On my most recent holiday, my boyfriend and I opted not to go backpacking and to spend most of our time in a resort where we could simply relax and take it easy after a rather energy sapping year. It’s not our usual thing though, so it took getting used to. What we most had to up our tolerance levels for was the extraordinarily homogenous and slightly insular company we found ourselves sharing our dining tables with.

The resort we had chosen was a German chain, so most of the people holidaying there were German speakers. I, being a fledgling in the German language, thought that this would be a great opportunity for me to practice my listening skills and to test out my courage by speaking to strangers in a language I barely have any grip on. To my surprise, people were not as accommodating as I had anticipated. Perhaps it’s because I am so used to being in International environments, but when I am in the company of someone who is unfamiliar with the language being spoken by those around us I make an extra effort to speak slowly or to avoid complicated euphemisms, all the while making sure that the person is following. I expected this to be the case when I was the minority too, but instead, I spent many of our evenings being momentarily acknowledged as the foreigner by the members around the table and then swiftly cast to the side as someone not worthy of attention.

One lady managed to spare two minutes of her attention and asked me where I was from. I told her I was British, which, as I mentioned in a previous post here, is my default answer for when I am not particularly in the mood to elaborate. To this her response was, “but…” accompanied by her slowly lifting her index fingers to the corner of her eyes and pulling them out to the side of her face. That’s right, a grown lady of around 60 years of age thought this was the most appropriate way to indicate that she could detect a hint of Asian blood in me. I congratulated her on her marvelous observation skills.

To be honest, despite my sarcastic tone, I wasn’t really offended as I’ve learnt to brush these things off without so much as a second thought. I was, however, amused and almost felt a twinge of embarrassment on the lady’s behalf. She was lucky she was aiming that at me; what if I hadn’t been so tolerant about such casual acts of racism? Truth be told, I was far more offended by the fact that once she had cured her curiosity, she proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the evening.

The episode got me thinking about harmless racism as a form of banter. Banter is a friendly exchange of teasing remarks; one might jokingly call a stingy friend cheap (and other more derogatory variations of the word), but as long as the friend is on the same wavelength such mock insults are laughed at together. Banter is used a guise with which you can point out someone’s perceived flaws and defining characteristics and joke about them; it works because often the person being teased is usually aware of and accepting of their targeted characteristic. So my question is, how does being an ethnic minority classify as banter worthy?

Don’t get me wrong, when my close British friends make any sort of harmless remark about my Japaneseness I don’t take offence, but I can’t help but wonder how my having Japanese roots elicits just as many witty remarks as the fact that I am rather short or that I have bizarrely shaped toes. On one hand, it can be seen as a parody of racism; when one doesn’t actually mean to be distasteful in pointing out that I am “yellow”, then couldn’t it be that they are making fun of the whole notion of racism itself? On the other hand, it could just be that racial characteristics are still the easiest factors with which to single people out with whether you mean it in a positive or negative way.

Perhaps lightweight racism is the fall back option for modern humour. With globalization gaining momentum with every year that goes by, people increasingly face situations in which they must accustom themselves to being displaced from their ethnic roots and building homes amongst people with completely different cultural backgrounds to them. When multiculturalism grows to such an extent, perhaps colour-coding jokes by skin tone becomes the same as making fun of someone for having an unflattering haircut.

One other thing I wonder though, is whether these jokes would be acceptable if I had been an exchange student from Japan who was completely unfamiliar with British culture. Could it be that my friends are comfortable with their jokes because I am also culturally accessible to them being half British? Is it less politically incorrect to make fun of national stereotypes of one’s home country if that person can fend for themselves in the context of banter?

I’m not necessarily trying to embark on a philosophical or moral deciphering of harmless banter, but I do wonder where the line between genuine racism and faux-racism lies. Does it depend on the sense of humour of the target, the intention of the dealer or the overall context? Of course, I did not react to the German lady’s eye stretching in the same way as I would my friends joking that my mother’s name is unpronounceable to them, but neither offends me per se.

Are we all becoming more tolerant or are those of us that do face occasional racism simply becoming jaded? Is racism nowadays only a taboo if someone takes offence personally?

I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this one as I’m still trying to pin down my own opinion.