Black and white

“My Zambian neighbours gave me avocadoes the other day,” I say on the drive to volleyball. “Black Zambian or white Zambian?” he asks. “Oh, ah, um, black.”

I am starting to realise that I am more uncomfortable with the mention of race than I care to admit. I lay blame on an overly politically correct upbringing. Part of me want to believe that when referring to someone it isn’t necessary to refer to their race, but I know in context a black Zambian is a different person and has a different story than a white Zambian. I don’t think of race as an essential descriptor and the mention of race inevitably brings up stereotypes. Then again, I suppose it never really is a choice whether you’re labelled and what label people attach.

My label the past week has been the Chinese president. Since the newspapers started writing about his visit to Zambia, I have literally been called Hu Jintao. Apparently, I look like him. It was somewhat amusing the first day, but now I am ready to call it racism. In being open-minded and culturally sensitive, I was trying to be understanding that I look different and people can only base reaction on previous experience. But, I really have no idea what to do when people make a dead stop in front of me, stare, point, and say, “Chinese! Korean! Japanese!” (I get all three about equally). Not wanting to be impolite or stir up any more attention, I usually ignore and keep walking. What can I really do? Do I point back and say Zambian. One particularly bad day, I turned around and told a guy he was being rude (okay, not exactly the perfect comeback), but I couldn’t believe how dumbfounded he was. He kept saying, “Forgive me madame.” I guess his stereotype of me was that he could call me anything and I was not going to say anything back.