feeling racy
one thing that gets shoved at my face sometimes is that literally unless you grew up in north america in a coastal bubble, race is actually a v significant marker and people talk about race and racial stereotypes/ethnic cultures a lot. not in a malicious racist way, but its one of the key visual markers for people, kind of like gender. theyll ask you where you're from, they'll refer to their friend as the frenchman or the colombian woman. was at a table full of newish immigrants at a toronto rationality meetup and every single person got raced and no one saw anything wrong with that. i talk a big game about the antiracism ideology here sucking ass and being counterproductive but it did take me some conscious effort to lower my hackles when everyone kept asking me where i was from.
its interesting bc race both matters materially and is also quite interesting to talk about! it's a huge part of peoples lives? the fact that im very visibly asian-raced meaningfully impacts my life in various ways; some beneficial, some i manage in some way or another, and some i just brace for bc there's nothing i can do.
conversational threads that came up for discussion at the table:
- ukrainian who immigrated here in 2015 talks about culture clash between the wave of ukrainian immigrants from the late 2010s (generally university educated young folks who left bc there werent any jobs at home) and the ones that are refugees from the most recent crisis
- indian consultant talks about being in dubai for work and needing to really dress up bc indians are the exploited underclass that everyone mistreats and he doesnt want to be mistaken for a day laborer
- south american guy talks abt how he gets so much pussy when he visits his home country bc he has none of the misogyny of the home grown boys but can still dance (v important rizz factor) and speak spanish
these are conversations that i personally think are very interesting and would like more of. on the other hand, my broader social and internet circles have psychically programmed me into thinking that it's an attack ("microaggression") even though in my own experience literally every person who does it actually means well and is just like, not in PMC culture.1
considering where i am in life and my immediate culture and community, i think it makes sense for me to deprogram myself from thinking that microaggressions are real are things people are ever going to do at me. empirically, i am not a person that it happens to nor do i exist in a culture where it is common, so it cuts me off from genuine connections much more than it protects me from anything. but of course, that kind of attitude shift is easier said than done.
and in the meantime my local culture is still one where race is a fairly taboo topic, which means that im signalling something about myself something if i choose to start a conversation about it - it remains a very non-neutral action. and as the new immigrants acclimatize, they will stop openly talking about race as well.
but also something something different worlds, i still don't think it' actually that rare for people to be the target of racially motivated verbal abuse - just not in my immediate circles.↩