who are you? i came into your shop to see your prices on used bikes, not your veiws on asian immigration. I dont know a thing about you, yet you seem so sure you know me, i must be mistaken, right? I mean, my great grandparents only came to america eighty years ago, you must know me inside and out. Im not just another person who walked off the street interested in buying a fucking bike, im “oriental”. Not only am I “oriental”, i have the audacity to be a HALF BREED. Yep, some god fearing, flag waving, white patriot beer and cornflakes champion took hiself a notion to go get one of them JAP brides. And then he had CHILDREN. the NERVE. Yeah, but you, my man, are a class A individual. You dont mind those loopy guys who like them slanty eyed meat; nooooooo, you are just as kind as kind can be to us poor half witted machine like kids who come into this world with the bad luck to not be a chaw chewing trailer hitched redblood like yourself. Heck! we’ve even got our uses right? I mean, we’re good quiet labour, and we bring all our nice stuff from “…where was it again? China? You did say Vietnam right?..” And of course, we are all well outfitted with nice cars that our rich “oriental” mommies or daddies buy us, and those designer clothes that we dont work for.
I rarely yell in anger. I get quiet, and things come out of my mouth that sting if you have half a wit to hear the insult in them. And, yes, they are all in perfect english.
what drives me the most insane, is this: this is your way of life. you dont mean to hurt me, in the same way you dont mean to mistreat a dog or an inanimate object. I’m sure you have a heart of gold. Really, i am.
You will never feel the barb of my comments, and my never visiting your store again will not affect you. There is nothing i can do to rip you into shreds, so why nurse this anger? It’s useless. Like you. The only thing i can do is hope that there arnt many like you comming off the assembly line now’adays, and maybe my children won’t have to deal with you.
Well. That pretty much sucks. Maybe it’ll help to think of this ahem person as a very bitter, angry, mean-spirited person who gets no fun or enjoyment out of anything in life because he’s too busy hating everything. When I feel someone has prejudged me, for whatever reason (I’m a woman, I have brown hair, I’m not slim and trim, whatever), I always think to myself “How can you hate me? You don’t even know me.” Prejudice makes no sense to me, because it’s based on nothing. Someone who doesn’t know me can’t make any valid judgements about me. Does that make any sense? Hope so. Good luck in your bike hunt :).
YesAnother white/Asian checking in. I feel your pain, man. I used to work with a guy who affectionately referred to me as “the little half-breed.” :rolleyes: I eventually cured him of that, though.
A few weeks ago, I was waiting in line at an amusement park when I noticed a guy near me staring at my face. I turned to look at him, and he said “So… what are ya, Chinese or somethin’?” I replied politely that my mother was Japanese and my father was American, and turned away. He tried to keep the conversation going by asking me if any of my Japanese relatives had fought in World War II, but I just ignored him. I don’t think the guy was trying to be an asshole, but I’ve been asked those kinds of questions so many fucking times… I swear, one day I’m going to get one of those propeller beanie hats, only instead of a propeller I’m going to have a sign that says “(1) Japanese mom, American dad. (2) One of my uncles was a kamikaze. (3) About thirty miles from Nagasaki. (4) Yes, I like Iron Chef. (5) 6 1/2 inches.”
Oh, and Cannondale makes the best mountain bikes, hands down.
Well take a page from my playbook. Buy a bike elsewhere, then drive by and show it to him. Simple as that. Did he have a diploma in Racist Business Administration from Pat Buchanan University on the wall?
HirokoAoi, that was superb, and, I for one feel it deserves a wider audience. Therefore, may I suggest you Go here, and e-mail these people the text of your rant? I think it’s just the kind of thing this paper selects for publication, and I’d be thrilled to see it appear in glorious AlternativePressHypnoInk ™. I’ll also volunteer to alert you to its arrival on OC newsstands.
I just realized a funny (not ha-ha, the other kind) thing; I think that most people wouldn’t act prejudiced towards a baby or a small child, but feel free to act like any kind of asshole towards an adult.
In my mind, that makes their prejudices even more wrong, and makes them real crap-weasels (as in, they know what they’re doing is wrong, so they don’t do it in front of parents that would attack them, but they do it to other adults or older children when they think they can get away with it).
This is just how it seems to me; anyone have a better idea if this is actually how prejudiced people behave?
Hello! random update…got a pair of rollerblades instead of a bike. Havent been on a pair in about five years, and i promptly fell down and sprained my everprecious, everguarded, printessential, detailed repetive motion making wrists. I was sprawled on the pavement lauging my ass off. I am in a considerably better mood…I didnt realize that people would post me back on this rant. so i didnt bother checking back with it.
so:
kaylasdad99, thanks for the complement, but i would not want anything i wrote in anger published.
headshok, a howdy from the hafu-gaijin silent collective. where do you reside? I had a friend in highschool who worked at a restraunt. He is half japanese and the other japanese employees assumed he didnt understand japanese and made disparaging remarks about him in his presence the entire time he worked there, thinking it was safe. I am pleased to say he got the SOB’s back when he quit. By delivering extremely complementary (for those of you not familiar with japanese understatement read: worse-than-sarcastic sarcasim)goodbye’s…in perfect, beautiful, japanese.
and generaly: thank you for the kind responses. I forget, sometimes, why it is i like this board so much. and then i post here.
Hello! random update…got a pair of rollerblades instead of a bike. Havent been on a pair in about five years, and i promptly fell down and sprained my everprecious, everguarded, printessential, detailed repetive motion making wrists. I was sprawled on the pavement lauging my ass off. I am in a considerably better mood…I didnt realize that people would post me back on this rant. so i didnt bother checking back with it.
so:
kaylasdad99, thanks for the complement, but i would not want anything i wrote in anger published.
headshok, a howdy from the hafu-gaijin silent collective. where do you reside? I had a friend in highschool who worked at a restraunt. He is half japanese and the other japanese employees assumed he didnt understand japanese and made disparaging remarks about him in his presence the entire time he worked there, thinking it was safe. I am pleased to say he got the SOB’s back when he quit. By delivering extremely complementary (for those of you not familiar with japanese understatement read: worse-than-sarcastic sarcasim)goodbye’s…in perfect, beautiful, japanese.
and generaly: thank you for the kind responses. I forget, sometimes, why it is i like this board so much. and then i post here.
When I was going through university, I worked in a shoe store. A man in his 50s approached me, and looked at some shoes. He discovered they were made in China, and made a very racist remark.
I said to him, “You’re a racist. I don’t like you,” in Japanese, and then in English, “I speak Japanese, actually.” He leaned forward, and looked at my eyes to see if I was Asian. I’m not, incidentally (school kids had to learn Japanese from the age of 7 in my home state during the 80s, and I got the hang of it). Baffled, he walked off without saying another word. Silly old racist twit.
Regrettably, as you say, it does work both ways. When I lived in Japan, I was exposed to racism for being white. At train stations, people are employed to give out small packets of tissues with advertising on them (handy, as public toilets don’t have toilet paper). I was at Kyobashi station in Osaka, and had the flu, and wanted to wipe my nose (blowing your nose is a no-no). A woman refused to give me tissues. I asked her why. She said it was because I was a foreigner and couldn’t read the advertising. So I looked at the tissues and read the advertising out loud for her, to show I could read Japanese characters. It didn’t matter: I still wasn’t allowed to have the otherwise free tissues.
My heart goes out to anyone exposed to racism. Its unfair and ignorant.
Ha! my entire childhood was one long litany of “Hirochan, when you grow up, you marry nice lookin japanee boy, have nice lookin kids! not like your mam! she marry hakujin, have weird lookin kid. Its ok. you get used to you.” from my grandmother. I managed to emerge relativly unscarred from my childhood due to the fact that, tho she ment what she said, my grandmother said it with love. She was honest to god worried about me. She and my mother raised me, and between the two of them, ive become one mixed chick. I have all sorts of amusing conflicting culture stories to throw in the soup. I guess it all comes down to one basic summary:Cornflakes for breakfast, onegiri with miso and takuwan for lunch.
Each of the children has what I consider the best of both races. Actually, the “half-breeds” tend to look sort of exotic in my eyes.
[Evil duplicate James T. Kirk voice]
“Spock, I’m tired of you and your half-breed interference!”
[/Evil duplicate James T. Kirk voice]
