Racism in Travels

Racism is probably the last thing we want to think about when traveling but it can happen. When it comes to traveling, no one, not even the privileged who have never once had to experience racism in their cushy home countries are immune to it. It can be a rude awakening for the privileged yet for many people of color, it’s something that is often pondered about before something as simple as moving to another state (or city, even) can be done. Fortunately, traveling doesn’t require you to settle down, so you can often just experience any racism that you encounter and depart to a better place, hopefully.

The thing is that racism tends to of course not be fair. I hear of stories of people flocking to Asia wanting to be English teachers as a means to fund their travels. Sounds great, right? Yes, that is until they face the very same racism they had perhaps run away from. If you’re Asian American, a language school is probably going to prefer a blonde over you even if his/her credentials aren’t as good as yours. It sucks, doesn’t it? And African Americans experience it too, except they’re still preferable to Asian American teachers. While I understand that it’s an image thing for schools there, they’re doing a disservice to their students and applicants. They’re committing some type of discrimination: racism. Unfortunately, laws revolving around racism in many Asian countries aren’t all that great. But what is there to expect when the most westernized of countries still continue to commit racism on the daily?

Hawaii is a dreamy island that many people fantasize of traveling to. It’s not an ideal destination for the cheap, though. Whatever you can budget after airfare, the one thing that you won’t be able to budget so successfully is lodging. I don’t care what anyone tells you because the truth is that lodging is never cheap in Hawaii. If you don’t know someone well enough to stay at their place, be prepared to see lodging costs eat up your budget. Yes, this applies to people wanting to stick to hostels and 2-star hotels, too! (Honestly, you’re better off paying a bit more for a better hotel. It doesn’t need to be a resort and shouldn’t be a resort!) So, after all of the daydreaming and splurging to turn Hawaii into a reality, the last thing you want is to have racism burst your bubble, right? Well, I have news for you: Hawaii can be very racist.

Interestingly enough, some people want to validate/excuse Hawaii’s racism based on their history of colonization. I get it but racism is never acceptable. Excuses only serve to allow racism to continue. I will never understand how it’s okay to have a sign on the main road telling “haole” off. While I get that sign isn’t for me and that most White people aren’t going to understand what haole means, I find this unacceptable. It’s hostile and for authorities to look the other way on such things, it says a lot about the type of racism that is tolerated and accepted in Hawaii.

At the same time, I understand the behavior and hostility. Beyond the reasoning of colonization that seemed to have happened long ago, there are the massive resorts. Locals probably aren’t so fond of these resorts which probably damage the ecosystem in some way or another as well as cut off locals from getting to enjoy Hawaii as freely. Think about it: if a resort gets to have full access to a portion of a beach, it is either going to be closed off to locals who aren’t staying at the resort OR turn off locals from hanging around there.

There’s also an attitude some visitors staying at such resorts have. By closing themselves off in a massive resort, they’re making it clear that they don’t want to intermingle with locals despite coming all the way from who knows where to Hawaii. There’s an air of entitlement and superiority that exists in some of these people and it makes sense, since these resorts aren’t cheap and if they’re used to doing things with money, they’re probably not that great of a person deep down inside.

I recall the time I was sitting at the front of a resort. I was waiting for a public bus that miraculously and surprisingly had a stop here. As I was waiting, I couldn’t help but to worry that resort staff would get on my case about hanging about as I was not a customer of their resort. I saw resort staff pass by every now and then and while I knew I had every right to be there, I couldn’t help but to feel triggered because I knew they were probably mistaking me as a local. But what local would need to take this bus line from this specific resort stop, right? The funny thing is that no resort customer got onto this public bus. Every resort customer waiting about would board a tour van that was probably RSVP’d by hotel concierge or some type of tour agency.

It was funny to see the disparity between a resort customer and me. But honestly, I wouldn’t have opted for such services even if I was staying at a resort.

Anyway, while waiting, an uppity resort customer came down to wait not far from me. I did not like the way she looked at me. It was as if she was disgusted to be sharing this “space” with me. As mentioned earlier, many resort clientele don’t want to intermingle with “others”; they want to remain in their safe bubble. I wasn’t sure if she thought I was local or if she just wasn’t happy to be near a person of color, but it wasn’t a good feeling and was rather bizarre. Like, lady, you’re in Hawaii, a place that has a lot of people of color. If you have a problem with people of color or locals, you shouldn’t be in Hawaii in the first place. I suppose if locals were to experience this type of attitude from a gazillion of resort customers, they’d harbor dislike, racism and hatred even towards people that resemble Hawaii’s past colonizers.

Interestingly enough, a Japanese resort customer came down and sat right next to me. I found it odd but was open to it, since the racist woman across from me was still there. Now giving both of us looks of disgust, it became clear to me how racist the woman across was and how undeserving of Hawaii she was. A privileged racist should never ever come to Hawaii or Asia. If you want to be around people similar to you, you’ll have to stay put to stay in your comfort zone. Things fortunately got better as other Japanese resort customers came down, plunked down next to me and talked to the first woman that had sat next to me. I was having a moment because I was so confused as to what was going on. But it was a good moment because the racist woman across now felt powerless and timid against a group consisting of people of color. She no longer had enough strength in her to glare at us amid the non stop chattering going on in Japanese. I said I felt weird because I was out of place. I wasn’t a resort customer. I wasn’t local. I wasn’t Japanese. But I suppose because I was a lot lighter than locals who actually consist of a lot of Japanese Americans and Okinawan Americans, I had passed in the eyes of Japanese resort customers as another Japanese resort customer. I wasn’t though. They probably figured that out after I didn’t follow them to their sightseeing shuttle OR they knew but were comfortable enough to be around me and for that, I’m thankful.

Going somewhere else requires us to be open and I appreciate it when someone’s open to me and I hope they appreciate it, too when I put in effort to be open to them.

If any of you have read my blog posts on Japan, you should already be aware that my experience in Japan was subpar because of the racism, or xenophobia, actually that exists there. I suppose we can’t call it racism if the majority of Japan opts to be racist to Asians, since Japan is also geographically a part of Asia. I say it like this because Japan unfortunately seems to have a superiority complex when it comes to them vs others in Asia and I’m not cool with that whatsoever. It’s a form of discrimination.

Japan prefers White travelers to Asian travelers, even if the Asian traveler happens to be carrying the same passport as the token White traveler. It’s cringey.

You’ll often see how better treated White travelers are in Japan and how much slack is cut off for White travelers. But when it comes to Asian travelers, good luck with that.

But privileged travelers that have never had to experience racism in their home countries could very well get a taste of it in Japan, surprisingly. Yes, there are places where they blatantly tell you that foreigners (Whites and other non-Japanese looking persons) aren’t served. It’s backwards and while I don’t agree with it, it’s kind of amusing to see how privileged people act when things go against what they’re used to. They finally experience racism and understand what people of color back home are complaining about, except in their situation, when they come back home, they probably won’t ever have to experience racism or microaggression again.

For some reason, a lot of people are fond of Japan. It could be the anime. It could be the ramen, which honestly has its roots from China. It could be the women that anime obsessed fanboys want as a wife so desperately. I am “fond” of Japan, too but I want to think my reason is different and more reasonable. (LOL at my holier than thou attitude right now.) My so-called love for Japan isn’t for Japan itself because I honestly can’t find myself to like a place that’s so racist and backwards (ex. Gender inequality, although I wouldn’t mind being a so-called stay at home wife, using my husband’s money to travel. Ok, this actually sounds like a really good idea…). My love seems to be its language which doesn’t really have much to do with the country itself aside from the fact that it’s a language used mainly in that country. I’ve always found the language pretty. I’ve always found it stupid when people would only praise French and Spanish as the romance languages of the world. Yeah, I guess we can’t call Japanese as a romance language, but to be honest, I really do find the language soothing to hear. Okay, maybe I don’t find it all that soothing to hear when a girl is being all fake, talking in a high pitched voice. No thank you and any man finding this to be adorable is someone undeserving of respect because it’s cringey. But maybe I’d understand if I were a man?

I guess people have always looked down on Asian languages. Many people find Asian languages gross yet Korean is now popular thanks to the K-dramas and K-pop that have invaded the world and of course Japanese, most likely from the obvious: anime.

Despite people’s fondness for Japan for whatever reason, the reality is that some people are starting to see how twisted Japan can be when it comes to xenophobia, discrimination and racism. The best example is from their COVID era traveling policies where they were allowing Japanese natives to travel as they pleased into and out of the country, but not allowing non-Japanese from who knows where to come into Japan under the so-called excuse of COVID precaution. It’s twisted because it’s obvious to most people that a Japanese traveler can catch COVID outside of Japan, only to bring it back into Japan. If this doesn’t give a glimpse as to how racist and outdated Japan can be, I don’t know what does. Regardless, I’m glad the world is starting to see it for what it is despite their “love” for Japan.

I have other stories revolving around racism within the travelsphere but it looks like I’ll have to save it for another blog post. Feel free to reach out to me and share your own experiences of racism while traveling abroad. Perhaps I’ll feature your experience in my blog one day.