MonkeyPants

Racism.

I loathe racism. No surprise there, right? Anybody who reads this blog with any regularity is going to know my views. People are people, and there are a million personality traits shared by every race and colour of person in the world. Assumptions based on race piss me off like nothing else in the whole wide world. When I hear someone make assumptions that X people are lazy/dirty/good at math/criminals/bad drivers/hard workers, I try my best to gently point out that, in fact, they are probably stereotyping.

Except.

Except.

When white people learn that my students are Asian and then they squint their eyes and draw their lips back into faux buck teeth and do these terrible ‘Asian’ accents that don’t sound like anything from anywhere in Asia, it pisses me off like nothing else.

I have a good ear for accents. I can tell Shanghai from Beijing from Hong Kong from Taiwan most of the time. I can tell Seoul from Busan sometimes. Still working on Japanese and Southeast Asian accents. But when some white-assed bigot thinks it’s funny to start a sentence with, “Ah, so…” I want to punch them in their strangely contorted mouths.

So far, I have contented myself with pointing out that they sound really stupid and must have poor ears for accents. Often, I’ll take it further by pointing out that the people they are mocking had invented radiant floor heating while our ancestors (all of Northern Europe, really) were still inviting the animals in at night to keep warm.

I hope my impulse control continues. A mild lecture is less offensive than a curb-stomp.