I couldn’t believe it, but this actually happened. I wasn’t sure if I should post this here because instead of culture encounter, I think it is actually shocking and somewhat scary.
It was a Wednesday. I don’t remember why, but we had that day off (it was just for our school). The day before, several friends and I wanted to go shopping at Queens Center Mall, so we decided to meet up at the 34th Street M train station the next day morning and go together.
On Wednesday before 10 o’clock, our meeting time, we all arrived at the platform of the Queens bound M train. Since there were some people I never met before, we started talking about random things in Chinese while waiting for the train to come.
While I was talking, I heard some mumbles on the other side of the group (we had a group of eight, so it was a pretty big group for morning on a weekday). I broke away from my conversation and realized that there was an African American talking this way. He held an almost empty glass Vodka bottle on his left hand, and his right hand was busy doing different kinds of hand signals to us, including the middle finger. At first, I couldn’t understand what he was talking about because he seemed to be swallowing his own words. In fact, the whole time he was talking, I only heard several key words like “counterfeiting”, “fake clothes and bags”, “taking over America”, “taking all the Americans’ jobs”, and so on. It was obvious that he didn’t like Chinese people, but I didn’t understand that in the beginning. I heard the words “skipping school”, so I thought he might had the wrong idea and tried to explain to him that we were not skipping school. He ignored me and went on anyway. In the end, he even pointed at one of my friends and started telling her how Asian she looked and told her directly “Asians are really ugly”. That’s when I realized I encountered a racist. Although there weren’t as much people, all of them were looking in our direction. Not surprisingly, none of them helped us. Just when I thought that I had enough and wanted to talk back to him, he walked away in a “take two steps and slide back one” manner, still yelling out the same words he said to us.
It all happened really quickly. He only stopped for about 30 seconds, but it felt like a whole century. After he left, we stared at each other for about 5 seconds, still not knowing what’s going on, and finally one of us said, “我们好像被歧视了。。。(It seems like we just experienced racism)” We suddenly broke into conversations about that man. We tried to recall what just happened, but the memory seemed so obscure but at the same time so clear for the language he used. After several discussions, we decided to view the man as a lunatic and started laughing so hard all together. After the laugh, we went back to the conversations we had before like nothing had happened.
I don’t know about the others, but that laugh was the bitterest laugh I ever had.
http://pastorchrisowens.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/how-a-victim-of-racism-became-a-perpetrator/
We spoke about this post in class. Your final sentence about the bitterest laugh is a very powerful one!
This is a very interesting story, and unfortunately, an experience that many minorities go through. I have had a similar experience on the subway. For example, when an old lady told me to “get out of the country and stop taking jobs,” I laughed at her stupidity when I think back to it, but like yours, it is indeed a very bitter laugh. I think what drives people to do this is their own personal frustration, that they take out on a stranger. Even though they might not mean harm, people really need to take into account the power and effect of hateful language.