I was disappointed to learn the other day that my step-daughter JJ was subjected to a racist rant. She was travelling home by train from the city on Christmas Eve with a friend and the two were chatting quietly in Thai. I know that they would have been speaking quietly because this is her default setting and her friend from school is equally shy. Apparently a man in hi-res(what else?) took umbrage and told them to speak only in English. He added that this was doubly important because it was Christmas Eve.

So the remark was both racist and stupid, two conditions that are often quite comfortable with each other. It is a shame that I was not present because I would have taken the matter up vigorously, and to his cost.

Being a foreigner in another country is difficult enough. The times I experienced racism in Japan (not often, but now and then) were humiliating and bewildering in equal measure. We should look beyond our skin colour or nationality - they are accidents of birth. Alas, it seems that no measure of education can inure a person against these kinds of lapses. Fear of The Other is still strong and may grow stronger given the mileage that populists get from invoking such fears.

But, meanwhile, let us all appeal to our better natures.


the silence
between his hockey stories...
a banana
thrown on the ice
to trip a black player

Chenou Lui