Microaggression and Macro-Self-Contradiction
Yesterday I wrote about a guide to recognise white-to-coloured racism or “microaggression,[] the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional(my italics), that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership” manifesting itself in horrible insults like “where are you from.”
Why is this question (when asked by a white American) microaggressive but not, presumably, asked by a Hong Kong Chinese? Or maybe it is but I just haven’t noticed it. Anyway, the author of the list of microaggressive insults, slights and snubs, one Derald Wing Sue, explains just why “where are you from” is such a kick in the face: “Message: You are not a true American.You are a perpetual foreigner in your own country.Your ethnic/racial identity makes you exotic.”
Fair enough. It must be vexing and exhausting for people of Chinese descent to get this question every day, maybe from the same people like their neighbours, again and again, because all Chinese look the same.
But then he goes on, only two lines further down, to describe another type of microaggression, namely “Color Blindness” with the following examples of hurtful slights and snubs: “"When I look at you, I don't see color." "There is only one race, the human race." "America is a melting pot." "I don't believe in race."”
Now suddenly the Message is: “Assimilate to the dominant culture. Denying the significance of a person of color's racial/ethnic experience and history.Denying the individual as a racial/cultural being.”
Now all of a sudden he wants the race or culture of the snubbed victim singled out and made different. Make up your mind, Derald?
I wonder whether, if his parents hadn’t buggered off to California before he was born, he would be one of those Hong Kong and mainland people who tell me: “Wah, you’re a foreigner but you know the name of a Chinese tea!” “Wah, you have even heard of lotus root!” “Wah, you can go shopping in Shenzhen!”
According to Derald, these are terrible snubs and insults based solely on the way I look. I wonder what he’d make of white people in Hong Kong being called devils, as a matter of course, in newspaper headlines for example. But I, although sometimes weary and exasperated by hearing these remarks day in and day out, are supposed to smile gratefully and take them as compliments.
Because only white people can be racist and make racist, patronising remarks. And political correctness never made it into Hong Kong Chinese society. Thank God!
你係邊度嚟呀？(Lei hai bindou lei ah? – You from where come ah?)
鬼佬 (Gwai lou – devil geezer/white man)
鬼婆 (Gwai poh – devil hag/white woman, NOT “gwai lou woman” which many foreigners call themselves)