Racism and Prejudice

Quite often, photos of children of different races hugging and kissing each other appear on Facebook timelines with a comment that racism is acquired, a result of social conditioning.

Personally, I am not 100% sure about it. My memory time-travels to the early 90s, to the time I spent in Taipei, Taiwan. I can recollect clearly two different cases of kids being or not being racist in different mixed-race settings.

During that period of time (Taipei in the 1990s), white expatriates’ kids had two choices: to attend a preschool/kindergarten at the private Taipei American School (TAS) or, as we were Taiwanese residents, join much cheaper local services. Many parents considered the second solution better not only because of the price, but as well because of the possibility of their offspring learning Mandarin language and Chinese culture while mixing with little Taiwanese citizens.

At TAS, where children embodied nearly all possible human looks, there was no single trace of prejudice because of race, but there was a really serious problem in Taiwanese facilities, where there was usually only one kid of different race. I am guessing that for kids from the mixed group at TAS, the archetype of a kid (a peer) was being similar in size and body shape, and it was those qualities that indicated that they were the same. But for pure group of narrow-eyed Taiwanese kids, the white kid was something that did not belong to them. All expat parents who undertook the experiment of putting their kids in Taiwanese schools were forced to switch back to the first option because their kids were bulled, laughed at, and had strong feelings of non-belonging.

The theory was confirmed by my neighbour who was raising her Japanese-Australian granddaughter. The girl looked more Caucasian than Japanese and her Japanese school experience forced her parents to send her to live with the grandma, who could enroll her in school in Sydney, where the diversity of school kids did not cause any sort of behavioural problems.

This is why I believe that “racism” is just an intolerance for dissimilarity.

I love to tell the story about a conversation I had with a taxi driver in Warsaw. I was going to the Taiwanese Office (Embassy) to invite Taiwanese diplomats for the promotion of my book. I gave a taxi-driver address of my destination. As we were getting close to the place, he asked me, "What's there? I cannot visualise any building at this address."

"The Taiwanese Embassy," I answered.

There was dead silence for a while. Then the taxi driver asked me a second question.

"They are Chinese, right? Do you like them?"

"Oh, yes, I do. Very much!" I replied.

After another prolonged period of silence, he said, "I don't."

"Why?" I asked. There was no answer, so I started a more detailed interrogation. "Did a Chinese person harm you in any way?"

"No…"

"Do you know any Chinese person?"

"No…"

"So, why do not you like them?"

"I just look at them and do not like them," he concluded, after a period of silence.

I love the story. I very often laughingly quote it as an example of the aversion of less sophisticated homo sapiens to those unlike them.

As I stated in another essay, Donald Trump’s admirers, who in many cases came from a less educated, simpler category of US citizens, identified themselves well with their leader. His way of thinking and expressing thoughts, and his vocabulary, which as linguists assessed, is on the level of eighth grade student, matched well with the level of most his followers. For them, and for their president, the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you" the base of all religions including their own), was too abstract to implement it in their own life. So for example to accept refugees with an Islamic background, they would have to imagine being refugees in foreign country. Much too much of abstract thinking….

To put it more simply, I believe that racism is nothing more than an inability to comprehend the abstract.

Another funny example of racism, nationalism, and prejudice can be found in ethnic communities.

Once there was a party at my place. A young couple from Poland, which decided to spend a year in Australia to master English and learn about Australian culture, participated in it. The crowd was really diverse. There was my transgender friend Anastasia, a black gay singer from NYC called David, a peculiar British lady named Carole, and other non-conventional individuals. Marcel, who just few days ago had left Poland -- a Catholic country where most people still whisper saying the word “gay”-- asked me if all Poles living in Australia had parties that looked like that. I laughed and told him that some Poles here still eat rosół and schabowy for Sunday dinner (since they consider it the best food in the world), drink vodka, and lament over the primitiveness of Australian culture, the stupidity of Australians, and other minor nations inhabited by Australia and the world. Marcel looked a bit dazed, so I explained to him quickly that it is the default behaviour among many members of ethnic communities, usually by those who are less educated or have difficulty expressing themselves in English. I added that migrants who integrated well have no such problems.

As my dear Vietnamese friend Chi was approaching us, I asked her. “Chi, do Vietnamese people at their gatherings say that pho is the best food in the world and that Australians and other nations are stupid in comparison to Vietnamese people?"

Chi looked truly taken aback and said: “How do you know that?”

People quite often ask me: “Where is your lovely accent from?" I asses it as a nice and inquisitive question. The question “Where are you from?" is acceptable as well, unless it is not followed by reassurance that the interrogator is not a racist or minority hater, and even talked to Poles before. Then I feel that they suspect somehow that I have a flask with vodka hidden in my handbag. But usually during the rest of the conversation they get used to my way of talking and forget about a bit of friction.

So, from my point of view, what is a cure for racism and prejudice?

I believe that there is one universal answer to all problems on the planet Earth – to expand our consciousness.