Had a -I have to admit - rare these days, very annoying race -related experience today.
It was the school staff health check day. On the plus side, being only part-time, I only had to have a chest x-ray, and while getting your shirt off in a bus in the school car park is not the most fun you might ever have on a Tuesday morning, at least I was spared the indignity of having to stand in a queue and make small talk with my colleagues while holding a cup of my own warm pee, as the rest of the full timers did.
Anyway, the process entails taking your paperwork down to a makeshift "reception area" in an unused meeting room, where there are two nurse-types who check it and direct you to the appropriate station depending on what your contract requires you to have checked.
So down I go, and in front of me are 2 teachers being processed, plus 2 pee-clutching English teachers with whom I engaged in light banter as we waited, then after I arrived, about 3 other teachers joined the line.
So the nurse-type (could have been a techie, could have been an administrator who knows, everyone has a uniform here) on the left finishes with her victim, and my 2 English teacher colleagues go to her together
for some reason, leaving me, very conspicuously - right in the middle of the doorway- next in line.
SO nurse-type on the right finishes dealing with the teacher she has ushered into the ominous looking "Stomach Check" station with the sign saying "expose your belly button before entering (!?!?!). She then pushes past me, and goes out into the corridor, checks the paperwork of the teacher behind me in line, and sends her onto the bus for the very x-ray I'm waiting to get.
At first I was just confused, thinking there was perhaps some special reason to let this woman go first - an imminently starting class or something.
So she comes back in with the lady's paperwork, puts it on the desk, pushing past me twice to get in then back out again, and deals with the next guy in line.
I say, very politely, in my best Japanese, "excuse me, is there some reason why you are making me wait? I can come back later..."
She ignores me, doesn't make eye contact at all, continues to deal with all the other teachers in the queue, before coming back, checking that the other girl was definitely not going to be finished any time soon, before unapologetically and silently taking care of my paperwork, and sending me on to the bus for the x-ray.
Thankfully the radiologist was perfectly professional.
Now first of all I should point out that I am in fact married to a Japanese man, of my own free will, and have lived in this country as opposed to going home, which I could have, for almost 20 years, of my own free will. My point being that not ALL Japanese people are like this, in fact like anywhere else, most of them are really quite lovely.
Also, I have just started reading a book, called "The Secret Life of Bees", which looks like it might be quite good, in the first chapter of which I have just read a description of a black woman being jailed and hospitalized after being severely beaten up for the dastardly crime of daring to register to vote in 1965 in America. My point being, that I know that as racism goes, this is hardly the worst thing I could experience.
Nonetheless the urge to shout "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!" really really loud has been with me all day.
This kind of blatant xenophobia - and I mean that in the true sense of the word- can really ruin your whole day.
Now, perhaps this woman has had a bad experience with some other whitey in the past. Some of us can be just as objectionable as she was. Perhaps she was feeling a bit under the weather, had PMT, or had been chucked by her boyfriend last night. Maybe the English teacher who asked her what her name was in just the wrong tone of voice all those years ago looked just like me, god forbid.
Perhaps so, I can't really say. But I CAN say with 100% certainty that she has never met, nor had any verbal or social contact with ME before, and therefore in her professional capacity, she has no reason to make me wait any longer than anyone else.
I mean, you're not telling me that in a job which deals with people confronting their medical insecurities on a daily basis, that she has never met a Japanese asshole ( I could introduce her to a few if she wants). Maybe the last one she met had glasses, or curly hair. SO is it acceptable for her to then brazenly avoid serving anyone with bad eyesight or a dodgy perm?
Silly cow. Pardon my language.
So, as I famously said on the stage at the teacher training conference a few years back: you get arseholes everywhere in the world. I shouldn't let it bother me. True.
But what really bothers me is, that while I could report her for her rude and unprofessional treatment of me as a patient, as my hubby suggests, I know that if I did, while many of the staff would actually sympathize and agree with me in private; on aggregate, it would be ME that had caused the hassle by reporting it.
Right or wrong doesn't matter here, it's the person that made everyone deal with the whole sorry mess that's the problem. And that's where the real culture shock lies.
Sometimes I think the spitting in your face, name-calling type of racism is preferable, because at least you can answer it back, and everyone agrees it is unacceptable.
More than a minority here, while they wouldn't actually go as far as behaving like this lady, secretly understand her fear of me. And that fear in some way mitigates her attitude to me for them.
After all, it's me that looks different.
And the nail that stands out must be hammered down, as the proverb says.
ITSNOTFAIR
So there.
