Transcript:
Tiffany: Hi guys!Welcome back to our channel! This is Yo! Is This Racism episode 3. I’m Tiffany, and today we have a special guest, Rachel Lin!
Rachel: Hi everyone! I’m Rachel, Tiffany’s friend!
Tiffany: Because we are both Asian, so today I invited her to join our discussion of what is racism, and what actions are really racism or is there any space to discuss people are not being racism. So What do you think racism is?
Rachel: Umm… In my own perspectives, I think racism is when a person is being discriminating to another person by their appearance, appearance does not only stands for how you look like, but also how your colors, your cultural backgrounds, and everything about that. So being discriminating towards a person’s colors, or their cultural backgrounds, or their culture identity.
Tiffany: So being racism is that people try to discriminate others or try to insult others just becase their races, or their cultural backgrounds that’s different from themselves, right?
Rachel: Yeah…kind of.
Tiffany: Do you know what is system injustice?
Rachel: No, I’m not really sure about that, you may talk more about that for me.
Tiffany: So system injustice is like… just like racism, or like… you know the he eduction in the U.S. is not very fair (equal) for everyone, if you are rich, you can live in a better place, and then the school in that area will be better. But those poor people they can only go to the school that cannot provide them a better education, so that they kind of lose their lifves form the beginning. And that’s in the system, just like racism, and it’s injustice.
Rachel:okay. I understand more about it, thank you for telling me about the example.
Tiffany: Let’s discuss some action that you think is it a racism. So here’s an real-life example that my roommate, she was studying at the study room, which is in our dorm building. And the there’s already two white guys in that study room. When my roommate get into the room, they just started to talk about Chinese people, and look at my roommate. Do you think they are being racism of are they just don’t want. My roommate there?
Rachel: I think it is kind of racist in some extend, I think being uncomfortable about some situation means that the thing has happened. So it’s not about how they act or what they are really trying to say, or really trying to present their ideas. When someone feels uncomfortable about something, and that thing is about race, racism, gender, or sexuality and these stuff, I think once when the person who feels that kind of idea that being racism or the gender problems, the things happened. So it’s not about how people actually wanted to act, or what they want to say about. But once the victim, which is your roommate in this case, felt something bad about that thing, I thinking that case, racism has already been there, like it’s there.
Tiffany: I remember you told me about your story when you on the bus? Can you tell us about it?
Rachel: So me and my roommate went to a place in our school, which is the north side of our school, its the more popular street, and all the restaurants are there. We went there to buy some food for dinner. We got on to a bus, and the government’s requirement is that you should be wearing mask in public transportation, but some of the white people doesn’t wear mask on the public transportation because they don’t want to wear masks. I don’t really respect their choice but I won’t say anything about it, because that’s their choice and I cannot really interpret their choice. But when I see someone who do that I will just go far away from him. So this guy on the bus was not wearing a mask, and he was sitting in his seat. When me and my roommate, which are both Asians, got on the bus, he saw us and he immediately wore his masks on, which made me and my roommate felt like he thinks because we’re Chinese, we’re Asian, might have Covid. Maybe we’re just overthinking, but that’s what we thought about it. And we didn’t really meant to look at him, but the second time we look back, we found out that he switch seat from our back to really forward back seat, which makes us feel more part where he thinks that Asians are the ones who have Covid.
Tiffany: His action is kind of racist cuz he did his action…as you said…went back to the back of the bus… like he run away from you guys cuz you’re Asian. And nowadays, hate crimes and discrimination against Asians are increasing year by year. Why do you think that happened?
Rachel: I think for some part of it is because of the wrong education. I’m a music education major, and we’ve been talking a lot about these racism stuff in class too. And one of those my classmates and I are talking about we as educators, can’t really help a lot of these racism stuff in school, because that some of those education has been taught in home. So it’s like this family or in their home, parents are super racist about some type of race, their children will be influence by their mothers and father’s thoughts. And that’s a really hard thing to really change in school, cuz that’s household stuff, and if we met these students in high school, or in middle school, which is the further education, his or her’s ideas will become a perspective, and their idea of that this is not something should be changed, it’s more like a habit not an idea that is easily for us to tell them and to change that. But I think it’s also impossible to do that and hard to do that but we should always try to teach them the right thing to do in school, so that maybe they will have a chance to change their perspectives to a correct one so they won’t be that racist to people. So for my observation, I felt like a lot of hate crimes on race is more based on people that came form a lower economics class, which they are not able to gain much education from school. They go to school but they spend more time at home or they just do the government’s requirement school education, for like first grade to twelve grade, and they didn’t get further education. They don’t have a good education background, that might be a reason why hate crimes are increasing. So I think the main idea of doing this is that maybe government should be increasing their education system, being more equal to every place not just where rich people live or a better white society place.
Tiffany: Yeah we all know that our parents are very important to form a good child. Cuz children get to know about the society basically through their families, and then go to school for education. So once their value has formed, it’s kinda very difficult for them to change. So as you said, school education is very important to them to solve this problem. Cuz I think system injustice like racism is kind of very hard to change, cause you don’ know who will be racist to others, maybe they are normal people in real life and in some situation they just came out of that thoughts. So it’s hard to know who will do that and try to educate them.
Rachel: Yeah but I think it’s like a general stuff, so the society should generalize these topics of this racist…or like the system injustice in every school, so that everyone can be equal on these kind of topics to prevent them to have these systems injustice in general.
Tiffany: Okay. And it’s time to our ending of the podcast! Thank you guys for listening and staying with us tonight. Bye!
Rachel: Bye!