After travelling throughout the Balkans, I couldn’t help but notice, except for other tourists, there was a lack of people who looked like me: East Asians. This is best characterized by when my friends and I could not find a single, non-pizza, non-pasta, non-slab of meat, ethnic restaurant in all of Durres, Albania, a city of over 153,000 people. Many people, more so in smaller places, were foreign to the idea of visitors and especially, an Asian-American visitor. I was often met with forms of casual racism that comes from ignorance. However, at the same time, I was welcomed by people as well. I was whiplashed by these two conflicting points of information, simultaneously welcomed and invited into people’s lives, yet so clearly “othered” because of my background.
I was recently introduced to the term, “everyday racism” as a replacement for the term, microaggression, as the term microaggression diminishes the impacts of these subtle comments. However, to me, the stereotyping I experienced in the Balkans were microaggressions. They were miniscule, not intended with harm, and ignorant. They were not meant to be hateful. This starkly contrasts what I typically find in the U.S. where throughout middle school, as well as sporadically afterwards, people would look at me differently, think I would have COVID, ask me to do their math homework, etc. In the Balkans, I would mainly get heckled at with phrases such as, “Where you from? Japan? China?”, “Konichiwa!”, “Ni Hao”, or “China?” This would happen quite frequently, at least once a day, and over time it became too exhausting to take these personally. To me, I took these forms of microaggressions to be coming from a place of ignorance and potentially lack of exposure to diverse cultures and peoples. It was often kids or adults working for the tourism industry, who would yell such phrases at me, in an effort to connect with me in some way.
When I was walking up a hill in Mostar, Bosnia, I even had a kid yell “Ching Chong!” at me, before his brother profusely apologized to me for his younger siblings comments, which made me laugh. The older brother, who spoke much better English, understood the problem with his younger brother’s comments and told him to stop, and apologize to me. I don’t see a difference in the internal hatred or disdain of Asian people between the two siblings. Instead, I see the younger sibling being exposed to less diversity, purely because of his age, something he can’t control.
I think generally, the fewer visitors there are to a place and the less ethnic minorities there are, the more fascinated they are to people who are different, such as Americans or Asians. This is perfectly exemplified when my friends and I got swarmed by at least 15 Kosovar school children.
We were sitting by a river in Prizren, Kosovo, when a kid walked up to us, with not much English, and asked us three questions: “Do you like Donald Trump? Israel or Palestine? And what is your religion?” I know, what a collection of three questions. He then left us before returning with 15 of his other friends. I then asked one of his friends who spoke much better English, why so many people were talking to us Americans, and why they asked such politically charged questions. Her response was that they don’t see many Americans, they just want to practice their English, and that they just want to connect with us.
This supports my theory on exposure. I really think these kids are just looking to connect with you. They wanted to know if I was from China or Japan and to talk with an Asian person, someone they typically don’t see around. There was no intended harm in any of the racist statements people made. This does not prevent their words having an impact though. It totally perpetuates sinicized stereotypes and a fetishization of Asians as an “exotic other”. I can totally understand how someone else with similar experiences could be hurt if someone stereotyped and assumed their race and background.
This experience provided nuance to our often black and white definition of racism. Oftentimes, casual racism comes from a simple lack of exposure to other ethnicities, a desire to connect socially despite not always knowing western norms of respectful ways to do so. But of course, they don’t! They did not grow up in the U.S. like most of us have. I have empathy for the young children and teenagers that have heckled me. After all, these kids did not control where they were born and which set of cultural norms they were taught in. Of course, I’m not here to support any sort of casual racism. Instead, I hope to provide some reasoning, background, and understanding to where these comments come from.
Lastly, I want to end off by saying that despite these difficulties, there were so many moments where I was treated not like another group but as a friend. When I was in Prishtina, my friends and I ended up at a medical school graduation party. Not once was my race brought up by our new friends, whom we danced, drank, and partied with. When I was in Tirana, Albania, my race was not brought up much either. I talked politics with someone who grew up there, brought in my Asian – American identity and connected Asian culture to some parts of Albanian culture, especially with the importance of family, and the dependence on family. When in Belgrade, I literally had food at a dumpling house and spoke Chinese with the restaurant owner. There are some Asian minorities in the Balkans, and are not totally European, obviously. When I was in Sarajevo, I had a conversation with a young student about what it was like living there while being smushed into a train. Despite some of my experiences with microaggressions in the region, people seemed genuinely happy that people were visiting their country and were welcoming to me. Something I cannot say about many places in Western Europe, a region that has significant numbers of ethnic minorities.
