Go away Ching Chong Girl…

I have been thinking about racism a lot recently and have been weighing up in my mind what it’s all about.

Admittedly being white and growing up for most of my life in Australia I haven’t had to deal with racism directed at me.

But the other day Lily and I were in our local park. I was sitting talking to my friend Meg while Lily played on the slide.

There were 2 little girls of about 8 or 9 years of age playing on the swings. Lily saw them and ran over asking if she could go on the swing. I told her to just stand and wait till the older girls were finished.

The next thing I know Meg is saying to me “Did you hear what those girls just said to Lily?”

I said “No, what happened?”

 

Then Meg proceeds to tell me that the girls saw Lily coming and said “Go away Ching Chong Girl! Ahh sooo ching chong chheee DO YOU UNDERSTAND ENGLISH CHING CHONG GIRL?”

 

Well I was completely mortified. I just could not believe that the racial cuts I knew would come one day were already here!! For goodness sake Lily is only 2 years old.

We live in a suburb full of many nationalities especially Chinese. The local primary school (that more than likely these 2 girls attend) prides itself on it’s association with a sister school in China and even boasts a Chinese language program through most of it’s classes.

 

Where do 9 year olds get such horrible attitudes from? And worse still was these girls were not what I would call white. They appeared hispanic and yet they were the ones doling out the racism.

 

I sat there for a full 5 minutes looking around the park and wondering how to respond. I looked at all the adults in the park wondering if I should question them to find the parents of these 2 girls and take it up with the parents.

I wondered whether I should approach the girls directly.

Then I looked at Lily. She wasn’t fussed. She did not understand what had just transpired. So I thought the best thing to do would be to let it go.

 

Even though I think it was appalling behaviour and such behaviour should be addressed I did not think that it was in Lily’s best interest to cause a scene.

And now after witnessing this incident I am sadly sure there will be many more opportunities to defend my daughter in the future.

At his blog Eugene Cho comments on this type of behaviour.

It’s a really hard call. How to react. I don’t want Lily growing up thinking her looks or her ethnic roots need defending. She’s Chinese and she should be proud of her Chinese heritage. But on the other hand I don’t want her to feel negative or angry about growing up Asian in Australia because of a bunch of ignorant and stupid racial slurs.

And people need to know that what they may percieve as a bit of a joke about someones ethnicity can be cruel and hurtful.

 

But foremost I am Lily’s mother and if I am honest the first reaction I thought to have was to go over and slap those 2 girls silly and make them apologise to Lily.  I may not be Lily’s biological mother but if you hurt my girl you deal with me!!

 

Albert has been mentioning that we should take Lily along to our Karate class with us… 🙂

 

This comic is by US based artist Wayne Chan