Who said what?

Funny or offensive? 

Would it be funny if it was a gift from one Asian to another?

Would it be funny if it was a gift from a white person to an Asian friend?

What if they were selling it at the Gap?  Would it be funny then?

Yesterday I ran into a friend and we were discussing my blog.   She said she wanted to post a comment about my blog but didn't want to register with blogger just to comment.  This is a common complaint I have been hearing.   I am trying to set up a facebook page that is linked to my blog that will make it easier for people to comment, at least for people who are on facebook.   No one else really matters, do they?

In the meantime, she shared her thoughts about my latest blog post, and I found her thoughts interesting enough that I want to share them with you.   I hope I do her justice, if not, maybe I will inspire her to register with blogger so she can correct me :)

She said that when she read the story about my daughter and the idiot in her science class, she was left wondering about one missing tidbit of information.   She wanted to know what "color" the boy who made the offending(?) statement was, and whether or not that would matter.   In other words, is it more offensive for a white kid to say, "I can see you as a doctor because you are asian," than if another asian kid had said it.   Hmmmmm.    I asked my daughter, and she confirmed that he was indeed white.   I won't include the other adjectives she used, but you can assume that they were less than complimentary.

In my discussion with my friend, she brought up that in many groups (not just racial) it is okay to poke fun of your own people.  For example, women call each other "chicks" all the time, but if men call a group of women "chicks", they are read the riot act.   We all know that a woman can complain that she is crazy with PMS, and she can commiserate with her friends about this, but pity the man who even hints that a certain mood might be attributed to a certain time of the month.   He is a dead man for sure.

So, is it okay when one Asian says to another, "Of course you'll be a doctor, you're Asian!" (wink, wink)?   And, by allowing and contributing to this kind of behavior, are we giving the message that sometimes, in certain circumstances, racism is okay?

We were discussing this topic at dinner and it led to DD1 sharing some new information about something that had happened to her this summer.   An event that we had all heard about before, but with a new twist.

This past summer DD1 went to visit my brother and his family in Scandinavia.    When she returned home her flight arrived at the airport at the same time as a plane from Tokyo.    When she came out of customs she told me that one of the airport workers had been insisting that she should go into the foreigners line instead of the US citizens line.   She kept telling him she was American and eventually had to show him her US passport so he would let her get in the right line.     When she told me that story I was outraged.    How could someone working at the airport be so racist?   Couldn't he see that she was wearing sweats from Hollister, and a t-shirt from her high school.   She might not be white, but on that day, she was the poster girl for "typical American fifteen year old."

Yesterday at dinner, she told us for the first time, that the man who had given her such trouble was Asian.    She also said that in retrospect he was probably not working for the TSA, but for the Japanese airline that had come in at the same time as her flight.    I have to admit, this changes things for me a bit. First of all, assuming he was ethnically Japanese, it means he wasn't labeling her as an outsider by pushing her towards the foreign-born line, but instead, he was including her as one of his own.   He was being inclusive, not exclusive.   Also, if he was ethnically Japanese he might not have recognized her extremely American outfit as such.   I do think he was a bit racist, or idiotic, to not believe her the first time she told him she was American.   But, somehow this new tidbit of information made the situation seem a little less awful?

So,what is it called when someone from a certain ethnic group, makes certain assumptions based on his or her own race, is it still racism?  And, is it benign?