A series of polls and interviews focus on racism
experiences in international students by Sam Rigney from Newcastle Herald have
received mixed information and opinions. On one hand, many international
students stated that they have never experienced racism since they arrived in
Australia, while on the other hand, a lot of international students told their
own experience of racism. For example, when being asked about if the suburbs
surrounding the University of Newcastle have problem with racism, Jarrod
Van-Der-Baan told the reporter “Not at all. I don’t see it around” while Nick
Phillips told the reporter “We’ve got international friends and they’ve told us
that they’ve suffered abuse”.
When there are many people say that it actually
happens, we cannot ignore the elephant in the room. We have been promoting
multiculturalism and antiracism for years, yet there are still negative events
happen from time to time.
One of the unique features of Australia education
system is the large amount of international students. Racism, among other
issues, is one of the biggest concern of the international student community.
As an international student who has been studying in
Australia from year 11, I have experienced
a range of situation in which racism happened. When I first came to Australia,
due to the vast cultural difference between Australia and China, I encountered
a series of cultural shock. Apart from spending a long time trying to adapt the
Australian way of schooling, I also encounter several cross-cultural issues as
well as some issues of racism. Some of the ‘top racism moments’ that I have
experienced due to my Chinese ethnic identity were quite unbelievable. For
example, name calling such as “f****** international” or “Stupid Asian”.
Moreover, there is one more experience that I want to share with everyone: My
first day of senior high school was a very hot day and I was having my first
ESL lesson. At that time, my high school was experimenting some environmental
friendly policies. One of the policy is to reduce the use of air-conditioner as
much as possible. The students in my ESL class have no idea about this new rule
as it was the first day in high school for most of us. When we asked our class
teacher if we could turn on the air-con because it was hot, she went to ask one
of the head teachers. Then, that particular head teacher went into our class
and said something like “I know there’s air-cons in China, but you know what?
You guys are creating lots of pollutions. Here in Australia, we don’t!” (Not
the exact words but that is what I remember.) and left the classroom, leaving
all the students from China with anger and confusion and our ESL class teacher
full of awkward in her face. Sadly, we did not say anything to protect ourselves
as we were still in the phase of cultural shock and to be honest, we did not
even realize it is racism.
Just like Minikel-Lacocque states, the racism can come
from ‘the power of words’, and ‘they have the potential to help maintain
various inequalities.’ (p.454-458) We are still trying to minimise race, and
there is no doubt that any form of racism – even just words should still be banned.
We need to take caution and be aware of even the most ‘subtle’ way of racism.
Reference:
Minikel-Lacocque, J. (2012) Racism, College, and the
Power of Words : Racial Microaggressions Reconsidered, American Educational Research Journal 50(3), 454-458
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