cloak of invisibility

more rightly, the "caucasian cloak of invisibility".

yesterday morning, i went to chinatown for salmon. my supermarket's fish is woeful and the quality at the new nearby fish store is terrible too. ridiculous how difficult it is to buy decent fish at decent prices in one of the country's premier fishing regions. ack. irrelevant rant.

anyway...

this was not my usual store. in hindsight, i realize the customer base in the other is much more diverse. this one is down a side street and i was the only round eye in the place.

there didn't seem to be a line at the fish counter and just one guy was doing service. i stand behind a chinese woman. he nets, bludgeons, guts, scales and bags her fish in a trice.

another chinese woman basically cuts ahead of me and also wants a live tilapia. he busies himself with her fish while she scuttles off someplace for something of sudden and dire importance. now another woman starts ordering, and is trying to convince him to give over the just killed fish. all the conversation is in chinese and it sounds like arguing but who knows. previous woman returns, gets her fish and so now this 2nd interloper has cut ahead of me.

a man stands next to me. while the monger is killing yet another tilapia, his back is turned and this guy is trying to get his attention. i look at him. "i'm next." he says something in chinese. fish guy turns around and cutter #3 is yammering for service. again i say it, "i'm next." the fish guy starts to ignore me and serve the "line" cutter. very loudly i repeat it. finally the fish guy makes eye contact -- and suddenly discovers he can speak english.

i say, "salmon, please." in a mincing whisper, chinese guy next to me imitates me!! i bang his shoulder with my index finger. "do you have a problem with me?" he says something else, very softly, in chinese. i can only imagine. at last i got my fish. i was furious.

i shop in chinatown alot. many many times, old chinese ladies have cut in front of me to pay. they're never buying much, so it hardly seems worth the hassle of confronting them. in fact last week, a woman tried to pull this and the cashier (i think an owner -- i've been going there long time) waved her off and indicated i was first. i was impressed and kinda laughed, but i know the old woman was very angry, and carried on the whole time i was being rung up.

i always just took it as rudeness. it wasn't until yesterday i realized it is racism. in its purest form. i was dumbstruck. this has never happened to me in any bodega i've shopped in anyplace i've ever lived. customers and proprietors always seem equally polite and pleasant. my money is as green as juan's, right? they'd like me to spend money there again, right? maybe they mock the gringa when i leave. who knows. yet these chinese people took their disdain so pridefully that i was invisible.

36 hours later, i'm still amazed.

i'm a white woman, living in a mostly white country. a very rainy night, many years ago, i had a scary scrape outside of baton rouge with some local blacks waving bats at my car. for certain, they were not in need of a ninth to play. their actions were hardly passive, like those of the chinese, who literally did not see me.

all these years of not recognizing it *as* bigotry only underscores what a life of cultural privilege i've led.