unpleasant elevator encounters
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008I got into an elevator today (not in my office building). In it were me, a single man, and a man + woman couple who happened to be Chinese. So we’re all riding the elevator and the couple happened to exchange a couple of sentences in Chinese. When they exited, this man–thinking, I guess, that we must be compatriots since we were both white–said under his breath, “They oughta speak English.”
Me: “Pardon?”
Racist Nationalistic Guy: “They come over here from their brown country [N.B. Brown? They’re Chinese; if you wanna be correctly racist, it would “their yellow country” or maybe if you’ve got a political grudge “their red country”] and don’t learn to speak the language. Makes me mad.”
(Curiously, they had asked me upon entering which floor I wanted, which RNG should have heard although maybe his brain was too full of himself to take notice.)
Me: “… [stunned silence] … Um … I don’t feel that way about it. LOTS of people don’t feel that way.” Then the doors opened and I walked fast to get away from him.
He just stared, as though I had suddenly spouted off the theory of relativity out of a clear blue sky, or asked him to say hello to my tall rabbit friend, Harvey.