Sunday, June 10, 2007

someone (sent last week):

Subject: race and class

Message: just reading your latest blog entry and want to tell you what happened when i brought *** to chapel at king's college on wednesday.

after the service, instead of exiting the college, i wanted to go to the toilet so we made a detour into the college. as i was heading towards the college bar (with toilets), one of the fellows of the college (he was walking towards us on the grass) came up to me and barricaded my way with his umbrella. he then rudely asked me 'are you a member of kings'. i said no, but i am a member of the university (ie 2nd class but still with more privileges than a member of the public, 3rd class). he then asked me 'where are you going', at that point i should have asked him, 'why,where are YOU going' but i was so shocked at his rudeness that i just told him i was going to the bar. whereupon he let me proceed.

i can tell you with 100% certainty that this only happened because it was 2 yellow people. if i had been with a white person, a black person, a green or purple person, it would not have happened.

so race does matter. in this case, i was of the right class (ie a member of the university) but all this man could see was race and that superseded everything else.

i should add that kings probably suffers the most from tourists, out of which, yellow (predominantly PRC) tourists are the most irritating and badly behaved. i go to king's for chapel quite often and am only treated with courtesy and respect by the chapel staff but it's a different matter for some of the other staff in the college. in a way you cannot blame them because a high percentage of the tourists who misbehave are yellow (PRC) so all yellow people get tarred by association.

another reason to hate and despise PRCs