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Yesterday, I went to the city to view apartments. I parked my car near East 47th Street. An old white woman came to me telling me to slide down the window of my car. She started talking,
"Please don't park here. Since poor Chinese came to this area, I don't have parking spaces. This is a rich neighborhood, park somewhere else." She said she lives in the penthouse of an apartment in front of where I was trying to park. She said she owns a Bentley.
I told her,
"I am not poor. I am not Chinese either. What is your problem?"
She said, "Then what are you? Phillipino?"
"No, Korean, and I was born here.
"Oh, you are worse. Are you North Korean?"
I was speechless. I told her to educate herself so she could stop asking that stupid question. I literally wanted to punch her until she gets down on her knees and apologize, but I couldn't. I yelled at her "You don't want me to park here because I'm an Asian???"
Then she kept on saying that she was born and raised in the city and this is her country. She wanted Asians to leave the country, especially from Midtown East area where she lives. I was arguing with her about 15 minutes and realized that I was wasting my time with this ignorant [person]. I told her,
"You know what? You are gonna die very soon. Nobody will care about what you think. Moderator cut: Inappropriate language" And I left.
I know I could let it go but I was so upset and angry.
I see a lot of old white folks in Midtown East and Upper East Side area. I know most of them are rich people but is this how all white people who grw up in the city think about Asians in the area?
You'll encounter racists in all walks of life, including Manhattan, but it's relatively rare (or at least in my case). I live in midtown east (tudor city to be exact - 4 blocks from where you were) and I'm Asian. It's a great neighborhood (though being close to the UN can be a pain in the rear at times). There are a number of older people in the area due to rent controlled apartments.
It can be a friendly neighborhood, but having a dog helps. Before I got my dog, I didn't really chat with people in the area. When I did get a dog, you can't help but chat with other people (especially when your dog goes to sniff another dog's rear - LOL).
It's an unfortunate situation you went through from a clearly disturbed individual. Parking in midtown east is a pain (especially between 3rd ave-1st ave) because embassy cars take up a lot of the spaces in the area (and some of those drivers are truly annoying).
Don't base your opinion on your experience with just one individual. Manhattan is great, though pricey.
Yesterday, I went to the city to view apartments. I parked my car near East 47th Street. An old white woman came to me telling me to slide down the window of my car. She started talking,
"Please don't park here. Since poor Chinese came to this area, I don't have parking spaces. This is a rich neighborhood, park somewhere else." She said she lives in the penthouse of an apartment in front of where I was trying to park. She said she owns a Bentley.
I told her,
"I am not poor. I am not Chinese either. What is your problem?"
She said, "Then what are you? Phillipino?"
"No, Korean, and I was born here.
"Oh, you are worse. Are you North Korean?"
I was speechless. I told her to educate herself so she could stop asking that stupid question. I literally wanted to punch her until she gets down on her knees and apologize, but I couldn't. I yelled at her "You don't want me to park here because I'm an Asian???"
Then she kept on saying that she was born and raised in the city and this is her country. She wanted Asians to leave the country, especially from Midtown East area where she lives. I was arguing with her about 15 minutes and realized that I was wasting my time with this ignorant [person]. I told her,
"You know what? You are gonna die very soon. Nobody will care about what you think. Moderator cut: Inappropriate language" And I left.
I know I could let it go but I was so upset and angry.
I see a lot of old white folks in Midtown East and Upper East Side area. I know most of them are rich people but is this how all white people who grw up in the city think about Asians in the area?
This lady was probably racist her whole life but the thing with older people I've noticed is that they reach a certain point in their life where they stop giving a f***. This is me love me or hate me...
BTW you shouldn't let that experience affect your view of the entire area. I'm sure most people keep to themselves and are decent.
Don't worry about that lady. Chances are she wasn't having a good day.
My "Asians are foreigners and need to go back to your own country moment" came when I was riding the subway 20 years ago one evening, a woman took out a cigarette to smoke. I told her politely that smoking isn't allowed on the trains, could you put that out? Well, the woman gave me a really dirty look and said, who are you to talk to me [perceiving me as a foreigner who had no right to tell her anything]. I ignored her snide tone and firmly said again, "No smoking is allowed on trains" and stared hard her to show that I meant business.
The woman looked at me with an angry gaze and very grudgingly extinguished her cigarette. She said, "Why don't you go back to your own country?" I told her, "I'm from California, and I have every right to be here. " I am a 2nd generation Chinese-American.
She said, "Well, why don't you go back to California?" I said, "I live here now and I have every right to be here."
By now she had no rational answer, since I had a ready reply for her, but she was upset that I deprived her of her nicotine enjoyment. She said, "**** you!"
And I replied, "**** you too!" And next, figuring if she was going to peg me as the unwelcome foreigner,
I also added the famous epithet - in 1) Mandarin, 2) Cantonese, 3) Taiwanese and 4) Spanish! Her stop came up and she got off.
Not really an appropriate behavior, but a great guilty pleasure to snap back at folks who give you grief. In retrospect, I think the woman in question was just tired after a long hard day on the job and just wanted to unwind, but I felt I was correct on insisting that she not do it in the train.
If she has a Bentley and she lives in a rich neighborhood. Wouldn't she have private parking in a garage. Wouldn't her building have parking, with valet service. I guess she's not so rich.
Yesterday, I went to the city to view apartments. I parked my car near East 47th Street. An old white woman came to me telling me to slide down the window of my car. She started talking,
"Please don't park here. Since poor Chinese came to this area, I don't have parking spaces. This is a rich neighborhood, park somewhere else." She said she lives in the penthouse of an apartment in front of where I was trying to park. She said she owns a Bentley.
I told her,
"I am not poor. I am not Chinese either. What is your problem?"
She said, "Then what are you? Phillipino?"
"No, Korean, and I was born here.
"Oh, you are worse. Are you North Korean?"
I was speechless. I told her to educate herself so she could stop asking that stupid question. I literally wanted to punch her until she gets down on her knees and apologize, but I couldn't. I yelled at her "You don't want me to park here because I'm an Asian???"
Then she kept on saying that she was born and raised in the city and this is her country. She wanted Asians to leave the country, especially from Midtown East area where she lives. I was arguing with her about 15 minutes and realized that I was wasting my time with this ignorant [person]. I told her,
"You know what? You are gonna die very soon. Nobody will care about what you think. Moderator cut: Inappropriate language" And I left.
I know I could let it go but I was so upset and angry.
I see a lot of old white folks in Midtown East and Upper East Side area. I know most of them are rich people but is this how all white people who grw up in the city think about Asians in the area?
She's just a random nut-job who thinks that no one's going to bash her face in for what she says because she's old. It's not typical, don't worry about it. NYC has crazy peeps just like any place else, it's just that with the city being so dense it will feel like you run into them more often than usual. Most people who say things like that in public are off their medication and mentally unstable and don't represent the general population. Most NYer's don't care what your ethnicity is, as long as you're a good, hardworking person they'll be glad to buy you a beer.
She sounded more like a senile/lunatic, rather than a racist.
But, then, as Henry Kissinger said, "sometimes a paranoid can REALLY have enemies."
Henry Kissinger was also asked whether he though Nixon was an anti-Semite (because of his anti-Semitic rantings on the Watergate tapes). Kissinger replied: "I don't think he was anti-Semitic or a racist. I think he just hated EVERYONE."
Sounds like the OP encountered someone with a mental illness, there's plenty of mentally ill people wandering the streets of NYC. Either that or they're having a really bad day and just snapped at the slightest thing that sets them off (which may be caused by chronic stress)
Well dressed or not plenty of people on meds, suffering from some form of tourettes and varying levels of mentally instability out there. It's not always the homeless guy ranting and raving on street corners who smells like urine. Sometimes it's a normal looking person sitting beside you on the subway. Kind of sad.
There's really not much public assistance or facilities to house for the mentally ill, so they're left to roam the streets. The ones with money aren't on sleeping on the street or wallowing in their own filth, but they still harass people. Generally the more money a crazy person has they're sometimes regarded as "eccentric" instead of "mentally ill", but I don't see the difference.
I've had things like that happen to me and people I know. The worst I heard was from one of my co-workers who ran into a nut-job anti-semite in an elevator on the way to a client's office. The second she saw the Star of David around his neck she went into a tirade.. Total bat**** crazy tirade ranging from "you jews are disgusting, I only wish Hitler finished the job." to "I know you jews are listening in to my phone calls, putting poison in my food, moving my furniture when I'm not at home," etc. etc. etc.. The person got off the elevator on the same floor and turned out to be an employee of our client. My boss had a word with the nut-case's boss and the said nut-case was fired. Three cheers for the good guys...
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