Breaking Stereotypes Fail.

Some ethnicities just don’t want to help themselves do they?

Now I’m no racist; oh sure, I don’t trust carneys and no, I wouldn’t be happy with Gyppos moving in on the front lawn and okay, I have some unresolved issues with Asians and AK47’s, but I am on the whole, as racially tolerant as the next frightened Caucasian.

Yet sometimes I wonder if some of the minorities who we share this country of ours with are determined to turn me. And why do they have such an aversion to being proven wrong? Granted, nobody likes to be proven wrong but these guys take that shit personally.

Example One:

I was attending Junior’s football game the other day, a rare occasion for me as I coach another team and their games are seldom at opposite times.

Ten minutes in and the tone for the game is set when a bunch of taxi drivers – and I’m not using the term as a racial stereotype, there were literally three taxis parked up to watch the one boy – started laying into the ref, our ref, because young Imran had just been knocked to the ground in a hard, but fair, tackle.

It didn’t seem to matter to them that Imran was the biggest boy on the field and quite possibly 16, not eleven like the rest of the boys. Nor did it seem to matter that Imran was playing a contact sport in which there is quite frequently, contact. No, any time Imran went over, which was often, the Wellington Combined section of the crowd would launch into the same anti ref tirade that got real boring, real fucking quick.

One of the Dad’s in my son’s team, all seven foot of him, decided to have a quiet word with the contenders for ‘father sof the year’ and suggest to them that they consider just what effect their words were having on the boys.

He might as well have suggested that they all go and suck their mother’s cocks given the response he got. Which was all rather predictable really, but given that he is a very successful lawyer of many years experience and they, well, taxi drivers, things got sorted real quick. An argument over who gets the next spot on the rank this wasn’t.

Needless to say it was a mis-match on and off the field. Imran fell over a few more times before the games end, our boys won the game and the entire sorry contingent left with some dirty looks our way, having done there bit for closer community relations.

Example Two:

Being the modern, new age Dad that I am, I like to drop my son off at school each morning. It’s a dicey bit of logistics on a dry day, but when it’s persisting down it’s like that bit on Star Wars where Luke attacks the Death Star in his X Wing.

Right outside the entrance to Junior’s school is a crossing and next to that, a bus stop. Having dropped him off I pulled out into the traffic. A bus had stopped in the opposite lane and was off loading the several hundred kids these things seem capable of holding in the mornings, which meant they were all drifting across the crossing, in small groups.

Amongst all this, some dude – let’s call him Kamahl – made the decision to squeeze in behind the bus and pedestrian crossing all the while trying to turn across my lane into the driveway. Had his car been, say, a pushbike, it wouldn’t have posed a problem but now it was pissing with rain and I couldn’t see kids behinf him entering the crossing on his side of the road. Real cool.

So we did what all good folk do in this type of situation; we had a verbal altercation from the safety of our cars. I mentioned that his not waiting till the other side of the crossing was clear was endangering the children, but the suggestion was drowned out by his claiming to be “not on the crossing. I am not on the crossing!”.

He was right of course, he wasn’t. But he was still endangering kids, still in the wrong and still a complete fuckwit. But then what can I say, some ethnicities just don’t want to help themselves and break down the stereotypes do they?

"But, but, but yer bleeck?!"

My god, Africa appears to be a country that is content to two girl one cup all over itself doesn’t it? Admittedly, I base this assumption solely from the footage I see on the news each night, which, as I would be the first to tell you, is no way to form an opinion, but in this particular instance I don’t think I’m far from the truth.

I’m sure it has its beauty and its good bits and friends who have been there assure me it does, but most of it seems to be in utter chaos right now and has been for some time. If only there was oil in them thar hills and we could all relax as George Dubya rode on in to rescue the poor bastards from themselves. Perhaps some shit stirrer of a country could sell Kenya or Zimbabwae some nuclear weapons and start the ball rolling? You can bet if they did the Yanks would be in like white on rice.

Still, nothing like a bit of genocide to keep the worlds ever increasing population down aye? Corruption plays a big part we’re told. No doubt. Can’t be any worse than the day my good mate Sully and I ran a football World Cup sweepstake at work and fiddled it like a five year old.

Things were going great until we had dished out the winnings - of which we were both recipients - and this one bird asked us to double check the results because she felt she too deserved a cut of the winnings. Turns out she did. We had genuinely overlooked her entry when tallying the results first time round. So being the stand up guys we were, we did the only thing any organiser in our place would do and threw away her entry, claiming no knowledge of having ever received it. Needless to say it all went down like a peanut laden stool and we were never again to run a sweepstake at work. Not one that she was part of anyway.

Racism is an emotive word isn’t it? It’s right up there with ‘abortion’ and ‘religion’ on the list of great party starters. But have you ever noticed how racism doesn’t seem to be such a defined form of bigotry anymore? In general society, with the diversity of the population today, racism has almost gone mainstream. Shows like BroTown have made it okay for Coconuts to poke fun at dumb Maoris, who in turn poke fun at crazy Asians who in turn dump on cheeky Honkys. It might be funny on TV – which it isn’t because BroTown is actually quite stink – but is it still funny when 10 year olds are doing it in the playground because they saw it on the telly? Probably.

The Australian cricket team got their panties in a twist this week because one of the turbaned Indian players allegedly called their token Abo ‘a monkey’, which is hardly groundbreaking stuff when comparing racist taunts I would have thought. Actually it is borderline lame when compared to something like, oh I dunno, ‘you curry munching fuckwit’ for example.

It’s a bit rich of the Aussies too, the biggest potty mouths in world cricket to start playing the ‘our shit don’t stink’ card because they got a bit of their own back. How they understood what the guy was saying is beyond me anyway, even if he was speaking English. I have trouble making out what the guy down at my local dairy says when he’s asking for my money and that’s even after I’ve read the price tag! Those crafty Indians got their own back though after throwing a tanty and having the West Indian umpire kicked out of the next game. Probably because he was black.

What gets on my moobs though, aside from some prick at working leaving crusty tomato coloured jizz all over the shared toastie maker, is what I like to call reverse racism.

Actually I suspect it's the same bastard who left the sweaty bum crack poo stain on the toilet seat, that I couldn’t help but notice as I made my way to the men’s after deciding against toasted sammies for lunch. It’s all class at my work I tell you. But then I shouldn’t really be surprised by such things, at least not since the day I noticed the regular appearance of an unfeasibly large number of manpubes in the hand basins every morning. I swear someone is washing their chopper in the sinks. Reminds me of a place I used to work where the Indian / Pakistani / Sri Lankian guys would wash their hands before taking a whizz, but not after. Nice one fellas. Why don’t I just hold it for you whilst you pee – that way you don’t have to waste time rinsing and I don’t have to worry about door handles?

Reverse racism is when one side plays the racism card when it affects them but gets away with pulling the same shit when it doesn’t. Some Maori are great at this. Like the Iwi in Greymouth who decided to hack down the town’s war memorials at the very sociable time of 6am in the morning and dump them out the back of some farm in the wops. They had good reason mind you; they wanted to make room for a shop.

The town is understandably pissed and so should everyone, regardless of colour, who had family members serve and die in any armed conflict overseas. You can bet if I chopped down a tribal anything on my property I would have a Hikoi of large, spectacularly tattooed individuals on my doorstep quicker that you could say “you cheeky bloody pakeha”.

And yet it doesn’t work the other way? Must be because I’m black.