Hi I am curious about where to draw the line between if someone is being rude or saying/doing hateful things.
Just a bit info. about me. I am from China and came to Zurich for study and now it’s been almost 3/4 years. Sometimes (rarely) I would run into or bump into persons behaving quite impolitely out in public. Stuffs like hazing/spiting/shouting some words I can’t really understand (I don’t know German sadly).
I feel a bit confused as in Asia, I am never a minority so I honestly don’t have experience dealing with things like these. I don’t wanna seem like a snowflake or being a Karen over-reacting. I’ll list some things I personally encountered.
1. An old lady spitting (deliberately) right in front of me at my direction and making some hand gestures after we both get off at a bus stop. I was so shocked at first and also confirmed she did it on purpose and also gave me those weird eyes. No one was near and she also kind of make sure I saw her spiting. It’s hard to describe but you just knew she was not being nice.
2. A bunch of young kids hazing at me. Saying things like ‘Kon’nichiwa’ (Japanese) at a rather impolite and rude manners.
3. Some van drivers shouting Covid and something like get out in mid 2020.
4. A old lady demanding me to delete the photos she thinks I took on the tram as I was standing up quite straight and holding my phone up in the air (just trying to maintain a good posture). There’s a dude siting next up to me and he’s as shocked as I was since he knew i was not recording.
5. My friends and I was swimming/floating in the Limmat river and some guys on another boat saying Korean or Japanese greetings. Though it’s quite polite, we don’t like it.
6. A very insulting page in PPT by a Prof. at ETH .
For me personally case 1,3 is quite racist and I can definitely tell immediately. BTW, I personally “like” racism in case 3 that is straight forward and doesn’t cause any confusion 🙂
I am not so sure about 2,4,5. Being a Asian in Asia, I really don’t have a sense or radar for racism but intuitively feel pissed, not sure if these count towards just bad manners or something serious like hate crime. Even though I admire those staying up to unfairness in the society, I do not wanna to over react. People in case 5 were quite nice but maybe just a bit inappropriate.
But how many case 6, is he being careless simply? Or is the lady in case 4 just being really protective about her or others’ privacy? There’s no way to read their mind tbh.
Just making a post here, trying to vent out the frustration and anger by those and also genuinely curious where the line is draw, at least in Switzerland.
10 comments
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You draw the line.
I find all of those mentioned cases at the very least unfriendly or rude.
Just a side note: The ETH PP slide you’re referring to was wildly taken out of context. Possibly even deliberately so by pro-CCP propagandists. Read the NZZ article about it.
You’re a foreigner, and very visibly so. So you will encounter unfriendly behaviour/racism now and then. I am on the opposite side, being Swiss living in Japan. And I got the spitting old man, and many other things, too. Just don’t step in it, haha!
No matter, where you’re from, being a foreigner means that you need to grow a thick skin. Don’t bother with these kinds of people, they’ll never be your friends and you won’t change them, so they are useless to you. Stick with the lovely people, there are enough of them out there everywhere.
Rude, crazy, racist or everything together. You won’t know. But as an foreign person you will no doubt encounter racism. Specially as asian after Corona. Some just make it look like they are an asshole in general. Others might seem racist but maybe dont mean it. Like the ones in the river. Maybe they were sure you are Japanese and didnt mean to offend you. Maybe it was to offend you because they think all asians look the same. We won’t know sadly:) just assume they are dumb and try to ignore them if possible 😀
Out of curiosity, how do they handle such situations in China? Can you play the racist card? Obviously I am talking about an European or American.
I don’t know specifically about Switzerland but in many cases there has to be a crime before something can be hate crime. So for example, if you were deliberately spit *on* that might be assault therefore could possibly be hate crime but someone spitting because of you or even at you but not on you sounds incredibly rude but not a crime per se.
It is illegal to take photos or video of someone without their permission, and the recourse is for the other party to ask you to delete said photo/video. This person may be paranoid and making stereotypes of you, but not quite rude (unless they were shitty about it) With smartphones, it’s really hard to tell if someone is or is not taking a photo.
Sorry about your crummy experiences here, I hope it gets better.
I’m very sorry you’ve experienced these things, and I hope nothing ever escalates beyond that.
Number 2 sounds decidedly racist to me as well (the assumption that all Asian people are the same and therefore if you are Asian a Japanese greeting *must* be relevant), as is number 5. The difference of course is that in 2, they were also generally rude, so kind of “aggressively” racist, whereas in 5, they may have just been acting racist out of ignorance.
(People tend to think that to call something racist (or another -ist or -phobic), there has to be violent intention behind it. In truth, ignorant behaviour – such as what might have been happening in n°5 – is also racist behaviour. A person acting racist out of ignorance may not themselves be overall/intentionally racist, but they are still *acting* racist, and when possible we should encourage them to examine those behaviours by calling it out.)
I can’t speak to number 6, as I don’t know what it is referring to.
For number 4, I really can’t tell. She might have assumed you took a photo because there exists a stereotype of Japanese tourists taking photos all the time, or she might just be generally worried about her photo being taken regardless of who is pointing a phone at her.
Probably best not to overthink it; as you said you can’t read their minds, and sometimes there is just no way to know. Some behaviours will be very overtly racists, others will be ambiguous. Rather than trying to decrypt complete strangers’ mind, focus on staying safe.
yeah 1 and 3 is definitively racist, the kids probably as well but they ‘re kids so how do you approach them. In the end you’re the bad guy for assaulting the poor boys. I think the lady was just very privacy conscious and the guys I think were just trying to be nice lol. I don’t see a problem with the list of the ETH prof, it’s just a list of possible things, there is no connection between Chinese and the picture for me.
but yeah as you can see Switzerland is quite a racist society, UK and the US are much better regarding that
1. Appears to be clearly racist, though of course it’s hard to tell without observing it myself.
2. How young were they? Chances are they are watching a lot of anime and/or read a lot of mangas and wanted to use their extremely limited Japanese vocabulary – assuming you understand it, I guess. Though if it sounded very rude… might have been racist. Or just stupid kids not knowing proper manners (unfortunately, many parents nowadays fail to properly educate their children in that regard). Either one might have been the case. Again, hard to tell without having it seen myself and without knowing how young they actually were.
3. Obviously some effing idiots. Not even necessarily racist per se (though they might be), just thinking they’re funny without realizing that they’re making themselves look like complete and utter morons. Who knows.
4. Probably not related to race at all. She must have thought you’ve taken pictures of stuff. Though she has absolutely no right to tell you to delete any pictures, unless you took pictures of her or similar (or she thinks you did). In that regard it might have been helpful if you’d have been able to communicate with her. Maybe the other guy should have told her, but it seems he didn’t want to get involved.
5. They might have thought they’re being funny and/or polite. I would assume it wasn’t meant in a racist way; though of course you can’t know for sure.
6. I believe he’s listing examples of inappropriate generalizations, as the title of the slide says. It’s about the temptation of inappropriate generalizations, then he talks about Big Data software and rhetorically asks if that couldn’t be applied to X, becoming more questionable with each bullet point in order to make his point about why inappropriate (!) generalizations are problematic. So if anything, it has a slight hint of anti-racism because the Chinese example was intended to make you (the reader of the slide) realize/understand that such generalizations are inappropriate.