World news: White girl in the 'hood
This island is small, very small. I’ve established that, this is nothing new to my dedicated readers (ha ha! She laughs manically in her yellow attic, disrupting the crows in the rafters).
Anyway. It’s small and there’s nothing to do and it’s too hot to neglect the intimate relationship one forms with one’s air-conditioner. So, obviously, conversation topics are on the sparse side. Previously it was the soccer and then the Lebanon crisis stepped in to fill the deafening hum of air-conditioner motors.
Over and above that, to spice the dialogue with some local content, people talk about other people. Understandably. I’ve seen it before, and I’m not even referring to the misnomer of a town Vrede. Everyone, everywhere, talks about other people. Still, I haven’t figured out how to take it, especially when it’s done so openly in front of you. Somehow if it’s behind your back, you can just ignore it.
The first time was around my birthday. I invited some people from the office to come have a meal with me. But then it turned into this whole big THING about who was going to pay and then me saying that we’ll split it and then this wasn’t appropriate so I said I’d pay and then that wasn’t appropriate because of this and then that and it turned into a whole week long pallava, and eventually I just called it off.
Now the pallava is about where I live. I don’t live anywhere fancy but it’s less than a five minute walk to work. Sure, I get raped by a thousand eyes daily but it’s completely safe and the second cheapest thing I found on my search. It’s central, I can catch a taxi to anywhere and I have ground-level access to all cultures.
Seems the problem is that if a white person lives in this neighbourhood, it is assumed that they are a Russian prostitute. This is the concern some of my colleagues have expressed. They have also expressed that it is inappropriate for me to live there as I should embody the values of my luxury lifestyle magazine. And that the boss might get whiff of it.
I sigh. Deeply. In fact, when I expressed some of this concern to my boss a month or so ago, he was indignant that anyone could suggest that there was anything wrong with the area. Assumptions of what other people’s opinions are, are more important than what that person’s opinions really are. Possibly this is the objectifying, racist gaze that seems so obvious here. Possibly, I have already been caught in this dialogue and am assuming this gaze.
Assumption is the mother of all prejudice. Here, it seems, everything is pre-judged to actually make it true. Like in some way, because other people may perceive me to be a Russian prostitute, I become one.
It does happen anywhere, after all, this dialogue between who someone is and who people think they are. Still, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. I mean, possibly I am insulting someone by being a white person in a non-white neighbourhood. But crikey, this isn’t a white country – I mean, is there a white neighbourhood here? Maybe I’m expected to stay in the ex-pat community. But then, the majority of my current neighbourhood is Indian.
Agh… whatever.
Anyway. It’s small and there’s nothing to do and it’s too hot to neglect the intimate relationship one forms with one’s air-conditioner. So, obviously, conversation topics are on the sparse side. Previously it was the soccer and then the Lebanon crisis stepped in to fill the deafening hum of air-conditioner motors.
Over and above that, to spice the dialogue with some local content, people talk about other people. Understandably. I’ve seen it before, and I’m not even referring to the misnomer of a town Vrede. Everyone, everywhere, talks about other people. Still, I haven’t figured out how to take it, especially when it’s done so openly in front of you. Somehow if it’s behind your back, you can just ignore it.
The first time was around my birthday. I invited some people from the office to come have a meal with me. But then it turned into this whole big THING about who was going to pay and then me saying that we’ll split it and then this wasn’t appropriate so I said I’d pay and then that wasn’t appropriate because of this and then that and it turned into a whole week long pallava, and eventually I just called it off.
Now the pallava is about where I live. I don’t live anywhere fancy but it’s less than a five minute walk to work. Sure, I get raped by a thousand eyes daily but it’s completely safe and the second cheapest thing I found on my search. It’s central, I can catch a taxi to anywhere and I have ground-level access to all cultures.
Seems the problem is that if a white person lives in this neighbourhood, it is assumed that they are a Russian prostitute. This is the concern some of my colleagues have expressed. They have also expressed that it is inappropriate for me to live there as I should embody the values of my luxury lifestyle magazine. And that the boss might get whiff of it.
I sigh. Deeply. In fact, when I expressed some of this concern to my boss a month or so ago, he was indignant that anyone could suggest that there was anything wrong with the area. Assumptions of what other people’s opinions are, are more important than what that person’s opinions really are. Possibly this is the objectifying, racist gaze that seems so obvious here. Possibly, I have already been caught in this dialogue and am assuming this gaze.
Assumption is the mother of all prejudice. Here, it seems, everything is pre-judged to actually make it true. Like in some way, because other people may perceive me to be a Russian prostitute, I become one.
It does happen anywhere, after all, this dialogue between who someone is and who people think they are. Still, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. I mean, possibly I am insulting someone by being a white person in a non-white neighbourhood. But crikey, this isn’t a white country – I mean, is there a white neighbourhood here? Maybe I’m expected to stay in the ex-pat community. But then, the majority of my current neighbourhood is Indian.
Agh… whatever.
posted by Nadine at 2:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home