XENOPHOBIA, THAT SHADOWED SPECTER, is no stranger to my soul, its bitter sting a thread woven into the fabric of my wanderings. In Melbourne’s sunlit streets, I felt its barb when a car roared past, its occupants hurling a glass bottle that shattered at my Nike-clad feet, a cascade of shards like cruel laughter. Sharper still was the rebuke of my first Australian beau’s adoptive mother, her voice laced with scorn: “I didn’t raise you to run off with an Asian girl.” The words cut deep, a wound unseen but keenly felt.
In Dorset, England, the air carried a different chill. Two Millennials, their tongues sharpened by disdain, branded me “chaff”, fit, they sneered, to be cast off, scattered by the wind’s caprice. At a gleaming mall, a Gap employee’s haughty gaze fell upon me, as if my mere presence profaned his polished domain, a scene plucked from Pretty Woman’s reel of indignity.
Yet it is in New Zealand, my chosen haven, that xenophobia’s subtle jabs have fed my meditations most. Outside a supermarket, a gaggle of raucous youths unleashed a slur, proclaiming my lesser evolution against their vaunted Caucasoid pride. I pondered, with a wry heart, how they might falter before the truth that dark-skinned Indians, too, share that ancient lineage, would their pack’s bravado hold?
At that same market, another slight: my bags were singled out for scrutiny, as if my Asian visage bespoke a penchant for thievery. Did they truly deem my kin predisposed to pilfering, marked as culprits by the hue of our skin? And at the city library, hallowed ground of wisdom, where one might dream of unity, I met prejudice’s stubborn face. Far from leveling souls, it harbored slights that mocked the hope that learning banishes bias. Indeed, it was the Enlightenment, spurred by Darwin’s The Origin of Species, that crowned science as truth’s new grail, supplanting Holy Writ and sowing the seeds of racialism’s error, a bitter irony that knowledge, meant to liberate, became a yoke of division.
These encounters, though sharp, have kindled in me a deeper reflection, a seeking after the heart of grace that transcends the world’s divisions, as Scripture whispers of a love that knows no bounds.
Irony, that sly weaver of truths, wove a curious scene at the city library, where an old man, bristles gray and garb tattered like a skid row wanderer, turned his nose up at me with a muttering incomprehensible, his mind seeming adrift on troubled seas. Yet another, a middle-aged Pakeha, near cussed me from those same hallowed halls, his faculties sharp as a blade despite the fire in his eyes. Madness takes many forms, bipolar tempests, schizophrenic shadows, delusions’ fog, dementia’s twilight, but to cast this man among such sufferers felt a disservice to those truly afflicted. No, his keen scrutiny of periodicals, devoured with a predator’s zeal, bespoke a mind in command. I could only trace his xenophobia to a fervent altar of Darwinism, for my husband holds that before Natural Selection’s creed, no soul of differing hue was deemed less than human. Though I counter that racism’s roots twine through man’s ancient tale, I grant that Darwin’s doctrine has been seized as a mantle to cloak such sins.
In the forge of New Zealand’s workplaces, I’ve learned that equality is a mosaic half-formed, its pieces jagged for a foreigner daring to carve a place within the towering edifice of education. Strangely, it is often a sister’s hand that buttresses the glass ceiling’s unyielding frame. Compounding this, I wrestle the specter of stereotype, the Asian woman foreigner, misjudged as a mail-order bride, her worth reduced to a transaction’s shadow.
One year, the struggle flared when a co-worker, sparking a verbal joust, dared to ask if a rich husband underpinned my mused retirement. My pride bristled, urging a barbed retort, dripping with mock-patrician scorn: “Oh, daaahling, behold this vintage Prada, my own labor’s wages sustain my life’s elegance.” Yet I held my tongue, letting the words dissolve like mist, while within, my soul’s voice whispered the sacred balm of Matthew’s beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”6 In that silence, I chose the path of grace, a quiet defiance stronger than any riposte, anchored in the promise of a higher calling.
Indeed, were it not for the Beatitudes, those radiant pearls of divine counsel, I might have loosed the sharp retort that stirred within me, a tempest eager to break. Yet their gentle whisper stayed my tongue.
On two occasions, a relief teacher from another workplace presumed to claim precedence at the hot water dispenser. I stood at the queue’s head, a breath from pouring steaming water into my Milo, when his arm, reaching boldly over me, brushed mine with a scalding touch as he served himself first. Towering above six feet, he loomed like a colossus, and I, diminutive in his shadow, seemed to vanish from his sight. The first time, I pardoned him, attributing his slight to my own inconspicuous frame. But when the act was repeated, a fire kindled within me, urging a fierce oration on the fabled privilege of the white bourgeois. Yet my resolve faltered, my slight form frozen before his Herculean presence, as if my body betrayed the boldness of my heart. “Walk away,” I whispered to myself. “Just walk away.” And so I did, choosing peace over the clash.
Then there was that leader of the New Zealand First party, whose words could pierce like arrows, reducing me to tears. But today, I shall not lend breath to his strain of xenophobia, letting it fade like a shadow in the noonday sun.
To close my tale here, however, would be to paint a portrait half-finished, its colors skewed to gloom. It would suggest that my encounters in the West, among peoples of fairer hue, were solely steeped in strife, an untruth that would betray the heart’s deeper wisdom. In truth, across my sojourns in white-majority lands, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, I have been met far more often by philanthropes than by xenophobes. For every soul who cast a barb of prejudice, ten others extended hands of kindness, their generosity a beacon that outshone the darkness. This is my honest reckoning: xenophobia, though real, is but a fleeting cloud against a sky vast with human grace.
In Melbourne’s sun-drenched embrace, I met the very soul of chivalry in Aussie men, the warmest hospitality in women, and families whose welcome wrapped me like a hearth’s glow. A steadfast band of four or five mates stood ever ready to aid me, shifting my belongings when I moved or replacing a light bulb, all with no thought of recompense. Three gallant souls, at different times, pressed roses into my hands, their gifts unprompted, blooming with simple kindness. A sexagenarian artist, his eyes alight with the outback’s spirit, crafted a painting of its rugged vistas just for me. Among the fleet-footed, one became my tennis comrade, trading volleys with laughter, while another joined my runs along the campus Ring Road, our strides a shared rhythm under open skies.
The women, too, wove me into their world. One spirited sheila beckoned me to her country home, unveiling the raw pulse of outback Straya. Others marked my twenty-first year with a surprise of cake and gifts, a moment sweet as dawn. With my closest mates, afternoons melted into fondue feasts or barbies, our hands crafting 3-D dioramas and greeting cards, or lifting voices to The Seekers’ nostalgic strains around a piano, each note a thread of joy.
Couples, both peers and elders, flung wide their adventures to include me — theme parks and concerts, rock climbing, hiking, bivouacking, horseback treks, often with their Happy Little Vegemites scampering alongside. Others led me to The Hard Rock Café, TGIF, or the Smörgåsbord in the Dandenong Ranges, where meals ended in a conga line weaving through tables, followed by the absurd delight of the chicken dance. Always, their invitations carried a “fair dinkum; it’s our shout,” met with giggles as we traded slang, my Manglish for their Aussie drawl, a playful bridge across our worlds.
In Dorset’s ancient lanes, Britons, white Anglo-Saxons, curious and kind, paused to ask of my origins and my holiday’s joys. The sting of the Gap xenophobe faded swiftly, eclipsed by the impeccable courtesy of Marks & Spencer, Clarks, and quaint boutique shops and eateries, their service a balm to memory’s bruise.
At Kansas City, Missouri’s airport, a man in his forties, with no thought of gain, lent me his cell phone, with no strings attached, pun intended, to make a long-distance call when my companion failed to appear. At Springfield Mall, a young man in his twenties offered a fleeting smile as we passed, a spark of warmth. Another, a quinquagenarian, patiently taught me to distinguish quarter from dime, dime from penny, small coins, large kindness. These strangers, seeing a wayfarer in need, chose to be the friendly face and helping hand I craved.
Such have been my encounters with the ‘white’ race, overwhelmingly radiant, far outshining the shadows. In this, God has dealt me a hand of surpassing gentleness, and in the grand mosaic of existence, that grace is all that holds true. Wherever earth’s paths may lead, we are never alone, for we have a friend in our Savior, Christ Jesus.