Thursday, July 16, 2009

Racial Discrimination in Melbourne

Human beings are born to learn to identify, to congregate and to discriminate. It's inside each individual's mind, of course it exists anywhere on Earth, including in this so-called Garden City.

I'm lucky to face the very very mild type of discrimination lol. 1st encounter was on my virgin international flight to Melbourne. I was sitting beside a local Australian and yeah we had some chit chat but too bad my listening and grasp of Australian accent was too poor(and still is) that he got a bit impatient and spoke to me using strings of English words instead of sentences>.< "I..rear....cows...very big....."blah blah, ugh but anyhow he was still nice, nothing nasty happened, just felt that I was being looked down by a caucasian~

On my very 1st day in Melbourne ie.18-2-2009, I was having my lunch at the KFC outlet opposite my rented apartment(Swanston/Grattan junction) when I heard the local Australian and his duno-how-old kid(probably 6-8 yrs old) murmuring and sniggering something like 'stinky asians...'Damn,should have scowled at them. Then everywhere i go, I'm always being mistaken as a China chinese >.< Went to the post office also, "Oh, where'd you want to send your parcel? China?" Argh, and the person in-charge that time was an Asian somemore. An Asian should be able to tell the difference between the way I speak English than how the mainland chinese do! (Caucasians are too proud and too ignorant to notice the difference in how we Asians speak English anyway until I tell them where I came from but still I don't think they give a damn)

Yeah right, my complexion is too fair and pale, and I don't speak those magnificent English, let alone seasoning it with local accent(maybe only with Malaysian accent). I can also feel that sometimes all those customer service staff or sales personnel are not as friendly as they are when dealing with caucasian customers. I thought I was just being too sensitive but well, some of my other friends here also share this same feeling lol.

I liked the moment when we all were in Mornington Peninsular. That time a local caucasian told us "Penguins over there" and Alex Ewe 'kek' the local accent "Oh really? We'll go there check it out!" hahaha,and he heard the woman whispered to her friends "Wow,that asian guy really knows English" LOL!

But there's still 1 ultra-sad moment that I can still vividly remember. That was when YiWern and I were at QV BigW. There's this 1 little chinese kid (5-7 yrs old?) fascinated with the display toy that he accidentally stepped on a local caucasian's foot. And the woman just got so mad that she shouted "OOOUUCH! That hurts, you stupid boy!"and stroked off. The kid's mum just managed to utter a sentence in Cantonese to her kid " you see, people just scolded you stupid.."Darn! C'mon, how painful could it be when a harmless little kid accidentally steps on your foot? Even if you are racially discriminative, you don't need to be so mean to a kid right? I felt so ashamed for that woman's sorry demeanour . Aikz~

5 comments:

  1. hey...wow...interesting. yah, i heard abt it in aussie, that's why i've developed a sorta unliking towards that country...after reading abt it past, i actually will nuke the country when i become some world dictator, after pyongyang though.

    anyway, i'd like to put my two cents (or sen) worth into this:

    1. i think the 1st and 2nd examples should be viewed as that of trying to be understading, just that they are really lousy...actually should pity them la, cuz they are so insulated by wealth they don't even know what's outside of their town, hence the large support for manchester at home...

    2. i think the woman at bigw has status eqivalent or > than hitler...i think it's rude to be like that to children, irregardless of race.

    3. i love my malaysian accent. i recently met a guy from india and for some steange reason i could speak malaysian style with him, and it felt so good. i dunno why, but i felt something missing for along time unti lthat day when a lah somehow crept into my sentences. it was the largest discovery i ever made (well that really was my feeling)un-lahed sentences, makes, like my fren once said, english a cold language. then i Go lah!

    4. i dunno...but do ever think that we are being rascist? i mean consider what we say abt other races, not to mention china chinese. aren;t we being rascist as well?

    the situation in germany is my ideal situation, well almost. here, people are not so discriminating, but not rasicst. when i'm with other counry frens, there is never a time when it is not mentioned that i'm not white, i'm asian or some other rascist comment. but i take it with a pinch of salt, plus they meant no form of degradation. plus, i'm learning to do it too. it's like shooting each other lor. we mean it without negatively meaning it.

    my ideal is that people stop discriminating, but should remain rascist and learn to laugh abt their cultural sterotypes as well as others.

    whatdoyallthink? :)

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  2. sorry...i meant:
    4. people here are not discriminating, but MORE rascist

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  3. hey hvnt seen such a substantial comment for quite a long time, thanks!

    yeah,I totally agree,learn to accept rascism inside each of us,but to laugh at it without any negative feelings in thinking about/expressing it.

    Btw jon,when're u gona update your blog =) lol,or u hv somehow changed it long time ago but i still don't knw?

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  4. Wow, looks as if you guys are having some sort of discussion over here! Cool

    By the way, I'm interested to know the wine bottle-throwing incident witnessed by you in last year. Can roughly tell me what happened on that night?

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  5. i'm really not sure le...
    the reason i stopped my blog was cuz i couldn't even get in my own blog =.=//

    so i thouight of starting a new blog but i'm getting lazy again :P

    will update you on it once i have found the momentum...

    ReplyDelete