Racist, really?

I was reading this article just the other day. It's basically about a Canadian who tries to figure out why he is often called a racist. And then last Monday, something happened that makes me think about one more time this issue called racism.

So what actually happened? It's not that big a deal, really. But a group from a major oil company in Vietnam took a visit to where I work. One of the group members was extremely rude, and my colleague, who's a relatively young lady who grew up in Texas and didn't have a lot of experience working with people from other cultures (Well, in Texas, you're a foreigner if you're from California. Imagine that.). She got a little offended by the Vietnamese guy because he kept asking her to take pictures for him in a very rude manner - no thank you or please, & gesturing instead of speaking. I was suspecting this made her think that Vietnamese are very rude in general. And, because of how she reacted, it's easy for an outsider to think she is discriminatory toward Vietnamese.

It is, of course, unfair to make generalizations like this. But at the same time, it is easy if this is your only encounter with people from that culture. Depending on the context, an individual does not only represent his/her self, but also the family, community, and culture that one is from.

Is she racist? Or is the rude Vietnamese guy racist? Probably neither of them are. But I can see it would be easy for anyone to think they are because of what happened.

I remember when I was in Hong Kong, my foreigner friends would complain to me that Chinese are racist. I never understood why. I think Hong Kong people are generally not racist. They're just discriminatory to people with no money.

Is it racist to call a Caucasian gweilo/gweipor (ghost man/ghost woman)? I genuinely don't think so. When we say gwei, we don't really mean anything bad about the westerner we're addressing to. It's just a name that we've been using for so many years that it's hard to change.

My husband is black. When we're in Hong Kong, some people would call him haak gwei (black ghost). At first, I felt a little uneasy about the name. But after a while, I realize that it's just a name that distinguishes him from other ghosts.

One time when we were driving in Houston, we asked a passerby how to get to China town. This person was obviously not very educated. He gave us the directions and then he said, "You'll see a lot of Chinamen there."

So was he being racist? Probably not. I know some Chinese get really upset about the name Chinaman. But I think, at least in this incident, that the guy was just using a phrase that he knew. He didn't know better. What did he know about racism, honestly? When he was giving us directions, he looked nothing but genuinely eager to help.

It's a fine line between racism and otherwise. But in the U.S., I feel like some people are using every chance they get to accuse someone of being racist so as to take advantage of it.

Take the N-word for example. It's okay for a black stand-up comedian to address himself by the N-word, but if any white person say an African-American (This term is itself problematic. My husband hates it. He's of African heritage but is from the Carribeans. So he never considers himself an "African".) is an N----, it's an absolute no-no.

Especially in the U.S., I think a lot of politicians are using the race issue as a tool to get what they want.

It's easy to say someone is racist, but before we make the accusation, we should really think about the motives or reason behind the obvious.