Conversation with Ex-Torontonian yesterday.
Me: Where do you live now?
She: St. John's.
Me: Why did you move here?
She: The foreigners took over Toronto.
Me: Seriously?
She: Completely, you wouldn't recognise Cabbagetown (a very ritzy area in TO).
Me: You lived in Cabbagetown?
She: Well, no. But I heard the foreigners took it over with their guns.
Me: What do you mean by foreigners?
She: Illegals
Me: What's an illegal?
She: People who have no right to be in our country.
Me: Who says?
She: Me and other real Canadians.
Me: What's a real Canadian?
She: People who are born here like me and you.
Me: I wasn't born here.
She: No?
Me: I was born in Ireland, so I'm not a real Canadian by your standards.
She: Oh I didn't mean people like you.
Me: People like me?
She: Well you know, people who speak properly and look like the rest of us.
Me: So when you say foreigners you mean people who are visible minorities?
She: That's a fancy way of saying illegals and aliens, isn't it?
Me: Well no, actually. I was thinking of landed emigrants, refugees, Canada's First Nations People and non-whites who were born here.
She: Oh, you mean all those Indian types and natives?
Me: Well technically 'Indian' is a misnomer. They were in this country first and the white Europeans stole it from them.
She: Good job too. They were savages. Like the illegals.
Me: Excuse me. I must leave you now.
I've heard that same diatribe so many times. Just reading it now made my stomach hurt. Such stupidity.
ReplyDeleteMarcia:
ReplyDeleteAnd you just know from the moment they open their gobs this shite is going to pour out. And nothing you can say will change them/enlighten them.
What made her more alarming than usual was her officer husband and she had travelled the world with the military and I wondered if he sang the same song.
Blech.
XO
WWW
Glad you spoke up. Most of us just shake our heads at the ignorance and prejudice and don't bother, because it doesn't make a damn bit of difference what is said to them. It's like talking to a frigging wall.
ReplyDeleteI take it that woman is deaf as well as dumb! You were right to walk!
ReplyDeleteYou really came up with all the right answers. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI have been there many times in a couple of countries. It is really quite insulting when you are called a "good" foreigner under these circumstances. My daughter has double citizenship and when a very rw party once proposed to take this away (as a means to discourage immigration) she got up at one of their debates all blond and blue eyed and asked whether she should cut herself in half or better still, whether one of the gentlemen on the podium would do it.
Well done WWW !
ReplyDelete"people who look like the rest of us" - Pffft! Did she mean people with 2 eyes, 2 ears, a nose and a mouth, 2 arms 2 legs (upon which SOME of us, herself excluded, walk erect, having managed to pull our knuckles out of the mud)?
OH BOY!!!
ReplyDeleteIf anyone needs deporting, it's deranged individuals like her. A classic example of not engaging brain before activating mouth.
ReplyDeleteYou were so polite! I had that conversation with a man who sat at my table in a Tim Hortons. It started with "now don't think I am a racist but...". He had immigrated here from Norway when he was 18!! I took it for as long as I could - made all my points including how my great great grandparents immigrated in 1810. Then just got up and left him sitting there with [I hope] his mouth handing open. No goodbye, no nothing.
ReplyDeleteGood for you! You would wish that in this day and age that conversation wouldn't happen, but I've lost count of the number of similar (though mainly less overt) times I've been presented with the same opinions, though I do not have your courage in just being able to walk away (particularly when it's people that I have to see every day).
ReplyDeleteShe night be surprised at who is a foreigner and what they think about a particular social and political situation that totally different from how she thinks about it and that may be very threatening to her.
ReplyDeleteThat would be quite funny if it weren't also tragic.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly sent her off with some food for thought (as well as a flea in her ear).
Funnily enough one of my favourite Englishmen is a Canadian, but he is more English and knows more about this country than most Englishmen! I have volunteered to marry him if he doesn't pass his citizenship test, but I very much doubt he will fail.
Such mindless, sickening hatred. You did right to challenge her, and you did well to keep your head.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the more I read your blog, the more I think we'd get along like a house on fire. My answers to her obvious ignorance and boundless stupidity would have been very similar. I had someone I worked with complain that it was ridiculous for First Nations people to have free post-secondary educations because they were all drunks. I believe my response was somewhere along the lines of - they're not all drunks, but if your land and way of life had been stolen from you, it might drive you to drink too.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the challenge is when I'm presented with a situation like this, I think "teachable moment" like you did. The problem is that it may be an impossible task. Other tasks are less impossible. Choices, choices.
ReplyDeleteSo many of us cannot hear ourselves... what a sad and pointless conversation that woman was having with herself. She couldn't hear you at all either.
ReplyDelete