The offensive little girl and the unconscious racism in Australia
By Kur Wël Kur, Adelaide, Australia
September 10, 2016 (SSB) — On 25th July 2016, my 5- year-old daughter started school in a Catholic school in our suburb. So, sometimes her mum drive her to and pick her up from school. I also do the same when I am free. On the 5th of September, I drove to her school at 2-50 p.m. to pick her up because the school closes at 3p.m. I parked my car in the parents/guardians’ carpark and I strolled into the school compound. I geared towards my daughter’s classroom.
I was looking forward to watch 10 minutes crawl into the last minute and into last seconds before the bell goes off. I burst into children playground. It was a casual day so all children were not wearing uniforms. Children were running and playing around. Some were skipping, some were gathering in their classrooms’ corners, playing computer games on laptops and others were playing soccer.
So, I just didn’t pay attention to their different games I continued toward the waiting area. On my way, two little girls of about 8-9 years old ran towards me. The little girl, the offensive one was a biracial of Asian and Caucasian grounds; she was running ahead of the other little girl. The offensive one was wearing a white, almost light creamy dress, the sort of a dress worn by flower-girls in weddings.
She was also wearing a crown made of white plastic flowers with yellow stigmas. They almost bumped into me, but the offensive little girl stopped and wheezed:
“You scared me!” she said.
“Why?” I asked, lowering my voice in a parental approach.
“You scared me” She went again.
“Why?” I asked her in the same gentle way.
“_______because you look like a shadow!” she said.
For some seconds, she stood there looking up into my face and narrowing her eyes, the type of meanness you see in the faces of racist adults. The simile exploded in my face like a rotten egg. Psychologically, it smelled so bad and in those seconds, it tinted my intelligence on how I view children.
“Is it how you talk to_________?” I finally responded but she didn’t let me finish the statement because she went on running.
There was a young white woman in her twenties following me. She just smiled and kept walking, minding not about our exchange with that little girl. I was so disturbed and still do. I was offended but couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t report her to the school authorities because she was just a child. However, bitterness still gnaws my brain because children emulate their parents.
My inner question spin out like this: do parents of that little girl discuss people of African descent with similes like the one she (little girl) used (That I look like a shadow)? And if they do, then these metaphors: they (people of my complexion) are car tyres or they’re tar, are common in their discussions. Using taunting remarks are not far away in discussions involving racial equations especially in that little girl’s house. It’s easy to come into this conclusion because the way that little girl spat those words into my face was as if she had rehearsed saying them in a million times. They came out of her little mouth so clean, the sort of accuracy you find in a well-script movies.
By the way, this is the complete statement if she had waited for my response: Is this how you talk to people who don’t look like your mum and dad?
On televisions, I heard young fans of Australian football league referring to Aboriginal players as apes or gorillas. And some of my friends and cousins had told me about their experiences with different racists, conscious or unconscious racists. However, I didn’t experience a blunt racism for a decade I have resided in Australia until on the 5th of September. The question goes, how about our children? Another question: how much racism do they experience?
I heard many complaints from schools that our children don’t listen; they’re aggressive. Schools expelled many of our children or summoned us (parents) on the basis that our children don’t get along with other schoolchildren. What we don’t know as African parents are horrors of racism, which our children experience every day, day in and day out of school.
I titled this opinion as such [Unconscious Racism] because I believe in purity of children’s hearts. However, unconscious racism doesn’t apply in my situation because the experts (sociologists and psychologists) believe that children from 5 years upward are able to use the conscious racism.
To finish it off, I wrote this opinion for myself. I couldn’t let it go. The experience keeps coming back even when I turn in my sleep. I wrote it for you those of you with my complexion so that any time in your life or in the eleventh hour of your life here if unconscious or conscious racism hits you in the face, you shouldn’t play into the hands of racists, babies or adults.
Don’t get mad to do unthinkable. I wrote it for you, the readers in my country, those of you at home to know that we’re not enjoying as you may guess. Every day is free of live bullets and hunger but we die million times of racists’ remarks, of bad looks and of standing out in the pack.
Kur Wel Kur has a Bachelor Degree in Genetics and Zoology from Australian National University (ANU). He pursues a Masters of International Security Studies at Macquarie University (Australia). He is presently the General Secretary of Greater Bor Community in Adelaide, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: kurwelkur @ yahoo.com
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