Yep. Got ethnic slurred day before yesterday. as a matter of fact. I had stopped at a McDonalds for a Southwest Salad. After I’d finished eating I went back to the counter for a refill on my drink. Next to me and placing an order was a really rough (as in had a really hard life) looking black woman and a younger woman I presume was her daughter. I decided I wanted an ice cream cone and when the girl brought my drink back I asked if I should pay her or the other girl at the register, and she said to pay the other girl. I said okay and stood there to wait my turn.
As I was waiting the girl taking the order from the black women looked to me to see what I wanted while the black woman was digging money out of her purse. I smiled and told her that I just needed a vanilla cone please. She nodded, said okay, and then turned back to the black woman, who said “I’d have paid you quicker if I hadn’t been interrupted.” Realizing that she thought I was trying to assert my “white privilege” and butt in on her order I tried to explain that I was merely letting the girl know what I wanted next, not that I was trying to cut in front of her. She cut me off before I said three words and told me she didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. Thinking she’d feel differently if she only understood, I decided to try again. Once more I’d hardly gotten three words out before she said “I don’t want to hear a damn thing you got to say! Just shut your old white ass up and get outta my face.”
So, I shut my old white ass up.
Having reached the ripe old age of 67 before ever having had an unpleasant racially tinged encounter with anyone of any minority I couldn’t help but wonder if it hadn’t been for all this hooey about white privilege whether she’d have reacted the same way. I’m inclined to doubt it.
There are plenty of places where ‘white privilege’ does not exist. There are plenty of places where being the wrong sort of white will make you the subject of racial abuse: here in Scotland is a prime example. Or you could have tried being a German - or assumed to be a German until they realised otherwise in my case - in France a while back. Gweilo and gaijin are not terms of endearment. Etc.
Sure, although any time I’ve been in a confrontation with a non-white that proceeded to that level of verbal violence, it’s been just straight-up nonracial epithets, like “asshole” and “motherfucker”.
But suppose I were to get into with, say, a black man, and it got to the point that the police were called. Who do you suppose the cops are going to support? George Zimmerman could tell you.
Okay. But my post was in response to Anaamika’s comments about subtle, “You know, those people”-style racism. And since we are both of us Americans, we were talking about racism here in America. Where white privilege is very much a real phenomenon.
I have no doubt you’re right about racism in Scotland. But I was talking about what I know.
I was walking down the street once when someone in a passing car yelled, “Go back to Mexico, 'spic!” I am extremely pale with blonde hair. I have no idea why they thought I was Hispanic, but obviously they were idiots anyway. I flipped them the bird as they sped off.
Many many times. Mostly as a kid, rarely in recent years. (I’m at the point that I can shrug it off, having long since gotten used to it back in the day.)
OTOH, I don’t recall ever being stripped naked, chained, tied up, suspended, humiliated, held down, beaten, whipped, shocked, burned, kicked, punched, bitten, stepped on, so there’s that.
It actually insults whites.
Now, down to my amusing semi-relevant story!
At one of my jobs, one of the programmers looks like your typical Hitler Youth recruitment poster. (Not *your *typical HY recruitment poster, etc… usual disclaimer)
Somehow, ancestry came up. He went into a spiel “I’ve got blah-blah, blah, blah, heritage, and I’m part [zambo? can’t remember the term that has to do with mixing blacks with other groups], so, what do you think that makes me?” Of course, as pointed out, whatever non-Caucasian was bred out centuries and many generations ago. At any rate, a black drunken bum just walked into the office one day and was being an asshole. We all rushed to get him out, and the drunk used the word “nigger” in it, somewhere,somehow. My HY friend thought that the drunk was calling him that, so he went into almost the EXACT spiel to the drunken bum, and ended up by saying “…, so what do you think that makes me? So, don’t call me that, motherfucker!”
It amused me how he had the canned speech down so rote, and also, that he thought that being called something that had no semblance to him should not be used as an insult, but, calling someone a person who fucked one’s own mother was quite acceptable! Also, I don’t think that the bum had even called HY that, since said bum was rambling incoherently about everything else.
Oh, yeah. There was the time I got into an argument with a Korean dry cleaning place in NYC. And old lady came out from the back and called me all sorts of nasty stuff. She spoke Korean, a have no idea what the exact semantic content of her words was. But it was pretty obvious that she was cursing me out. And I’d guess there were some racial epithets in there.
I had white privilege in that case. I knew she wasn’t going to do anything risky like hurt me. So it was easy enough to shrug off. And eventually, they gave me back my quilt.
I’ve been called a “cracker bitch” quite a few times at work by patrons. Of course the difference between that and my coworkers being called the n-word or, once, memorably, a “gook”, is that for me there is no sting in that word, it’s more of a “huh? people say that?” situation.
Well, and of course “white bitch”, all the time. This white bitch is always hasslin’ people who are breaking the goddamned rules which are clearly marked on the signs.
To be fair, while other people are, you know, ancestrally white, I’m pretty close to being the color white. So maybe they’re saying I should get out in the sun more and take an iron supplement.
Yes. My reaction is always one of derisive laughter at what Ryan so eloquently described as the barking of small dogs. They create their own reality of sadness and ill will which over time comes back to haunt them.
Yeah, I’ve been called Chink. It was funny because I’ve never been called a Chink. I was never mistaken as a Chinese even until high school. I don’t look Chinese. It was funny because they were so obviously trying to push “you look like a Chink” or such. The attempt & intention was obvious. They weren’t really interested in “mistaking” or “calling me Chink”. They just wanted to push a delusion that I looked like Chinese when I don’t.
Ethnic slurs are legal though, aside from whether you deserved them or not. Any form of slur (even “idiot”, “moron”, “trash”, etc) is legal. I’ve asked on Avvo.com.
