Saturday, July 18, 2009

Do you Fish?

I was taking an electronics course when I was 25. Of course many of the students were younger than 25. There were no 'ethnic' or people of colour in the program. One day at lunch time one of the guys was making jokes. He started in on the ethnic jokes making fun of Asians and doing the no 'R' accent. I decided that was enough and told him I didn't like jokes about other people. In telling him I didn't like ethic jokes I explained that I was Indian. He stopped, looked at me with a bewildered look; he said "you're an Indian?" and then he asked, "do you fish?" I laughed and said "yeah I do fish".
That is one of the things about looking like 'them', people will act and say things that are comfortable to them and their group. I tell my relatives and other Indian looking Indians that they will never truly know how people are when they are not in the Indians company. Me, I look like them so I do know what they are like when no one is looking. :-0 LOL. That's laugh out loud.
I also tell my friends who have married 'one of them' that their spouse could still be prejudice against Indians. My friends usually get pretty guarded and protective of their spouses.
I tell them of course it is natural to be prejudice of people out of your group. I am somewhat prejudice towards white people, but have white friends. The thing is I exclude them of my general prejudices and views of the group as a whole. So I could be married to a white woman and still have prejudices against white people in general. But not my wife because I know her and have excluded her from the rest of the group. That is just an example in truth, my wife is Indian.
In reality everyone is prejudice but when it goes beyond the generalizations it becomes ugly.

The story of the day: This one is not from my Reserve but a Maori friend told it, and it would apply on the reserve. This young Maori guy went on a date with an older woman. They hit it off and ended up in bed together. The young guy wanted to be romantic with the older woman so he looks at her with his eyes all dreamy and says "I love you, ... Auntie". :-0
Get it? In Maori culture and in Indian ways, you call an older woman Auntie. Not real old, than you call her Granny. It might have been even wilder if he called her Granny. Not a good story if you have to explain it, but I just ate a whole bunch of Thai food and my belly is rather full.

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