When Americans are motivated to move out of the small town they were born in, it's often because that "small town" is a dying and depopulated hollow shell full of awful, racist, jobless, drug-addicted idiots who are mostly only surviving off of some kind of long-term disability insurance.
Often, with these kinds of places, they aren't a place your family has lived for generations, and nor are they a place you have the opportunity to form any good connections in; rather, they're somewhere your parents had to move to when they lost their jobs/went bankrupt/etc, and so could no longer afford to live anywhere with higher land values.
Everyone living in these places encourages anyone who has any potential at all, to get out as soon as they can.
I took my (Asian) partner back with me to visit the small town I grew up in, and I could not believe some of the shit coming out of people's mouths when they saw her. Literally 1 in 5 people she talked to while we were there would do some sort of "funny" voice or ask her some real stupid shit; and 1 in 20 people we passed while walking around in the downtown area would shout slurs at her from across the street.
And that's with me there walking with her—I can't even imagine what they'd be doing if she was there alone.
My fav thing in the tech world are the “conservatives” who grew up in some of the bluest areas in the country (and benefitted from all affiliated things like excellent education and healthcare systems) then cast doubt on how bad small town red America is on these dimensions.
Is she one of those Asians who thinks it’s “racist” when people ask questions that merely acknowledge that Asians are highly likely to be immigrants or children of immigrants? Like: “where are you really from?”
I find it impossible to believe that people are literally “yelling slurs” to anyone in street unprovoked. I look like a 9/11 hijacker and nobody has ever done that to me even walking around bumblefuck south Georgia.
Why are you asking this given what the parent comment described? Are you accusing them of lying or blowing things out of proportion? I'm truly, honestly happy that you have not experienced anything like what the parent comment described. But I grew up in west coast America and I still experienced a lot of casual racism. Park next to someone? They yell, "This ain't China, don't park so close." Walk home from school? Students yell ching chong at me. Shit is messed.
People don’t shout anything at me, racial or otherwise. Certainly not “1 in 20” strangers on the street. So I find OP’s story difficult to believe and likely lacking context.
> Park next to someone? They yell, "This ain't China, don't park so close." Walk home from school? Students yell ching chong at me. Shit is messed.
Is this “racism” or bad manners/people trying to get a rise out of you? Did that guy yell at you because you were Asian, or would he have yelled at you if you were white—just with a different comment? Same for the kids in school—if you were different in another way (fat, skinny, etc) would they have shouted that at you instead?
Do you think you’ve ever been materially prejudiced because you were Asian rather than white?
again, super happy for you. but i feel some people try to go out of their way to convince themselves that racism is not at play even when it clearly is, because it paints a picture where they are somehow "better" than those who experience hatred. the guy who yelled at me to park farther away, when I called him out on what he said, he walked up to me in an imposing manner and said, "so yeah, I can be a little racist, so what are you going to do, mr. china?" I'm not even chinese.
this is just an anecdote, and you don't have to believe what i say. but i think racism (against asians) is very real and many people are affected by it every day.
As I already told you (yes, you), I doubt anything I say will change your mind. I do hope one day you will come to see that yelling ching chong at an asian man on the street should be seen as racist if you think a bunch of Arabs were being racists just because they said the word "Bangladeshi."
I assume such events are randomly distributed. So I’m talking about your reaction, not the conduct itself.
What I find odd is the impact of this negative interaction in a parking lot. Do you think the guy wouldn’t have yelled at you had you been white? If not, what’s the real difference between “this isn’t China” and “are you blind?”
your point is racism towards asians does not exist, because these random assholes are being assholes toward random targets and they would basically act the same way to other white people. i disagree. i believe what the grandparent comment described about their partner's experience in rural town america is more or less true. you are free to think they are a liar or an outlier. but when people you have never interacted with call you a chinese ching chong on the street when you're just walking home, you have to admit there is some racial element to their abuse. would they have yelled anything at me if i were just another white dude in their predominantly white neighborhood? somehow i highly doubt that.
no, i don't think these people go about their lives consciously trying to be especially mean to asian people. most of them have probably just internalized certain biases against asians. for the sake of convenience, i and many others have decided to categorize such patterns of behavior as racism.
again, you are free to believe that racism is not real. if you are squarely within that camp, i doubt anything i say will change your mind.
Re: your experiences — racists (and bigots in general) are a lot more likely to voice the bigoted things they're thinking, when the target of their vitriol looks like someone who wouldn't fight back against what they're saying. So: women (when the speaker is male and physically larger); old people; people with disabilities; etc. It's the same victim-selection logic that criminals use.
If you're the sort of person who would never expect to get randomly fucked with on the street, then you shouldn't expect to be the target of voiced bigotry, either.
> Did that guy yell at you because you were Asian
Yes, 100% it was because she was Asian.
The small town I grew up in is effectively 100% white (just by coincidence of history); but exists near some major global cities (like the one I live in now) that have a good mix of ethnicities, and especially an increasingly-large percentage of Asian people.
Due to various economic factors, many otherwise-well-to-do people can no longer afford to live in the big cities. This includes many immigrants of other races who originally moved to this country to live in these big cities, and have never visited the rest of the country. These people (including the immigrants) started off just moving to commuter suburbs — but as those shot up in land value as well, people are now increasingly moving to outlying non-cosmopolitan small towns, which do still have lower land values.
And that's shifting the demographics of these small towns.
This wave of demographic shift has not yet reached the town I grew up in.
AFAICT there is a sentiment among people who live there that they don't want "outsiders" — i.e. immigrants / anyone who's not a tenth-generation resident of the country — to move into the town. The sight of such people — especially when those people are "city slickers" doing "tourist" things in the town — enrages them.
So, it's not a prejudice these people have that's specific to any one race of people — but it is a racially-motivated prejudice. It is, essentially, a racial purity mindset — whether the people living there would call it that or not. (I say "racial purity" generally rather than "white supremacist" specifically, because this dynamic exists in provincial small towns in every country that's currently experiencing demographic shift — with the people in those small towns being bigots against any ethnicity other than their own, but especially against whichever ethnicities are increasing in prevalence in the countrie's large cities and beginning to "spill over" into small towns.)
I have! Indians can tell I’m Bangladeshi and exclude me in just us desis” groups. And once I was riding in an elevator with an Arab family and they said something in Arabic about the “Bangladeshi” that I assume wasn’t very nice.
The only time a white American ever said anything negative to me was a middle school bully, and I called him a pig-nosed pink pig in response. Both of us were just looking to get a rise out of the other, so in my estimation that’s not “racism.”
when white people call me chinese ching chong it's not racism, but when arab people say something about bangladeshi, then of course it's racism? i have a couple guesses as to why you would think this way and it's sad.
You said it was “students” that yelled that. As I mentioned, I had a similar experience in school where another kid mocked my skin color. But these kids aren’t saying that stuff based on some racial ideology. Kids are mean and will pick up on any characteristic to mock other kids. Kids also mocked me for reading during recess. Why should I perceive these instances of childish bullying differently?
The comments by the Arabs, by contrast, is based on a racial ideology. Though I don’t get worked up about it because who cares about a random interaction at the mall? The only thing I’ve ever experienced that I’d call material racism is the social exclusion by Indian people. Because that arises in professional or workplace contexts.
I love living in small towns. Truly, I do. I lived in towns ranging from 2k to 10k, and like 90% of it is great.
But avoiding police is essential for people like me who even have slightly more melanin in their skin than the usual amount. There are certain stores I learn not to use, and I have to learn the locals too avoid in each one I live. The number of times that I'm treated well but that I'm somehow unique in my imagined racial group is unusually high.
And I want to be clear, this isn't just in "white" communities in the Midwest, but other cultures/"races" too. I don't fit in with any because I fall into the mythical "mixed race" category.
This is truly a sad social construct that I wish would die already, but yes, it's often part of the cultural nature of such places. Holding these beliefs often leads to people holding the view that their problems are caused by some external force that they can never overcome, and they end up trapped in places with low economic opportunity.
So yes, racist. And I'm not limiting this to one race or culture. It's sadly a common part of the places where I most want to live and will never fit in.
> have to learn the locals too avoid in each one I live. The number of times that I'm treated well but that I'm somehow unique in my imagined racial group is unusually high.
What do you mean by this? Are you treated well or not?
Nobody likes to be told that they are racist. Once you realize that land value and low airfares are just ways of changing the scenery on different time scales, you can start working the deeper problems.
Often, with these kinds of places, they aren't a place your family has lived for generations, and nor are they a place you have the opportunity to form any good connections in; rather, they're somewhere your parents had to move to when they lost their jobs/went bankrupt/etc, and so could no longer afford to live anywhere with higher land values.
Everyone living in these places encourages anyone who has any potential at all, to get out as soon as they can.