Ignorance or Racism?

I am probably going to get a lot of hate for speaking up on this. I have stood up with a lot of claptrap before, and guess what, it’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Before I go into this upsetting issue let me say I am not in any shape or form attacking people I am going to write about in this short rant or any group of people as some might feel after my diatribe against mind-numbing racism and/or ignorance my friends and I came face to face with on our university campus today.

It’s a beautiful Wednesday afternoon, just after 5pm and outside the lecture halls we don’t see a lot of students...as we do every day. John reminds me most students leave the university campus around 3pm, but we see groups of two and three or more students scattered around the park-like area in front of R2(one of the lecture halls). As we are about to walk down the stairs three boys go past us, and one of them is waving at us. I look on my left at John, and he gives me that “I don't know them” look. On my right, David is shrugging his shoulders and in the interest of being a nice guy, I wave back with a smile. At this moment they had gone a mile in front of us but the three of them are still turning their heads back at us. Just as I wave back, they look at one another and back at us with judgmental looks, then they burst out laughing. Ouch!

You know that embarrassing moment when you pull doors that are built to be pushed and then you think no one noticed then you hear giggles behind you, and you know someone has seen you. That’s was how I felt, sheepish. We continue to walk casually as if nothing happened. "Saat kaç?" one of them shouts at us! Again I look at David and John and they are both wearing peevish frowns. There is momentary silence and David, the sturdy and muscular one among the three of us charges forward in anger shouting back at the guy who asked us the question. Now for those of you not living in Turkey, let me take you out of the fog of confusion and decode this for you. Get a couch, or anything to get comfortable, I am about to take you on a roller coaster. A few months ago, two black African students were harassed by some airheaded men on the streets of Istanbul in one of the many shameful incidences perpetuated by uneducated, uncivilized and uncouth people. Apparently, they were asked some crazy questions including the one we got asked today, "Saat kaç?" Which translates to "What is the time?" in English. You are now making faces and whispering "So, what's wrong with that? They probably wanted to know the time". Like hell they did!

Walk down a roadside in Istanbul and you are bound to bump into at least one African or black man selling watches. Of course, there are dozens of other street vendors of other races selling watches, but typical of ignorant people they assume any black person anywhere in Turkey sells watches. Please don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with people who sell watches and make a living out of it, but there is everything wrong with people presuming I am something I am not, especially when it's scornfully.

And so when I heard this question, my jaws dropped and my mind literally went numb. I stood still, watching David confront the three boys all by himself. In a split of a second I was overcome by so much anger I joined David in his heated change of words with the guy who asked us the question. I don't know about you, but if I am stuck in intense and impassioned subjects my Turkish goes AWOL. Like where does Turkish go when you need it the most? So I decide to use English instead, which was dumb because I was basically talking to my hand...none of them spoke English! But did it stop me? Hell No! I went on to give him a lecture I always regret not giving to people who sometimes make racist remarks in buses or in Çarşı (My no-go to zone in Adana), or anywhere.
The guy who asked us the question was too proud to see anything wrong with what he said, even spinning us the story of his phone being out of battery. Sure we believed him because we are naive. His friends are trying to pull him away from David who is getting closer and closer to him, to prevent what was an inevitable fight. I am getting even more annoyed as his other two friends are suppressing a giggle with difficulty. What was exasperating to us was amusing to them.
We can’t take it anymore and we are ready to duke it out, teach our bigot a lesson or two. After all, violence is the only language people like them understand. But again we looked no better than them by stooping so low and I am thinking to myself as I type this: maybe there were other better ways to deal with the issue besides fighting, but hey!

"Shut up! How dare you?" I snarl as if they can understand me! At this moment, John is pulling David away from throwing himself on this guy who won't stop uttering all the racists’ slurs, going as far as calling us "Zenci", another one of the names I resent a great deal. Call me anything but Zenci...and don't even try to defend the meaning of the word that makes every black person feel like a second class human being because you don't have to be a genius to know it has a demeaning feel to it among a huge negative baggage that it carries. His other friend tries to reason with me, and this time he is earnest, no more silly laughs. "Wait look! No stupid! No stupid... I make joke" he is trying to speak English. The causer of the whole confusion is pulled away from us by his second friend as they yell at their other friend talking to us to leave. John had mollified David and I begin to feel less emotion as we watch them walk away in another direction.


 This is my tweet in 2016 after another racist episode.



I have watched unfortunate incidents of racism on television and on the internet, I read about it but not once did it cross my mind that it would happen to me one day. If you are black, in Turkey, and a stranger has never shouted "Zenci" to you as you mind your business, you are blessed! I always take these racists comments with a pinch of salt, but today it reached a boiling point.

As we walk to the bus stop to catch a bus back to the residence halls, only John is talking. I am not listening to him and I doubt David is either. "You shouldn't let them get to you guys" It’s John trying to dissolve what just happened into a minor issue. He is always like this. I wish I had John's heart. A positive young man who always sees the glass as half full. But there are only so many John's in this world. Even after walking a distance from R2 David and I are still not talking, we are listening to John go on about how we are granting "uneducated people" power over us by giving them the reaction they wanted and ... I don't let him finish, "That’s the point, I have been called horrible names in Çarşı (A very crowded market place somewhere in the city) by ignorant people and I kept my cool, but never in the university. I expect to interact with literate civil people on campus and I can't sit back and watch them make us feel bad for being black." I shoot back. David is nodding, he agrees with me, obviously still unsettled by what just happened. His residence hall is at the center of Adana whereas John and I are just a few minutes away from campus by bus. We can’t let David go alone in this state so we agree that we do something to rid our minds of the tension.


 Poor burgers! I directed all the pain on them.



Half an hour later and we are eating a lot of junk in a fast food somewhere in the city. We are in a better state and we talk, laugh about lectures and watch beautiful Turkish girls go in and out of the restaurant from the balcony where we are seated.

In a country where a lot of people don't take claims of racism seriously, where most people will try to squash the weightiness of racism with petty phrases like "We don’t have that here, because we are X and Y" or "You can only find that in country A or B.", it is about time we have a dialogue about what is a far paralyzing concept than we want to believe yet still remains a taboo talk among us. Am I getting racism and ignorance mixed up? I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is education, not just in Turkey, could be the answer to all these daftness.
Pause…