When I first moved to the U.S. six years ago, I wondered at how I would be able to survive in a country that has people that judge each other based on the color of their skin. After a few years of dealing with the problem of racism, I came up with a "guide" on how to respond to racism and what the consequences of the action I take has.
When someone makes a racist joke against you, you can:
1) Ignore it
2) Make a racist joke back at them
3) Tell someone
4) Beat them!
Now lets look at what happens if you pick one of the options above.
1) Ignoring it wont make it stop. And as time goes on, the jokes will only get worse which will lead you to stop ignoring the problem and move on to a different solution.
2) Making a racist joke back at them will only piss the person off. Which will lead to other creative jokes. And over time, you find a new action to take against the racist person.
3) Telling someone, a counselor or a teacher, will make the racist person sit down with the person you told and they might get detention or even expulsion from school. Usually, the racism stops there. However, it is possible that the person might come back to school with a vengeance and you are number one on his hit list.
4) If the jokes don't stop, you might have to resort to the final action, beating them! If the jokes never stop and you challenge the person to a fight, AND WIN, the jokes are sure to stop. However, if you lose, you are screwed for life.
This is definitely a view that I haven't taken before on the topic of racism in school. I've been judge for different reasons and I've had to deal with name calling and the like, but not racism. These are interesting rules that I haven't thought about before because they are just things that I've dealt with. It's true that if I ignore a joke, they just keep coming. If I make a joke back, they come back meanier. If I tell anyone, nothing really changes. And though I've never been in a fight, I've wanted to beat the crap out of some people. I'm not sure if we can change a nation, but I try to surround myself in people who understand my view in life. I hope that you've found friends that have accepted you for you as well.
ReplyDeleteI like it but the last part of it a person can end up with a criminal background and that is not good when looking for a job. Back in the day. A person could give another person a ass kiccin, but nowadays that wont fly. Nowadays kids resort to hardware (guns).
ReplyDeleteRacism is pretty much in every country.Not all Australia are racist but still lots of people are racist here. Now question is 1)why people became racist? and 2)how to overcome it?
ReplyDeleteAns 1) Mostly there are 3 reasons people became racist. Number one reason is insecurity they think that these people from minority are smarter and more hard working than us so they will take over our jobs and power etc. Number 2 is Jealously which co related to reason no one. and third is weak and narrow minded people are racist.
Ans2) Now how to overcome racism. Do your home work and reply back with full knowledge and its not hard coz these racist people don't have much knowledge of other people culture and most of the time they don't know their own history otherwise they won't be racist. ie.... if any Australian ask you that where you come from in a racist or non racist way then always ask back same question and they might say no I was born here than say no I mean your ancestor because Australian is only 200 year old country and belongs to Aboriginal black people so Every one is migrant in this country so that way you will remind them that you are also migrant like us. and secondly if you are upset or angry with racist people than don't do fight with them insist prove it with your hard work and get better jobs or do business in your business and prove it than you are better than them.....as lots of Indian and Chines and Asians like to prove that way to white Australians.