klarali.blo.gg - Racism against Asians

Something that made me quite upset recently was the racist messages a classmate wrote in our class chat. It was a discussion about the corona virus and he said some shit about events closing because of Chinese people attending and also made an insulting comment about our eyes. It was just so chocking how a young person at university can express himself like that in a class chat just out of nowhere. There´s always people with weird opinions but the thing that scares me is the reaction from my classmates. Some of them thought it was funny just because it was so provocative which just gave him encouragement to continue, just like when a child does a prank. I wrote a message saying I´m not thinking it was funny and that I didn’t like his attempt to be provocative. His answer to that was just that he was racist for real. If he is that´s really bad but mostly I just took it as an excuse to not give an excuse. It´t such a stupid situation and my biggest disappointment was that barely no one reacted. Afterwards some people told me that they got upset but it doesn’t matter if no one´s saying anything.

I hate that this kind of racist jokes and comments are so overlooked and accepted by people. Of course it´s better or worse depending on the environment but I seriously thought university students would have a higher standard. Because it´s not funny and even if the person of color is laughing doesn´t mean they appreciate the joke or the comment. In my case it´s been everything from "do you feel like you´ve adapted to this society" to "do you miss your real (biological) parents?" It makes me feel really uncomfortable about my ethnicity and how people see me. When I was younger I was way more scared of being different. I didn´t wanted to be connected to asian people because I felt how they we´re not as respected in society as white people. People make fun of asian people thinking that they are innocent, stupid and submissive. I have no idea how many times I´ve passed men in the street shouting nihau to me. It´s not an insulting word, it just means hello, but it´s the way they are saying it. Just like I´m something weird and exotic.

When I was around 14-15 all the boys in my class bullied me daily because I was asian. They were shouting nihau and other more insulting words everywhere I went and no one said anything. My friends where there when it happened and I even told them that it made me upset but no one held my back. They said I shouldn´t take it so seriously because the boys where just trying to be funny. But I din´t think it was fun and eventually I broke down. It was a school day after gymnastic class. The boys where not attending but sat on the side watching. During the whole class they shouted mean things at me and as I remember not even the teacher reacted. I think I shouted to them to shut up but it´s impossible to be heard as a single person when there´s like 10 of them. Afterwards it continued in the hallways. I had borrowed the cleaning lady´s key to unlock my locker but walked over to them. The cleaning lady came and saw that I left her key unattended and got angry at me. That was the final drop for my big breakdown. I ran away from school and cried on a bench. Eventually my friends and teachers called me and everything was actually taken cared of in a good way. My parents where really upset and my teachers had a serious talk with the boys. After that it stopped but it took two years of daily harassment and me being to embarrassed to tell anyone else about it. Most probably because of how my friends reacted if they had supported me I might have felt the strength to tell my parents or the teachers earlier. And I´m also really upset about how the teachers didn´t notice because it also went on during class.

I hurt my self-esteem really bad. I had anxious feelings about my ethnicity from before because of the general norms and values I felt from people around me but this made it worse. I didn´t think anyone could like me in a romantic way because I was asian. I felt like it was connected to being disgusting and weird. These days I feel way better. Just the fact that a lot of people actually have asian fetishes really fascinated me. (And yes it might be due to porn damage but that´s another topic). It just really made me happy that people can think asian people are attractive and beautiful.

I feel proud about being Chinese but this incident at university still hurts. But now I´m actually taking myself seriously and reported it to the university board who handled it really well. They booked in a meeting with the guy but I don´t know how it went or if he showed up. It´s important to take action against these kind of behaviour to show that I´m not okay with it. Not doing anything is accepting the behaviour. It´s hard to stand up for yourself alone and that´s why it´s so important for everyone to take action so the person(s) being harassed feel supported.

It´s also extra important to be aware of racism in this times of corona. Since the disease started in China the country and east Asia in general has got a bad stamp being connected with the virus. Asian restaurants has to close because people don´t want to eat there. I also heard in a women´s group on Facebook how kids yelled corona at asian people. With the corona epidemic going on racists just have another excuse to express their hate and judgemental thoughts.

Me as a child (it’s a chinese flag in the background that got cut out...)

Klara Li