Racing Harmony

Got a picture in one of my messaging apps on my phone. It was a poster about free health checks for Asians only. Non-Asians are not welcomed. My friend was very offended that a workplace would allow that kind of race specific activity being promoted in the organisation. She found it insulting and racist.

My first reaction to the poster was "Are there Asian specific illness that needs to be checked? Like Asian specific cancer or bird flu (I actually used a different one in my reply but it won't be appropriate to put it on here)?" My friend found my reply funny but still didn't change the fact that this kind of activity or promotion annoyed the hell out of her.

However, the whole conversation got me to think about, "When we accused other people of being racist, do we not have a part of it?" For example whether certain disruptions about racial issues in our society were actually caused by behaviours of people who actually blamed the society for being racist to them?

I cannot speak for other racial groups but as a Chinese Australian living in Australia there were occasions that I wondered whether we did contribute to people not liking us. Not because of us as a race but because of what we were doing? The fact is a lot of times people remember bad things about you and then they start to generalise that this is what they are like. For example when I was at the university many a time I could hear some of my fellow Hong Kong students talking among themselves during classes. Now Cantonese is a very loud language even when you whispered the words. So you can imagine how disruptive this kind of non-stop talking during the class is. Even worse was that when people shushed them these Hong Kong students will give other fellow students dirty looks as if it was their right to talk in class. There were many occasions the lecturer had to ask them to leave. Under such circumstance, is it racist that other people don’t like these Hong Kong students in class?

Take another example, when I was in the college, I have heard some of the mainland Chinese residents saying how they didn’t like the toilets in Australia so they would simply squat over them or squat on them. As a result the “disposal” was not entirely “on target”. They think it was Ok but then I felt bad for the cleaners dealing with regular complaints from other residents how bad the state of the toilets were. When I was working at a University, there were debates about whether teaching certain sector of students to properly use the toilet is racist or not as they were scared of being labelled as a racist University. However, at the same time the maintenance costs of toilets are getting unbearable, as they were not built to be squat on. I personally did not think it is racist but education, but other people might have some different views.

Meanwhile I heard that a friend’s friend’s daughter was complaining how racist the Australian lecturers were when she was studying in Australia. The reason behind this was she never got grades as good as her Australian classmates. Now she was studying a curriculum that requires the mastery of the English language. However, her English, to be honest was not great. It was sufficient I guess to get her into the course but not great to enable her to debate in papers or in class eloquently. Furthermore when she was studying in Australia, she only wanted to hang out with Hong Kong and Macau students. Under such circumstance, with a lack of appreciation of the English language and at the same time no motivation to improve it, how would you expect to do well when it comes to an English demanding course? Is it really because of racism that you did not get good marks?

Further during my years in the higher education sector I have encountered mainland Chinese students who told me I have no right to tell them what is right and what is wrong if I do not speak Mandarin with them. They think they paid tuition in this country to study, they have the right to anything and only a fellow Chinese person who can speak Mandarin can tell them what they can and cannot do. They were at that time the active groups who usually filed complaints about my Australian colleagues for being racists when they were told not to smoke in the no smoking areas, unplugging public computers to charge their mobile phones, reserving seats in a whole area for their friends by pulling off rows of books from the shelves and playing online games when terminals were reserved for online database and catalogue searches only. If that really constitutes racism that could be it – but is it?

Recent reports about some Chinese restaurants in Sydney are charging non-Chinese customers higher prices also brought to light about the whole racism issue in Australia. I personally had Australian friends who were not served by staff members in a Chinese restaurant in a predominantly Chinese suburb because they could not read the Chinese menu. They eventually had to leave because every staff in the restaurant just ignored them. Is this racism? That is something we need to think about before waving the racism banner in the air.

I am not writing this article to defend Australia that there is no racism. That will be painting a completely unrealistic picture, not just of Australia but also of the world. I am not writing this article to accuse my fellow Chinese counterparts of wrong doings either - I must emphasise that I love a lot of them and they are great people with great talents and abilities. But what I am trying to point out is, racism sometimes can be created by certain behaviours that the groups claiming to be victims of it had exhibited. They might not start as racist issues but then the repetition of these issues allowed generalisation to be made about these racial groups. It then gradually develops into racism per se. Racism is a complex issue and not every flavour of racism was based on the same issue. However, as the world becomes more compact, I certainly as once a foreigner living in a foreign land where I now called home, think that we should all contribute to remove misunderstandings and tensions and help build a more understanding and harmonious society. Adopting some reverse racism like tactics like what my friend experienced at her workplace would not help the situation at all. There is no one single antidote to the racism – just a lot of collaborative efforts across the board. And everyone has to take part in it.