I Remember Every Racist Remark

I’m not of a race that really stands out. I have a Persian (Iranian) background and am relatively light/olive-skinned. I blend in in major cities, Europe, and Latin America. Plus, as I age, I am beginning to look like many middle-aged guys with salt-and-pepper hair and a tan.

But I’ve still been a victim of racist remarks in my life, and I remember every single one.

Racism comes about when people feel threatened. It’s getting harder and harder to do a few basic things everyone deserves: get a job, earn enough money, and buy a house. The easy solution is to blame someone else, and immigrants are an easy target. But of course, blaming others doesn’t make life better for anyone; it just makes life worse for the victims.

This is what people who aren’t ever subjected to overt racism don’t understand. You might think “racism is bad and I deplore it”, and that’s great, but you go home at night and stop thinking about it. If it happens to someone around you, you don’t take it personally, and might not stop it. You may put abolishing racism on the same level as caring for the environment, ending war, and ensuring food and security for everyone.

But if you’ve had things yelled at you, they stay with you. I remember them all. And this is excluding things kids said to me when I was a kid (like calling me “cocoa pop”, after an Australian breakfast of chocolate rice crisps), because, well, kids are stupid and under-socialised. You know what, that still sucked, but I’ll let it go, assuming, of course, that that kid has grown up to be a loser with a loser’s job and a loser’s life.

It doesn’t matter to me, anymore. I’ve met enough people now to know that anyone who says things like “Go back to Italy” is a low-IQ failure of a person who doesn’t even know how to intelligently misdirect their own frustrations with themself. Whatever. But still, I remember these things. They chip away at me, and remind me that some people don’t think I belong. But I do. I speak four languages better than they speak English. I pay more in taxes to Australia than they make in wages. It took me a while to get to this place, but here I am.

This blog has, unsurprisingly, attracted hateful comments from low-IQ racists who hide behind pseudonyms and fake emails. Got something to say to me? Wow, that’s great, send me an email so my spam filter will just delete it, and add me to the list of people who ignore you.

Queensland

The first adult-aged incident was in Queensland, Australia. I was in a car park in Noosa near a beach, and thus not wearing a shirt. I was probably 20 years old. An embarrassingly sunburnt white boy, surrounded by his friends, maybe somewhere around my age, started dancing up and down and making monkey noises.

I didn’t know what was going on, and his friends laughingly apologised for their friend making obvious racist taunts, but didn’t stop him, either. Later, after leaving, I realised they were making fun of me for being monkey-like in some way, maybe because I have chest hair.

I think about this because I should have known it was racism at the time. I’m kind of mad I didn’t. Not that I could have done much about it. I wasn’t the relatively large unit then that I am now.

I don’t really remember their faces but I remember they were white, that there were three of them, and that it could have become violent. That’s the feeling that stayed with me. Every time I see someone who just looks like they did, it reminds me of that incident. Violence lurks just below the surface of every passerby.

The second time someone yelled something at me was also in Queensland, Australia. I was in a car park in a shopping centre in Brisbane and someone yelled “Go back to Italy!” Sounds funny, right? I joke about this. Italy? Sounds lovely! I laughed it off because I’m not Italian. But I know what they meant, and I still remember it.

Side note: Queensland just sucks as a place. It’s a bad place with nice weather, beautiful beaches and nature, and some nice people who made it tolerable (shout out to the friends I have there). But apart from central Brisbane, it’s dogged by racism, backwards politics, and uneducated people. North Queensland is rife with people who grasp onto any ideology that helps them feel better about themselves, which usually means rejecting science or other cultures. There’s a reason the major economic centres are Sydney and Melbourne. There’s a reason why Queensland has the only three counties in Australia that have voted to remove fluoride from the drinking water. My advice, if you’re smart and forward-thinking, and especially if you’re non-white: Leave Queensland. Try Melbourne and Sydney. You’ll get over the colder weather and learn how great life can be.

Man, I even remember the times when someone made an ignorant assumption about me that just highlighted that they have very few brown friends.

I mean, I remember in Sunshine Coast, Queensland (see?) someone meeting me, learning I was Persian, and saying, “Oh, you should meet that girl! She’s Egyptian!” I thought “Egyptian, eh? I don’t remember telling this guy I have a special interest in Egypt and travelled there… oh wait, I didn’t.” I went and met her, and while I was speaking with her (she was lovely, by the way), I realised that the guy had only introduced us because we were both brown.

America

I tend to live in “melting pots” of cities. San Francisco has a mix of cultures there. Granted, relatively few Middle Eastern people, but we have a presence. I regularly visit LA, a.k.a. Tehrangeles. And New York is also super cosmopolitan, of course.

But once you leave those cities, racism rears its ugly face.

I remember that time in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when I went to get a table at a restaurant. I already felt out of place in that city (on the way there, someone had yelled out from their car to my partner (“I looove them Asian women!” What the hell? Who yells stuff like that? What was that shithole of a place?), but much more so when I went in, saw only white people, and was told by the receptionist that they had no tables for us. There were empty tables. Other walk-ins went in. It was obvious what she meant: She had no tables for us, two foreigners of other ethnicities.

The US was the only place where I got “Where are you from?” early in conversations. Granted, I have an Australian accent (or “European or something” as someone once put it), but it’s still not the kind of thing I want to hear so early when meeting people.

It’s not really racism, but I remember a tourist in Portland, Oregon, asked me where I was from. He tried to relate to me by telling me he had spent time in Afghanistan, serving in the Marines. Really, dude? You served in a military that ravaged a nearby country, and think that’s a way to relate to me?

Conservatives aren’t racist by default, but bloody hell, Republican party rhetoric does grant tacit permission to a whole bunch of right-wing losers to speak their poorly-educated minds. The current climate in the US is one that is going to keep me away. I don’t want to go there (well, other than to LA, where I feel like “these are my people”), and people with those views aren’t welcome anywhere else.

Melbourne

My last experience in Queensland (being introduced to an Egyptian) contrasts with one I had in Melbourne. When I told someone I was Persian, she said, “Oh, do you speak Farsi? You should meet Kayvan. He’s Persian, too!” Now, this was good. Specific, relevant knowledge of the culture. Kayvan was also good value. Melbourne’s just a different place.

Not that Melbourne is blameless. Stuff happens in Melbourne, too.

When I moved into my new place, I met my neighbour. Chatting with him, he asked where I had moved from. I said, “Oh, all over, but I used to live in Melbourne a couple of decades ago.” He seemed dissatisfied with this, and I realised he wanted to hear I was Pakistani or whatever. I explained my partner was American, to which he responded, “Oh, we welcome people from everywhere.” It was a strange way to refer to someone American. This was a welcoming statement. But it instantly created an otherness between me and him that made me uneasy. He saw me and thought “brown person” and wanted to classify me as one.

It gets worse, too. Recently, in Melbourne, Australia, a teenage girl at North Melbourne train station just yelled “N***ER!!!” at me, in a guttural tone, smiling. I remember it like it was yesterday (well, it was less than a year ago). I was shocked that people a) use that word in Australia (let alone at all), and that b) they’d extend it to non-black people like me. It doesn’t matter who it’s aimed at; they just meant “non-white” and it hurt. I still fantasise about going back there, finding that person, and telling them off with a barrage of insults. I doubt it would have achieved anything other than getting my blood up. She was just a stupid kid. But I wish her the opposite of well.

And I was disturbed to see someone wearing a flag on their back and getting off at my train station in inner Melbourne at the “March for Australia” protests. One is too many. Luckily, that person was old and not in good shape, and so won’t be long for this world. Still, it’s a sign that I’m in the wrong suburb.

Melbourne has had racial tension for many decades. None of this is new. There are gangs, there’s violence, and crazy stuff I don’t even know about. But still, it’s leagues better the places I’ve left behind.

Stoicism, Rage, and Solutions

You might think I should be stoic about this. Water off a duck’s back. Well, it’s not like that. Racism makes me super angry. It gives me a window into how people might become radicalised. Of course, that is a terrible outcome… I don’t believe in violence as a way of solving problems. But I also am starting to see how frustrated people struggle to think of another way to solve problems.

I’m well aware that people experience much worse than this. Some people are excluded from work or education, society, or their country altogether. I don’t mean that my little experiences are worth as much as those. Quite the opposite; I mean that even little things stick with me, so imagine how much those people have to bury just to get through life.

Aside from rage, what’s the solution? There’s a Chinese expression I often like to quote: Having a friend from distant shores makes faraway lands seem next door. We have to be well socialised as adults, if not as children. We should all have friends from multiple cultural backgrounds, both men and women, and people who are queer or who have non-traditional identities. Do what I do and expand your comfort zone gradually. The more we do, the more everyone will seem not like “my black friend” or “my gay neighbour”, but just “people”.