Over the last fifty years, social norms have evolved such that overt expressions of many forms of prejudice are now taboo. If you live in world in which you rarely, if ever, encounter such prejudices, it can be easy to forget that hostile bigots who are proud of their attitudes and behavior exist. Especially if you are someone like me, a white male who grew up in an environment where nobody expressed such beliefs.
Tonight, I share a story, my first direct encounter with anti-Semitism, an incident that shocked me and made me think different about prejudice and discrimination. Note: I have changed the names in this story.
I used to live in Shanghai, China, where I taught at an international high school. Every winter, we had a three-week holiday to celebrate the Chinese New Year. In 2004, my friend Kelly and I spent the holiday in Vietnam. A week into our trip, we decided to spend a few days in Mui Ne, Vietnam, a costal town famous for its beautiful beaches and breath-taking sand dunes.
Our second night in the town, Kelly and I walked to a restaurant for a late dinner. It was a tiny beach front restaurant and only one other couple was seated when we arrived, a Caucasian man and an Asian woman. We started chatting with this couple and we soon learned that Tom was an American citizen living and working in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and she was his Vietnamese girlfriend. They had left the city for the peace and quiet of Mui Ne for Tết Nguyên Đán, the Vietnamese New Year celebration.
The couple was very friendly and Kelly and I quickly found ourselves exchanging stories with Tom about the ups and downs, the quirks and oddities, of being an American expat in Asia. We could relate to many of his stories and he offered a great deal of advice about places to travel and dishes to try while we were in Vietnam.
And then it happened. It came out of nowhere. To this day, I don't understand what either of us said that could have precipitated such a question from Tom to Kelly:
"Are you a Jewess?" he asked.
Initially, I was really confused and did not understand that the term Jewess is often used as a slur. Once I saw the look on her face, I knew.
She looked him in the eye and said, "Yes, I'm Jewish."
"Well," he said. "A Jewess. What would bring a Jewess to Vietnam?" Then he looked at me and asked, "Do you like travelling with a Jewess?" He was using a very snide tone to emphasize the s sound in Jewess.
Kelly didn't engage him any longer, but I said one more thing to him. "Well, I'm a faggot. What great misfortunate for you to encounter a Jewess and a faggot on your peaceful vacation." I felt powerless in that moment. What more do I do? Yell at him? At that point, I followed Kelly's lead and said nothing.
He mumbled something about Jewess and faggot and continued with his meal. Fortunately, he paid his bill and left about five minutes later, mumbling something about Jewess on his way out the door.
We ate in silence until he left. I apologized as soon as he disappeared out the door.
"It's okay," Kelly said. "It's part of being a Jew. You never know where you will see it. My mother always told me, 'If you ever forget that you are a Jew, someone will come along to remind you.'"
What a horrible thing for a mother to have to tell her daughter. Prepare yourself, for you will meet in life people who hate you before they've even met you. How does a parent have such a conversation with their children? (I highly recommend this Criminal InJustice Kos diary about such a conversation between an African-American woman and her son.)
As a gay man, the quote from her mother really resonated with me
If you ever forget that you are a Jew, someone will come along to remind you.
Although de jure and de facto prejudice is daily reality for me, I often forget that I am the "other", that I am different. Perhaps that my difference is invisible or concealable gives me that privilege. But there have been times when somebody has come along to remind me. One night in college, before I was out, even to my friends, I was at party where I didn't know many of the people. Somebody that had just met me for the first time asked me if I was gay in front of a big group of people. A few of my friends rushed to my "defense" and asserted my heterosexuality. The guy who asked insisted that he didn't care and he was just curious. But this was the late 90s in a region of the country that remains very hostile to sexual minorities.
At the same time, this incident really sent my mind spinning because it was so shocking for me. I had never encountered anti-Semitism. I guess that really isn't a surprise given that Kelly was the first Jewish person I'd really befriended (I grew up a rural, conservative community that was almost 100% White). Sure, I had read about the anti-Semitism of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups and I had studied the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism in Europe that preceded and followed World War II. But seeing it in person was completely different, seeing it happen to somebody I care about was both unnerving and infuriating.
The other thing that floored me is that Tom was basically my people. He was an educated western man enjoying a privileged lifestyle in a developing Asian country. I've always associated racial prejudice with lower-class, less educated people, not the people from my social circle.
After that incident, when I returned to Shanghai, I began to think about some of things those in the expat community said about China and the Chinese people differently. Expats love to complain about the cultural differences and, in the case living in the developing world, the inconveniences and annoyances of living in place without the comforts of our developed homeland. I began to see how the language of prejudice easily slid into some of the conversations.
That evening taught me a valuable lesson about bigotry. It exists is places where you least expect it. And if you forget it exists, somebody will be there to remind you.
Erase the hate.
Erase the discrimination.
Speak up.
Get involved.
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