DUers of Color: Tell Your Story

[betsuni]

87. Interesting to get a little tiny taste of this if you're white when you live in another country.

As a foreigner in Japan, in the past I've been followed in stores, empty seats next to me on public transportation while people stood, older women in line for the toilet stall I've just exited get in another line rather than chance catching all my diseases, told by the neighborhood garbage police that the glass jars I was dropping off for recycling were foreign and unacceptable, given earlier times to arrive at events because everyone knows foreigners are always late (this one might be true, except for me), in general having eyes on you in public just in case you do something suspicious, my sister-in-law after more than twenty years still thinking I can't eat Japanese food. These days mostly only the older generations think foreigners are all disease-ravaged criminals, though. Whenever my father-in-law saw a murder or robbery on the news where the criminal was on the loose, he'd mutter, "must be a foreigner." Whenever there's a horrible crime I hope it wasn't done by a foreigner.

Sometimes getting paranoid. For example, it used to be a joke among foreigners in this city that middle-aged women riding bicycles would get off and walk their bikes when passing a foreigner. I'd forgotten all about that and then it happened to me a few months ago and I almost laughed out loud. No other reason for the woman to suddenly get off her bike and walk it until she was past me, get on again and ride away. Or the time I was leaving my apartment at the same time as the next door neighbor and she turns around and takes her kids back inside and as I pass hear her telling them that something was scary. Me?

But I still have white privilege. Never been stopped by the police, never had problems with visas or questioned at immigration, never had trouble renting an apartment, nobody ever thought I must be a bar hostess or illegal. If I'm the only white face at the immigration office or when I pass the factories that employ workers from other Asian countries as they get off work, I feel like there's a flashing neon sign over me saying IMPERIALIST OPPRESSOR (this should probably go in the paranoid category as well). When I go back to the States, my white privilege is incredible. Nobody gives me a second look in stores or walking around anywhere, I make no one nervous. I have the feeling I could steal a car on a busy street in broad daylight and nobody would be able to give a description, I'd easily get away with it.

The difference is that of course I can leave here any time, it's not my country or culture. Totally different to be treated as a foreigner in your own country, but getting a taste of what it must be like is extremely valuable.