Friday, January 09, 2004
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Once upon a time...
I was in the San Jose airport lobby carrying my then 2-year old daughter, when an old white lady came up to me and marveled: "You Oritentals sure have the cutest babies."
Now I had two possible responses floating in my head:
1) "She's cute cuz she's MY baby, not an 'Oriental' baby."
2) "Yeah, good thing. Otherwise she'd grow up to look like you..."But I was such a wimp. All I did was say, "Thank you."
What would you have said? Is there a polite but snappy response to let her know that what she said was insulting? Are any of you still confronted with this kind of backhanded compliments? Share your thoughts...
NLUTE
Geez, its been over three months since I've written an installment in the Onigiriman saga, "Not Living Up To Expectation". I got to 1979 when I went to Japan and discovered that I was not Japanese... no wait. I already knew I wasn't Japanese, I discovered I was American... yeah. Anyway, as I've written before, the years 1977-80 are pretty much a blur. I think it was a combination of being excessively drunk, having virtually no direction or understanding of myself and doing absolutely nothing worthy or significant to premanently occupy a portion of my brain. When I think about it now, it was a pretty sad portion of my life... well maybe except for the singing contest...Before school start next week, i will try to sort out some of the events and maybe put it down if possible... I guess it was too late for Piratechan... :(
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Comments (21)
Hmmm...I guess you would have to take into account that she's an old white lady. They grew up with different views and are still adjusting. My friend's grandfather still refers to me as the "oriental" friend, but he doesn't mean it in a bad way.
I remember a time when I was walking downtown to go to my sister's graduation ceremony. Some white guy (maybe around mid-twenties) came up to us and asked if we spoke English. That kind of cheesed us off.
yes quoting yourself is fun =D
geez, random stupid white people still use the term "oriental?" honestly, i don't know how i would have responded. that would depend on how fast i get over the shock of being called an oriental. basically, i probably wouldn't have said anything. maybe mumble a thanks and a mental fuck you *shrug*
Usually, I just shake off the use of "orientals" (and I don't know this person well) if it's not used in a malicious manner. Some people just don't know that "orientals" have a negative connotation.
Yep...dumb old people. Of course, any non-Asian who goes to Asia gets plenty of similarly ignorant "compliments," even from young people. Not that this makes what was said any better.
Question...where would this stop being offensive and start being a real compliment? Substitute "Japanese people" for "You Orientals?" Or is this still implying that you're not American? While as you said, "She's cute cuz she's MY baby, not an 'Oriental' baby," it's not unusual to hear people mention race/ethnicity in such conversations.
hmmph...i would've either give her the evil eye till she goes away thinking all "orientals" are rude.. or DECK her and say "thank you white bread"
yeah, i've been posting on my LJ and totally forgot my xanga. oops. happy new year to you too! =) may yours be filled with lots of laughter and love.
o haha i almost forgot...
one of our white friends made us laugh soo hard when we first met. He asked, "do you orientals have >blank<?" i really don't remember what it was but my bf replied "oriental? what are we a rug or something? it's asian if you want to be PC nowadays." ahehehe we're such dorks.
I had a guy come up to me once at a bar and tell me I looked like someone he knew because she was oriental, and then launched into some sort of discourse on how he looooves oriental women because they know how to treat a man.
So I told him that it must because we all look alike. And then I paused and said, "Oh yea, and I play the violin, I'm really good at math, I have a great work ethic, and I always walk two steps behind a man with my eyes cast down." I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Apparently I offended him with my "racist" remarks and he didn't understand the irony of a Korean girl saying these things.
hmm, i probably wouldn't have said anything either, plus it was an old lady.
on the topic of racism, over break when i went to see the last samurai with my cousin and his friends.
this group comes in 15 minutes into the movie, two of the guys were freaking loud as hell, they were constantly commenting on the movie out loud as if no one else was in the theater. then you know the part, where aruguren's at the dinner table and he's trying to learn nihongo and learns the names of nobutada and the two little kids. then little kid starts naming stuff. well one of the white guys was like, "what the...damn gooks."
I thought to myself wtf, we're in freaking chicago...what the hell. I'm not japanese or korean, but i was freaking insulted. i'm sure the korean girls we were with, were too. probably even more so. so, i politely said "jeez, shut the fuck up, fuggin' bumpkin" i normally wouldn't say stuff like that, but it just came out. i don't know, i was pissed. but anyways they continued talking, maybe even louder than before. so in the end, i probably ruined the movie for the other people there.