To the woman on the train,
You emphasized the word ‘racism’ in your conversation when you narrated to your friend sitting on your right, about how a convenience store employee gave you a fork instead of chopsticks with your bento, judging you by your appearance. Your friend empathized with you by sharing her own experience of being conversed in English despite her fluency in Japanese. Your conversation immediately reminded me of the countless forums I had clicked through for the past four years. People who lamented on being offered friendship in exchange for free language lessons and felt as if they were treated like live exhibitions while walking on the streets. I too had stories to tell. However, before I could get a chance to share my experiences, someone had already written, “It is easier if you are Asian. Their looks help them blend in with the locals so they are more lenient towards them.”
There are struggles too; in looking the part but not being the real deal.Although physically and geographically I am different from you, your mention of the word ‘racism’’ is all too familiar. I have been acquainted with that word far before I even knew how to read or write.
I know very well how it feels to be judged for the color of my skin and the shape of my eyes, my importance based on imaginary geographical boundaries and my worth decided by preconceived ideas of my culture or the lack of it. It’s all too familiar even for my fourteen-year-old self who identified with the ‘others’ in George Orwell’s quote, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
I am acquainted with bigotry.
My mother recalls the story vividly. The last day of our family holiday in Thailand when I was four years old. The morning flight back home had been delayed as a result of technical difficulties. The passengers were ushered into a restaurant for breakfast at the airport with the airline bearing the full cost. The servers at the restaurant left the other passengers and, my young mother with three tiny children; hungry and tired from waking up at 4:00 in the morning to catch the flight. We stood there; while other customers came in, dined, paid and walked out. Everyone in the restaurant assuming that we could not afford the meal if it were not the airline paying for it.
I have known prejudice through phone calls.
Through my older sister calling me at 2:00 a.m in the morning, sobbing herself to sleep during the first week of her university in Australia. In her flat, She had been the only Asian girl from a minority country- or to be precise in their words, a ‘third-world-country.’ She spoke of how she would find herself walking into a room filled with lively conversations dying out at the sight of her presence, how none of her flatmates were kind enough to let her know about any freshers’ events and how everyone in the flat would go out together without inviting her. My sister ate racism for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and by the end of the week they had cut out her existence and decorated her to blend in with the walls of their flat.
I have been fed and clothed by discrimination.
There was a time for four years; my mother earned her paycheck based on her race rather than her qualifications. She had been an English lecturer back home. Since Primary school, she had been raised in boarding schools run by Nuns and Fathers. She had trained in the U.K, Australia and had her Masters Degree from the University of New Brunswick in Canada. To think, she did the same amount of work yet earned two times less than her Caucasian colleagues. They were given full-time employment contracts while she was given a temporary one year contract of which she had to continually pray for it to be renewed at the end of the year.
I have exchanged greetings with suspicion.
Asians are stereotyped to be hard-workers, good at maths and doctors and lawyers but somehow that does not seem to apply to Asians from ‘developing countries’.
“Why are you here?” They always ask. And my answer always remains, “For University,” “How did you come here- I mean financially?” They look at me condescendingly.
Every time that happens, I take a deep breath. Open my mouth to say something, then pause- shake my head and smile. “To steal your jobs and ruin your economy,”– is probably the answer they are expecting for the first question. “I came illegally by hiding in a suitcase,” is definitely what they are wishing my answer to their second question is.
I have flown around the globe with discrimination.
As a child, I enjoyed geography class. I wanted to see the world with my own eyes, not just through my brother’s atlas. However, the amount of paperwork and time it took to apply for a visa to just even go on a week holiday was enough to make me realize money was not the issue but one tiny book issued by the country I was born in. I have memorized the degree of furrowed eyebrows belonging to immigration officers in more than ten different nations and witness people being pulled aside in the immigration line after one look at their passport.
And I have clicked on part-time ads posted by racism.
I was asked to look for someone who could understand English, and before I could raise my hand to volunteer, they specified, “Someone who is native in English, like that South American boy in the year below.” I have been reading and writing English since the age of five but no one told me fifteen years ago, I had to look the part to be able to speak the language.
So to the woman on the train, I feel you. I am also tired of being told my ‘English is good’ because, honestly, that is the only language I can write fluently in (If you think my English sounds terrible, just a note- I speak English more than I speak Dzongkha, Japanese, Hindi or Nepali combined).
Nevertheless, by no means am I trying to compare your agony with mine. It is just that I thought it must be nice to be able to turn to your right and have someone empathize with your struggle.
I have spent countless nights in my bed, scrolling through articles after articles till 3:00 a.m being blown away by activists, writers, speakers of groups speaking words of encouragement to their fellow men and women. However, I never came across any articles that felt like a reassurance to my identity- my identity as a minority Asian coming from a ‘hermit kingdom’ and living in one of the biggest cities in the world.
I wrote this piece so I could come out of my shell and because I know there is someone out there who can relate to this. I just did not want anyone else to feel how I felt about my existence when I was sixteen. My death to be only a number like my cousin who died in a hotel fire in Germany. My resume, a suitable image of a second-class citizen. My culture, someone’s souvenir back from a ‘third world country.’ My passport, the first sign of an illegal immigrant. My education, my upbringing and my experience just a footnote to my existence as a minority.