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Soph
Joined: Dec 3, 2004
Posts: 3
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Tongue-tied
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Gender & Age: Female & 19
Country: New Zealand
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The little things in life
December 5, 2004 - 10:38 AM
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Has anyone ever noticed the little things, the everyday things that just tell you that the world is, despite all efforts, still a racist society? Like at the poll tax display (enlightening the world about the 100-pound poll tax the Chinese faced when attempting to move to NZ in the 1800s, simply because the govt. of the time wanted them out because they were Chinese) in the guest book there were all these racist comments and it just made me more aware that racism is still everyday. As a Kiwi Chinese (5th-generation and proud of it) I am often confronted with the "Asian" stereotypes attributed to Asian people as a group. This is because there are again lots of Asian people trying to come to NZ and as a result the racism has sprung up again. I get people talking to me slowly like I don't understand, or mocking the Chinese language (of which I can speak maybe 100 words tops, a fact I am not proud of as I would like to be eventually multi-lingual and I am sure that if immigrants can learn English, I should be theoretically able to learn Chinese which is much simpler as a language) or saying "go home." Well, this is my home, my house is down the road if you really want me to go back, but I thought it was a free world, right? Wrong, obviously. Usually this is just a case of people not understanding, or not coming into contact with NZ Chinese. The funny thing is, half the time I just see myself as another NZer (which I am)but then the other half of the time there'll be the comments, the snide remarks, the faces, the bad vibes...and I'm not imagining it. I know I'm not imagining it. It becomes funny after a while though, when you've just lived with it forever and a day-the sheer stupidity of some people just cracks you up. Like at the poll tax display, someone wrote in the book "There's no such thing as NZ Chinese-you all Chinks-just go home" spelt exactly like that. It was funny because if we're going to 'go home' to our 'own country' then all the Europeans and Americans and Africans and everyone else who came to NZ after about 1850 should jolly well push off back to where they came from too-why is there one rule for us and not for them? What is also ironic is that sometimes the people who are teasing me aren't even as 'Kiwi' as I am, being sons and daughters of people who have immigrated here themselves. If they can call themselves NZers so can I. If your right to be a citizen of a country depends on how you look (we're going Nazi/Hitler styles here) then it's a sad, sad world we live in. Go home? I am home.
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