I’ve heard the phrase ‘post-race’ bandied around on the telly over the past week. This ‘post-race’ society is meant to be the ‘Promised Land’, the aftermath to all the outdated and now defeated ideologies of racism throughout the world. It’s a nice thought isn’t it? I saw one black American political commentator the morning after the election almost in joyful tears at the prospect that:
“No longer will my children have to take a basketball player or a rap star as their black role-model…now we have a black man with real substance for our children to look up to.”
I have to admit I was taken in for a few minutes; I got that warm feeling in my stomach at the thought that Obama’s victory had signalled such a watershed moment. I smiled and sat back on my couch and took a sip of ‘post-race’ coffee. What a beautiful world it was in that moment.
I half-expected that if I switched over to another news channel I would be greeted by unprecedented news like: “ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS AGREE TO DISAGREE – GAZA DISPUTE SETTLED”. My optimism knew no bounds yet I felt in my heart that if I did go ahead and change the channel my ‘post-race’ utopian bubble might be burst by news of an anti-Obama protest by some rednecks or something.
I decided that this dreamlike ‘post-race’ world I now inhabited was simply too fledgling, too fragile to be exposed to reality and so I took the decision to safeguard it by switching to Sky Sports 2 instead.
World Pool Masters seemed innocuous enough. Here I would take in a few ‘racks’ of high quality 9-ball all the while savouring each sip of coffee I took in this brave new world. The match was between a Finnish player (I forget his name) and a Taiwanese player, Ko Pin-Yi.
Mere moments after the first break-off was taken by the Taiwanese player, my ‘post-race’ dream began being comprehensively deconstructed by the commentating duo. One was English the other American and whilst their comments were certainly in no way overtly racist; what they displayed were classic racial prejudices, the kind that people do not even realise they are displaying; the “harmless” kind.
After Pin-Yi proceeded to knock in a few balls and impress the commentators they seemed to realise that this ‘little’ Taiwanese guy might just be as competent at this majestic sport as the mighty Americans or Brits, not only that but he might just be as much of a human as ‘us’ too!
“I’ve seen him in interviews you know and let me tell ya; he makes a real solid attempt at speaking English…”
My gosh, so you’re saying that this Taiwanese guy can actually play pool as good as us and speak another language?
“…and he’s actually very congenial.”
And he’s a nice guy? No way! How can this be; is he a robot ‘commie’ spy or something? Then the English guy replies;
“Indeed. He’s certainly miles better at speaking English than any of us are at speaking Taiwanese.”
Seeing as though the vast majority of Taiwan speaks Standard Mandarin and not Taiwanese; I’m not sure how valid this short-sighted comment was.
The game progresses and after taking an early lead, Pin-Yi drops off a little and allows his Finnish counterpart back into the match; seemingly a chink in the robot’s armour, leading our dynamic duo to come up with some suitably generic excuses for his drop in performance.
“Well it must be difficult for someone like Ko Pin-Yi to come to a place like Vegas and not be put off or over-awed what with all the bright buildings and hotels…it can be quite surreal if you’re not used to it.”
Do they imagine Pin-Yi comes from one of the tiny settlements in ‘Apocalypse Now’? Do they not think that Taiwan has “bright buildings and hotels” of its own? Taipei is one of the major global cities in production of high technology thanks to its position as the capital of the Republic of China so I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t find tall buildings “surreal”.
The match carried on, with my ‘post-race’ coffee getting cooler in my hands with each passing rack. At the beginning of the 8th rack the English commentator blurts:
“They say the number 8 is lucky for the Chinese…will it be lucky for the Taiwanese?”
A typically ill-informed generalisation that the people of the ‘Orient’ (Which doesn’t actually exist – it’s a Western concept) are uniform; when actually the Taiwanese most likely have their own identity and a whole other set of beliefs and superstitions to mainland Chinese.
The real gem came as the match was drawing to a close with the Taiwanese player closing in on victory.
“If Pin-Yi wins this tournament it will be splashed over the front of all the Taiwanese newspapers.”
Now, to actually believe that Taiwan has no news more worthy of a front page splash than someone winning a pool tournament is blinkered idiocy beyond comprehension. The American commentator who came out with this probably imagined Taiwan to be a tiny little rural village somewhere in the Chinese countryside; just waiting for a hero to put them on the map. It isn’t; it’s a developed country with its own news and issues and I’m supremely confident that if Ko Pin-Yi were to win such a tournament it would be usurped by the news that Taiwan’s former president Chen Shui-bian has been arrested on corruption charges. This was the final straw and my ‘post-race’ coffee had long since gone cold so I switched over to the haven of the music channels.
After which I soon realised that what Obama’s victory had achieved was not vanquish racism at all, there was no such thing as a ‘post-race’ society, certainly not in reality anyway, and prejudice would always exist as long as people have the capacity for autonomous (however moronic) thought. Racist thought is just an inherently unfortunate but no less unavoidable product of growing up in world segregated by nation states.
Still, that little Taiwanese guy can’t half play pool.
