Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:A man who was either homeless and/or has substance abuse issues/mental illness was walking towards me last night on a semi isolated street, in that unsteady halting way. I was trying to walk around him with my head bent down to stay out of his way when he snarled "stop staring at me, you f****ing chink".
I kept walking ahead. For a split second I thought he would turn around and start following me. There were other people ahead of me so I just started walking faster to catch up to them and then I was in an area where there were many more people.
I've been called "chink" by all sorts of people since I was a kid in elementary school. "Go back to your country". [My country? I was born here.]
So it surprises me how much it still stings when someone calls me a chink. It's even hard to write that. That a man who was probably homeless thinks I'm less than him because of my skin color. It shouldn't bother me, after all this time! Right?!
So I'm just trying to get this out of my system. Weirdly I feel ashamed and couldn't even tell anyone IRL that this happened.
Thanks for listening, strangers on an anonymous messaging board.
It is upsetting, but bring so so so surprised that these things happen is not going to serve you--Asian people are people just like everyone else and will be subject to human bias at times just like any other group of humans. And no, Asians are not going to be treated like white people in the United States, meaning bring seen as the default Americans. This is not good, but if you are unaware of this you are going to be shocked daily.
DP, and a little off-topic, but the weird thing for me was that in my high school / college / grad school / NYC bubbles
, it was really rare to be automatically “othered” or feel like I was being treated differently from anyone else on the daily things. It was kind of a surprise to have to relearn that once I moved to Va.
Anyway OP I’m sorry that happened to you. It must have been especially jarring coming from (1) a man (2) walking towards you (vs seated) and (3) visibly “off,” because those things together alerted your self-protection instincts. And then he came up to you and yelled something that was clearly targeted at you specifically, of course you felt attacked in the moment. It’s also the realization that only he knew in the moment whether he was going to raise a hand to you—to be willing to yell a slur like that means he is already partially unbound by the rules of civility that we all abide by—and the feeling that your appearance, which you cannot change, somehow catalyzed this.
Ignore all the hopeless PPs who are too busy fixating on how your post could be edited for political correctness to offer you a word of compassion. They are using this post to pile on with their own anger, and most of us are seeing how that is very sad and not okay.
Feel better and cocoon yourself with good people if you can. Also talk to someone about it. Next time you’re out with your friends, just share that it happened. You can use a light tone while still mentioning that it hurt and was scary at the time.