She repeatedly said “I can’t understand you” even though I was raised all my life in Oz, as in literally from kindy to uni, my entire English vernacular is a product of Australia, ditto with my accent.
I will now discuss the most virulent criticisms of my previous post. They are:
- No evidence of racism
- The charge that I am racist
- That I, the victim am just as bad as the perpetrator.
- The diatribe is because I got livid over a “snack”.
NO EVIDENCE OF RACISM
Racism : “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.”
Superior: “having or showing an overly high opinion of oneself; conceited.”
“High” in daily semantics conveys positive, good or desired states of being. Low is its opposite.
When we first encounter new people, as a general rule we either remain neutral OR we highlight the positive aspects of ourselves. To refute this, is to deny the phenomenological parameters of our reality, which make up our system of social rules.
Eg. When you meet a potential partner on the first date, how many say “I have an extreme porn habit which will render you pointless in that engagement, unless I can call you Betty spaghetti and slap you around a bit”, we change that to “sexually liberated/exciting”.
For Elizabeth and Jesse to proclaim their WHITE STATUS first and foremost without provocation by anyone, already is an ASSERTION of a racial hierarchy, with white being at the top! They don’t have to literally say “WE ARE SUPERIOR RACIALLY” for this to be racist! They literally stated their skin colour first and foremost, completely out of context!
I have NO IDEA how readers can surreptitiously bypass this as being “No evidence of racism”. How ridiculous!
How many people say, each and every time, they need to go to the bathroom? The fact that they head to the lavatory, stay a while, then return looking relieved is EVIDENCE that they p*ssed out a lake Eco system. Can we say there’s NO EVIDENCE that they went to the toilet because they didn’t say “I went to the toilet”??!!
The other overwhelming racist behaviour is Elizabeth claiming to not understand what I was saying.
Are people really this belligerent that things need to be spelled out? The real version is this:
Joe Jonas and Miley Cyrus pulling Asian eyes.
Then after pulling the eyes, making a sound like “Ching chongchun wongwangwing”, before lamenting “I can’t understand Chinese/Japanese /Asian people. “
This level of dense reasoning is unfathomable!
2. I AM RACIST
Once again, this is so asinine and comes about only because those who dispense it, are NOT on the receiving end of it.
All my life, I tried to IGNORE my race, not because I wasn’t proud of having Singaporean, Chinese, Portuguese and Malaysian blood, but because that fact DOES NOT WARRANT stating in MOST situations. I am AUSTRALIAN first and foremost.
However, will OTHERS let me forget my race? No. That’s the problem! I still, to this day, get especially some white people ask the evolved form of “Where are you really from?”. The modern day incarnation to this classic is, “Where are YOUR PARENTS FROM?”.
The fact that this particular incident involved a white couple openly declaring their white status as the genesis and for me to point it out, according to some readers RENDERS ME RACIST! Holy schmoly, imagine THAT CONTORTION!
3. THE VICTIM IS JUST AS BAD AS THE PERPETRATOR
Amazing. Hebetudinous minds aggregate like moths to a flame.
Here’s what detractors really want me to say:
“Sorry, my bad! Eventhough one family member of mine, had his food stolen, and mashed up, we, the yellow gremlins NEED to learn how to be EVEN MORE submissive then we already are.
We were supposed to be glad that a “silly” (never xenophobic), young white couple even honoured us enough, to fondle our food! Don’t look at this event as stealing and food contamination, look at it as youth and culinary foreplay!”
I have already used this example before. The people who accuse me of being equally as abominable as the racist couple, by default, must also harbor this view.
The conundrum: I don’t know who’s worse, the insolent Jews who tried to escape Auschwitz or the carnivorous Germans in battalion 101 who tried to mass murder them!
That’s in essence what the core belief is. The rebuttal of this will be “oh, you can’t compare a snack to a holocaust”. Wrong you can.
Why? Because logic must adhere to all variables or else IT’S WRONG!
Variable 1: a situation instigated by one side sans provocation from the other.
Variable 2: perpetrator
Variable 3: victim
We, my family, literally had ZERO self initiated engagements with Elizabeth and Jesse. We did not acknowledge them in any way. Our first and only exchange happened AFTER the stolen snack. How on earth can people bury their sense of fairness to protect their own race to the point of double incrimination when one side HAD ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY in causing the initial distress?
We literally boarded a plane wanting to head back to Japan after a 2 week holiday in Oz. We weren’t looking for confrontation. We weren’t looking for drama and we certainly didn’t expect to be so disrespected, that our right to enjoy the same benefits as other passengers would be infringed upon.
4. INDIGNATION OVER A SNACK
There are people who lack this much respect for others, that they are willing to overlook a fundamental infringement of our right to live our life in contentment, and relegate it to a frivolous snack issue.
This BLOWS my mind! It also disheartens me to know that despite how much equality the West so called espouses, some people are just more equal than others!
The REDEMPTION
What gives me hope? These people. People who share their allegiance to truth and fairness and genuinely believe that human rights, PERTAIN TO ALL.
This is definitely not exhaustive, there are way more than this, but tis a sample! People who read this and agree, go to their account and give a simple thanks. We need more people like them to make our world a better place.