Is this racist?

[ToastedWaffle]

Okay.... so my ex was over at my house tonight to see our kids (he often does this).

Eldest DC was brushing their teeth whilst the same time trying to ask my ex a question.

Because you couldn't make out the words DC was saying with the toothbrush in their mouth, ex then proceeds to imitate the 'sound' saying something like "wah sah wah ha insert random sound here Are you Chinese or something?"

I've just had my arse handed to me by my ex for pointing out it was casually racist and could he not say things like that.

He has kicked up a massive stink which involved shouting, swearing, in which I asked him to leave. Still, the kids overheard him as he was being deliberately loud in shouting at me.

I'm sat here confused as hell.

He was making Chinese sounds. Wah, sa, ha are in fact words in Chinese. And those are exactly the sounds the OP wrote down. I’m not in the least bit deluded. You’re just not happy it doesn’t fit your narrative.

I think I've been respectful, patient and measured in my posts to you. I haven't been rude, insulted you or name called, I've politely said I don't think it's productive to continue speaking to you - after politely engaging with you in multiple posts to explain my POV and try to understand yours.

I haven't simply shut down a conversation or silenced someone, I just think that as your attitude is 'giving something a name doesn't mean it will make any difference' and 'privilege is an unnecessary layer' we've reached an impasse where talking further won't be productive.

I'm not shutting you down, you're free (obviously) to post whatever you want to whoever you want. I just don't want to continue engaging when I don't think someone is open to a conversation in good faith.

Sigh. Obviously she means making up random, garbled words that they think sound like Chinese

This. He wasn’t speaking Mandarin.

Thats not quite accurate. One possible translation is wow, sound of wind, frog. Another posted by @AffronttoBS was wow, sand, stir fried prawns. Without having heard the exact intonation and pronunciation cannot do an exact translation.

I wasn’t claiming the OPs ex is bilingual or anything, merely that he did in fact use actual Chinese words. Therefore, he did not mock Chinese by using animal noises or nonsense noises as other posters have suggested in their outrage.

This might be one of the most wilfully disingenuous things I've read on here!

The problem with calling resist at every single little thing, most people are now becoming desensitised to the meaning and starting to ignore it. This is now becoming the modern age boy (if I can say that, of is it sexist 😅) who cried wolf.

To be honest call me what you like, as I hear it so much now online as as way to virtue signal or try win an argument on line I no longer care.

If my ex suddenly had an appreciation for learning other languages, I would think I'd have woken up in some parallel universe.

Learning about other cultures and languages is not high on his list of priorities. He barely makes sense in his own language (English) as it is.

I've politely said I don't think it's productive to continue speaking to you - after politely engaging with you in multiple posts to explain my POV and try to understand yours

Telling someone that someone makes no sense and are not saying things in good faith is rude and not one bit polite however you pretend it to be.

What you must have meant to say was tthatwhat I wrote didn't make sense to YOU. That's very different.

And if you really were as polite as you claim, you would have just said that you thought it better not to respond to me, the 'I don't think you're open to acknowledging truths that you find uncomfortable' was definitely not necessary.

And to be quite honest I'm not sure what words he used. All I grasped was the derogatory tone and monosyllabic sounds that he probably wouldnt have dared to make about for instance, black people.

It didn't make sense to me, no. Perhaps I should have phrased it like that, yes.

I don't think I've been rude all things considered, at all.

I stand by the fact you aren't open to hearing difficult truths. That's how you come across. To me.

To be honest call me what you like, as I hear it so much now online as as way to virtue signal or try win an argument on line I no longer care.

To be honest no one needs your permission. If someone says something racist, someone else will likely (and rightfully) call them out.

@vivainsomnia

What you must have meant to say was tthatwhat I wrote didn't make sense to YOU. That's very different.

No, it didn't make sense, period.

Still digging that hole bigger.....

Wouldnt bother me.

@vivainsomnia my ex argues the same way you do, it's invariably never in good faith.

You are of course welcome retract any of the facts you presented in your OP and replace them with alternative facts that better suit your preferred narrative, since the voting is not overwhelmingly in your favour. However, to do so calls into question your honesty and integrity as a reliable witness to the situation you related in your OP.

You are of course welcome retract any of the facts you presented in your OP and replace them with alternative facts that better suit your preferred narrative, since the voting is not overwhelmingly in your favour. However, to do so calls into question your honesty and integrity as a reliable witness to the situation you related in your OP.

Well since made up sounds isn't my mother tongue it would be hard to recall word for word, or sound for sound exactly the rubbish that came out of his mouth. I recognise racism when I hear it though.

@Discovereads

You are of course welcome retract any of the facts you presented in your OP and replace them with alternative facts that better suit your preferred narrative, since the voting is not overwhelmingly in your favour. However, to do so calls into question your honesty and integrity as a reliable witness to the situation you related in your OP.

Did you really think OP was doing a forensic, verbatim transcription of his racist impressions?

You are the gift that keeps on giving 😂

You are an unreliable narrator of the precise sounds the non mandarin or Cantonese speaker chose to mock with. 😂

Next time i should record my exes not so funny outbursts. Noted.

Yes since it was a mock impersonation and I dont usually speak like that nor interact with people who speak like that so sorry if i didn't catch all of it. I do understand what an English person impersonating a chinese person sounds like though. Sounds like racism.

Yes it was racist and his reaction to you was bizarre, similar to some of the reactions here. Racism doesn't exist on MN 😒

I nice reminder of why he's your ex.

"He was making Chinese sounds. Wah, sa, ha are in fact words in Chinese. And those are exactly the sounds the OP wrote down. I’m not in the least bit deluded. You’re just not happy it doesn’t fit your narrative."

This is such a stretch.
The OP confirmed, back on page 1, that her ex can't speak Mandarin (or Cantonese or presumably any other Chinese dialect) That he may have stumbled inadvertently on random Chinese words doesn't make it okay or somehow not racist.

@Discovereads I think the narrative you might be missing here is the perspective of the kid that gets bullied with those noises. That probably doesn’t make much sense, so let’s imagine a situation.

A dad is brushing their kid’s teeth, kid makes funny noises, dad says, “haha are you Chinese!” If it never goes further than that, people can brush it off as a funny comment.

However, now, in that kid’s head, especially if they don’t have a diverse friend group/school, Chinese = funny noises. So they go up to a kid they think looks Chinese and make funny noises and go “that’s how you talk!” Not necessarily out of any malice, but because that’s what the adults around them say. How do you think the child who has that directed at them will feel? From ds’s experience, it’s a combination of ignorance like that and proper intentional racism (which makes the “mild” stuff seem worse) which led to him telling me he wanted to die. I don’t think the outrage is the bad thing here.

Anyway, the point of my first post was that the men who thought they were just making the same “funny noises” at my husband were probably quite surprised to get pulled in for a stern chat with the police and a possible caution. But that was the consequence of their actions. If people don’t teach their kids what’s acceptable to say and what’s not acceptable to say then they’ll learn by consequences in the real world which may not be as nice for them.

@Discovereads

However, to do so calls into question your honesty and integrity as a reliable witness to the situation you related in your OP.

You're posting on Mumsnet mate, not cross examining a witness in a murder trial. What an unbelievably pompous post!

Quite. In Chinese each syllable is a unit that contains meaning so it’s not surprising that if you come out with random syllables that sound vaguely Chinese they will have potential meaning. As far as the ex goes, he was indeed making nonsense noises as there was no intention to communicate beyond literally making the point he couldn’t understand.