That time when my Childcare lecturer asked me a racist question
Okay, it is once again, a post about my shitty life as a foreigner.
For the first year of college, I studied Childcare and Education, looking to become a nursery nurse. I've had childcaring experiences since I was 15, so it was to become my lifetime occupation. Sigh, things didn't go my way in the end, and I ended up doing something else.
Anyway, I was the only Asian in my class and at the beginning, my childcare lecturer was talking about children's hair, and how it changes colour as they get older. And it's true. My classmates were like, "I was born with blond hair, but it changed to brown while I was growing up...", bla bla bla. So then the teacher finally settled on me and ended up asking me this super racist question that I'm sure she did not meant on purpose to offend me, but it hit me quite hard.
"Did you always have black hair?"
Oh my god. It's a surprise I didn't start to beat her up then and there!
But you know what's the sad sad truth is? This only hit me a year after it happened. Yep. At the time when she asked me, I did not get offended. At all. I just answered "Yes." like a stupid goody-two-shoes while all of my white classmates stared at me like I was an alien or something. Do you know why? At the time I still didn't see myself any different than anyone else. I mean, I knew I was Asian, and I was aware that that was how other people saw me. But the damn question didn't come off as racist to me at the time, and everything was fine. Until I reached my second year of college.
I studied Health and Social Care (which I mentioned in some of my older posts), and it has to be the best and the most interesting course you could ever do in college (okay, to me). The course teaches you about differences and that you should respect that and don't judge and make assumptions and discriminate, bla bla bla, and I loved it. But it was also then, the question came back to me, hitting me hard.
By then, I was so fully aware of my own differences, that it made me think, did my childcare lecturer asked me that question on purpose just to be racist? But it can't be, because she was nice. But if you work in the field of caring, you really have to be very careful of what you say and how you communicate, which includes respecting diversity. I'm sure she was just trying to involve me into the topic, and was probably struggling to come up with a question to ask to an Asian girl. But you can't just come up with this shit and expect no offence taken, and coming from a childcare teacher, I expected her to have dealt with this more professionally.
I just want to express my frustration on even the people who works in the no-discrimination-respect-diversity field, such as doctors and nurses, won't actually be like how you think they will. In the inside, they will always be like everybody else. They have this image of perfection in their mind, and once they think you're different than that image they have, they will always judge you and treat you differently.
And maybe, some people doesn't really mind this sort of thing, but it does make you think about what and how other people actually think of you.
For the first year of college, I studied Childcare and Education, looking to become a nursery nurse. I've had childcaring experiences since I was 15, so it was to become my lifetime occupation. Sigh, things didn't go my way in the end, and I ended up doing something else.
Anyway, I was the only Asian in my class and at the beginning, my childcare lecturer was talking about children's hair, and how it changes colour as they get older. And it's true. My classmates were like, "I was born with blond hair, but it changed to brown while I was growing up...", bla bla bla. So then the teacher finally settled on me and ended up asking me this super racist question that I'm sure she did not meant on purpose to offend me, but it hit me quite hard.
"Did you always have black hair?"
Oh my god. It's a surprise I didn't start to beat her up then and there!
But you know what's the sad sad truth is? This only hit me a year after it happened. Yep. At the time when she asked me, I did not get offended. At all. I just answered "Yes." like a stupid goody-two-shoes while all of my white classmates stared at me like I was an alien or something. Do you know why? At the time I still didn't see myself any different than anyone else. I mean, I knew I was Asian, and I was aware that that was how other people saw me. But the damn question didn't come off as racist to me at the time, and everything was fine. Until I reached my second year of college.
I studied Health and Social Care (which I mentioned in some of my older posts), and it has to be the best and the most interesting course you could ever do in college (okay, to me). The course teaches you about differences and that you should respect that and don't judge and make assumptions and discriminate, bla bla bla, and I loved it. But it was also then, the question came back to me, hitting me hard.
By then, I was so fully aware of my own differences, that it made me think, did my childcare lecturer asked me that question on purpose just to be racist? But it can't be, because she was nice. But if you work in the field of caring, you really have to be very careful of what you say and how you communicate, which includes respecting diversity. I'm sure she was just trying to involve me into the topic, and was probably struggling to come up with a question to ask to an Asian girl. But you can't just come up with this shit and expect no offence taken, and coming from a childcare teacher, I expected her to have dealt with this more professionally.
I just want to express my frustration on even the people who works in the no-discrimination-respect-diversity field, such as doctors and nurses, won't actually be like how you think they will. In the inside, they will always be like everybody else. They have this image of perfection in their mind, and once they think you're different than that image they have, they will always judge you and treat you differently.
And maybe, some people doesn't really mind this sort of thing, but it does make you think about what and how other people actually think of you.
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