mf.rox

Or did the song go “tell that GIRL to shut up”?

Anyway, I had a talk with that Chinese-American guy yesterday. He’s the guy I talked about back on September 5, who always badmouths Chinese people, and said weird stuff about Jews. Basically, his opinions hurt and offend me, and whenever I talk to him, even for a few minutes, I come away irritated. I’d been trying to avoid him, but he wasn’t getting the message that I didn’t want to talk to him. I decided I’d have to do it directly, or he wouldn’t get the picture.

We were supposed to meet for dinner last night, and when we saw each other, I took him aside (he’d invited another person too) and told him how I felt. I told him I’d gotten the impression he didn’t like Chinese people very much, and while I have no illusion that China or Chinese people are perfect, the things he said hurt my feelings and made me unhappy. I also mentioned the whole agreeing with Mel Gibson thing, and said that if he really belived Jews were some sort of evil force in the world, that was not something I could accept. I told him if he really believed these things, I didn’t think I could spend time with him. He was kind of aghast, and started arguing with me. He said he didn’t remember saying those things, but then he started saying that he didn’t believe Chinese people and “the Jewish people” were “above criticism.” At that point I told him that I was going to go home.

I am proud of myself, I guess, because I was never rude or impolite when talking to him. I really can’t be friends with him if he believes these things. Maybe hearing me say these things will be good for him, and make him think about what comes out of his mouth and how it makes other people perceive him. Original Curtis mentioned to me that one time he was at this party, and this guy came up to him and whispered in his ear, “Why do you talk about yourself so much?” It was a shock to hear, and made him think about what he was saying, while not embarrassing him in front of the other guests. So maybe hearing me say this to him will do him some good. Probably not, right? But there’s always a chance.

On a side note, I don’t like it when people talk about “the Jewish people,” or “the blacks” or “the Chinese.” It makes it sound like all the people of the group know each other and coordinate decisions together, which is completely ridiculous. For example, when you talk about Jewish people, you’re talking about millions of people all over the world who’ve never even met, have different political views, and even different religious views. If some politician like Benjamin Netanyahu wants to make a decision, it’s not like he calls up Bob Dylan, who calls up Paul Wolfowitz, who calls up my friend Phil, who calls up Jerry Seinfeld, and then they all get together and vote.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 5th, 2006 at 11:33 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.