Blowing Water | Racism should never be normalised, and we all have a responsibility to speak out to put racists in their place
- We cannot treat racist behaviour lightly and to dismiss it as a joke is no defence, Luisa Tam says
- Recent events such as an airline passenger’s racist rant and comments made by a Chinese businessman in Kenya have brought the issue into sharp focus
A friend once asked me to view a flat he intended to rent on his behalf because he said the property agent seemed reluctant to deal with non-Chinese ethnic minorities.
I went along and found out that it was in fact the property owner who did not want to rent the place out to non-Chinese, except Caucasians; my friend was an Arab.
So when I read a recent article in this newspaper detailing the prevalence of everyday racism in Hong Kong and the unpleasant experiences many non-Chinese ethnic minorities have to go through on a daily basis, I was not too surprised.
One of the problems is that many of us tend to treat these incidents as normal and dismiss them as just “Hongkongers being Hongkongers because they are rude”. We should never normalise antisocial behaviours, especially the lack of consideration or even harmful actions that affect the well-being of others.