Random Musings

I get it. I am an affluent white male. I went to a private school, lived in the UK when they valued all education, so I benefited from a free undergraduate degree and a cheap postgraduate degree. I literally drip with privilege, so I don't really garner a lot of sympathy when I complain about the prejudices that I face.

So, let's not talk about me; instead, let's talk about this video 'Breakfast at Tiffianys - Mr. Yunioshi's.' This is, of course, Mickey Rooney playing Holly Golightly's neighbor in 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s.' Though some people defend it as the product of a different time, even the director, Blake Edwards, saw it for what it was and tried to recast the role but failed to get the studio to agree. All in all, it's offensive AF.

But I have an accent, and one of the last bastions of casual racism seems to be the acceptance of people copying British, Irish, and Australian accents in front of them. This always occurs in a casual or nonchalant manner, often unintentionally. The impression is normally poor (I always get imitated as if I am a cockney, I am far from it.) there is often a joke about drinking, fighting, or throwing a shrimp on the barbie (Australians usually call them prawns, by the way), they play on some annoying stereotype, or perpetuate some other racial biases. Casual racism of this type is often less overt and less malicious than overt racism, but that doesn’t make it cool.

I get it; we were the colonizers and oppressors for centuries, so it's our turn. But imagine I was a young Japanese female on a J-1 visa taking my first trip to the US. I arrived at your camp, and when I introduced myself, one of the staff started to speak like Mickey Rooney in this clip. Then they started to walk around, shuffling their feet, and bowing. How long will that staff remain employed? How many staff would stand up in outrage and make them stop? And they should.

Yet we have thousands of Western European staff arriving at our camps every year and enduring the same type of racism, and no one says a thing. When they push back, they're told that we love their accents and it’s because we just want to be like them. We can do better; we need to change.