A rural town about 75 minutes outside of Seattle. There’s a bar fairly close to the main strip of the town. I haven’t been to a bar in the USA in a long while, decide to try it. Walk in, sit at the end of the bar. The closest people to me are two stools to my right engaged in a discussion about someone’s son’s graduation. Bartender’s a big rugged type, looks like he’d be comfortable wrestling crocodiles with Paul Hogan. It’s fairly crowded, so he’s busy with customers at the other end. I feel like I’m being stared at, but I ignore them for the moment and look at the selection of drinks behind the bar. About 30 seconds after sitting down, I hear the following somewhere behind me:
“Hey, what the hell’s Chinaman doin’ here?” in a fairly high-pitched male voice that’s sort of a cross between an auctioneer and a bumpkin. Was spoken softly but somehow carried to me.
“Look at 'im. No sweet sao-wah pohk here, Mr. Wang” said that guy’s friend. I dunno how to describe it, but the “Wang” sounded incredibly derisive.
I have Asian blood and I do look Chinese. But…
WHAT THE FUCK?
As the bartender was coming over to me, I got up and walked out the door. Prolly shoulda tried to mess with them by putting on a pidgin English show or something, but I really didn’t feel like dealing with it. Guess I was crashin’ on an Aryan-only bar or something. They should have put up a sign.
Jesus Fucking Christ on a broken pogo stick! Hell, Windwalker, that’s awful. I know there are parts in eastern WA and OR that are a bit on the backward side, but that’s inexcusable. Had I been in there with you, I would have been completely flabbergasted. Racism exists, sure, I’ve got that, but loud, obnoxious, cretinous racism in a public place? THE HELL?! That is so sixty years ago.
Just as well you left, I guess. I’d hate to think what might have happened if Monsieur Smartypants had decided to spread his stupidity around.
It sucks. Interesting but not surprising that they chose to pick on a total stranger for no reason. I would think adults have better things to do. Here’s hoping Mr. Asshole had a killer headache in the morning and puked his guts up and got fired for being too hung over to work.
Wind, that sucks. Would you e-mail me the name of that bar? (I’ve got a TDY to Ft. Lewis later this year. Wonder what they’d do with ten or eleven uniformed americans of african and asian decent entering at the same time?)
Windwalker
Not that it’s much consolation to you, but that is probably their entire universe. Sure, they might make fun of people that are different, but their lives will be the same unchanging nothing existence til the day they die. You walked away from their narrow-minded, limited perspective and you only had to associate with them for just a few minutes. They, on the other hand, are stuck there with each other forever.
Gee, that makes me feel better.
Well, to be fair, I don’t think anyone else heard those two. They spoke at a low volume but perhaps due to some acoustical reason I heard it loud and clear. So I wouldn’t impugn the town just yet; really wish I’d confronted them, though, just to see others’ reactions. It’s just that I don’t frequently get in a let’s-mix-it-up-and-socialize-with-strangers mode and this totally threw me off, so I just left. I don’t mind friendly racial jokes (Q: How do Chinese people get their names? A: They throw a bunch of pots down the road… Ching Cheng Chang Ding Dong Dang…), but they’re usually said among, well, friends, and not in this quasi-hostile, belittling tone.
[naive optimism]I dunno, maybe they were drunk and just in the making-fun-of-people-for-whatever-reason mode and would’ve bought me a drink afterwards. [/naive optimism]
By the way, I don’t think I should say the name of the bar, but it was in Auburn (or just outside, not sure of what the city limits are). 'Twas close enough to farm country that I saw a few cowboy hats in there. Maybe I shoulda challenged’em to a duel?
My guess is that these assholes were probably just looking for an excuse to get in a fight with somebody and your perceived ethnicity just happened to be a convenient weapon to harass you with. Not that it makes it any better but if you hadn’t looked Chinese, they probably would have just found something else to rag on…hair style, glasses, clothes, “you look like a queer.” anything. Dickheads looking for barfights don’t really need a good reason.
You showed good judgement by leaving, by the way. You shouldn’t have had to but it was a smart thing to do. Giving them shit back probably wouldn’t have ended well.
On the other hand, they sound like they were dumb enough to believe that all Chinese people know Kung Fu. Maybe you could have scared them off with some fake martial arts moves.
Nope, Windwalker, you’re in the right century; they’re stuck in a bizarre timewarp.
That sucks but it confronting hostile drunks is a waste of time for everybody. They don’t have enough enough functional brain cells to work with–assuming they had many before they sucked down some liquid stuidity–and the point would have been lost on them anyway. “There I was, having a quiet drink with a buddy, then this Chinese guy comes over and tries to start a fight…”
They’ve already passed sentence on themselves. They’re stuck being loser barflies with nothing better to do than get pissy about total strangers.
Could have been interesting to know what the bartender might have done about it, though.
Man, WindWalker, I’m sorry. That’s horrible…it’s unfortunate that racism still exists. I even feel it around the Albany area sometimes, so where you were I guess it’s not too much of a surprise.
If it’s any comfort, you have a really cool username.
In a warped way, I kind of appreciate the genuine’ jaw-droppin’ shock (both my own and that of others) that results from these kinds of situations. I mean, like your thread title implies Windwalker, in the not-so-distant past, such behavior would have been pretty unremarkable, so it’s kind of interesting to me how the tables have turned to make those barflies the freaks in this scenario, rather than you.
Does that make sense?
I once went on a date with a guy (whom I met because I bought his mother’s piano) who told me over lunch that he “never would have guessed that [I was] colored, because [ I ] don’t have a huge chip on [my] shoulder or talk all that jive talk like most colored people.” (Oh, yes. I quote.)
I think it was supposed to be a compliment.
Anyway, I got back to work after lunch, and told my coworkers (who were equally aghast) the story, and one of them came into my office later and tried to get me to “open up” about how painful that situation must have been for me.
But honestly, it wasn’t painful at all. I mean, my “date” was the person who came off as a complete and utter freakshow of an idiot (to me and to everyone who’s heard the story), so why should I be in pain?
If your experience caused you pain, Windwalker, I’m sorry you had to go through it. But from your tone in the OP, it sounds like you mostly experienced the shock and confusion inherent in encountering people who just fell off the dumbfuck trailer (and the subsequent regret that none of your snappy comebacks occurred to you in your moment of shock).
You should have turned around, given them your best Bruce Lee scream impression, waved your arms around a bit, then broken a bottle on the bar and pointed it at them menacingly. If nothing else, you would’ve made them piss their pants. Because after all, all Asian people know Karate. :rolleyes:
