Monday, March 29, 2010

Racism in Spring Break

During my spring break I went out on Friday night with my girlfriends. We all decided to go to a club called 7 which closes at 2am. When we got there it was around midnight and there was a long line. Because we go there often we became friends with the people who worked there. As we kept walking closer to the door and not in line, one woman commented by saying, “look at those Asian girls they think they can get in, please.” I also heard another remark, “look kung pao chicken!” I was so angry at the racial comments that it almost ruined my night. I thought about it until we all laughed because we ended up getting in right away. Many people use racial remarks for different reasons. In this example the people that said those racial comments did it as an insult, because they were angry at what my friends and I did.
Sometimes people think that they can say something racist around their friends, because they think they can get away with it. We talked about this in class which is called Micro-aggression (2007). For example a few of my friends in high school have given me the name “chop sticks” since middle school. It happened in one of our classes when one of my friends decided to blurt out chop sticks to get my attention. I thought nothing of it, because I didn’t think it was that extreme. I did not start thinking about it closely until the teacher was so angry he yelled at everyone to stop and said that racial comments were not allowed in his class.
In our class Diversity and Inequality in Professional Practice we continue to talk about racism and diversity. It is a primary topic during dialogue discussions. What I encountered during spring break was very shocking to me, because someone said a racial slur to my face. After this incident, it made me think about a lot of other times when a racist comment has been geared towards me in the past. However, every time something like this happens to me I tend to let it go.

(May-June 2007). Examples of Racial Mircroaggressions. American Psychologist
Amy Phengsavath

6 comments:

  1. In my spring break I went to Alabama and I experienced racism in a way I've never seen it before. I went down there with a large group from Augsburg and one night we went out to dinner. In our group there were 3 muslim girls who wore traditional muslim clothes. At the dinner we could hear the people on the table next to us asking the waitress if they could see the manager. They thought it was disturbing that these three ladies were eating that close to them....!!

    Anyway, I'm glad you can laugh at the whole situation rather than be upset although it's an uncomfortable situation.

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  3. I can really relate to you on this situation Amy. When some of my girls and I went out to Stargate Night Club, there were a lot of racial slurs going on as we walked to the line already. Some of the girls were saying things that Asians did not belong here and they were giggling. Eventually after hearing two more statements, the girls and I left. We were all pretty mad, and basically we never went there again, until a new owner bought the club. It is a lot more diverse now, which I like.

    Pang Khang

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  4. I really think that many inccidents like this one occurs on purpose. AlthoughI do not club, I see that people say many things to offend others everywhere, not just at clubs. I can totally relate to this, and I understand where you are coming from. Something similar happened to me and my mom when we went to a Walmart in Forest Lake. However i didn't let that get to me, for one reason she's just a customer like me too, and another, she's even younger than me. So I didn't really cared.

    Blia Lee

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  5. Wow, I'm so sorry you had to deal with that Amy! I've noticed that there are people who seem to see racism exclusively in terms of black and white--it's like they don't even consider comments against people from other backgrounds as racist. It is interesting to me that in your example and in the other examples students left in the comment section, the recipient of discrimination has chosen to "let it go". I'm guessing that confronting the offender is just not worth the effort and that it would be exhausting to take a stand every time you heard someone say something ignorant since it happens so frequently. I'm glad you girls got in though--in their face right?!! ;)

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  6. I've came across similar situations also and it's not just at the club but in everday situation. I remember back in middle school, everytime my friends and I were talking, students who were not familiar with us would mimick us and say "Ching ching chong..."

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