Are you going to say something?
You’re staring at me
Like you’re going to say something
make me feel like nothing,
with your stupid jokes, jibe comments
torrents of abuse, you choose to say
Day after day
And you tell me to move,
Tell me to move,
tell me to move,
Move from your face,
My slant-eyed race
With the masks we wear for protection,
I don’t spread infection
And the contagion’s raging,
Hundreds of thousands have died,
Because China lied
but that’s not my fault
Now you think,
You won’t eat Chink
Food, you’re not in the mood,
You’re hungry to smash our shops and take-aways
Ruin our livelihoods,
Because you think you should,
It’s what we deserve
we’ve a lot of nerve coming here
Now I’m waiting for your attack
For you to smack me down
like Jonathan Mok
on Oxford Street, there you beat,
With split lip, black eye,
Made him cry, ran him back home
To the land of Chink
Well, he’s actually from Singapore,
But that’s the same thing, you think
And our ethnicity isn’t a virus,
This is the true crisis
You call us liars
Genetically engineering a virus
To wipe you all out
With our 5G towers
police state powers
Disappearing anybody who exposes the truth
And because you can’t separate the government from its people,
You’ll only blame us
And you don’t care if we’re
Chinese
Vietmanese
Japanese
Thai
Malayasian
Filipino
Korean,
We all look the same,
So you’ll treat us the same
you’re the true pandemic,
endemic of this fear and hate,
Spreading like a plague
Across the globe,
With your terror and violence
Silence from the majority
So the minority
Have to speak out against this discrimination,
Alienation against us
Looking over our shoulders in fear,
Because the hatred is right here.
Not only in London, but Manc, Brum, where the rage is hum-drum,
You told Mandy Huang to take her fucking virus back home,
You swung at her friend who only wanted the horror
To end.
You call up the school,
You say, Mr Smith, I have a tiff
With Mrs Ting Tong, Mr Ching Chong
Sending their dirty kids to class, total farce,
You’ll have them mix with my precious angels
And this is a joke?
But there’s no smoke without fire
And I’m no liar
Because this happened
In Toronto and New Zealand
And no longer can I sit on the fucking fence
As this isn’t damn anecdotal evidence
And even if it was
That doesn’t make it any fucking better
But I don’t want the hate to fester
I’m no Gandhi, Mother Theresa,
no saint,
Not trying to paint with a black-tar brush
hush anyone I disagree with
no SJW,
Pretending I’m better than anyone else, I’m full of shit,
a big fucking hypocrite
let’s face it,
I’ve been as racist as the racists I’m discussing now
Wow, I’ve said some stupid shit without even knowing it,
Ask my sister explaining to 12-year old me, why I shouldn’t like a Facebook group called
“You want to see my ID? I want to see your passport first,”
There’s worse
After 7/7, I was nervous after seeing Turbans,
I made jokes about watermelon, fried chicken,
Cherry-picking the best jokes
To get a laugh, a pat on a back
God, I was a right ignorant twat
Because I confessed, professed to my ignorance,
That doesn’t make me a better person
And that’s for certain,
Because I said that racist shit
Just to get a rise, and that’s not right,
And for that I apologise,
Cos I’m not trying to gaslight
Or start a fight
Pit us against each other,
Brother against brother,
Because we need to stick together,
Whatever the storm might bring
Apart we can’t win,
But we can’t succumb to this hate,
Maybe it’s too late,
But we need to think about what comes after,
Were we good or bad to each other?
But there’s light at the end of the tunnel
If we help each other up, rather than kicking when we’re down,
And maybe that’s cheesy as fuck
And I should just shut the fuck up
But I need to say this
Because we’re not liars
We didn’t cause this crisis,
and our ethnicity is not a fucking virus.
*Author’s Notes*
In this poem, I discuss everybody’s favourite topic: racism. More specifically, the recent rise of racism against the Chinese and others from Far East Asia as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Big thanks to my friend Fiona for helping me lick this poem into much-needed shape. Racism is obviously a very nuanced topic and I wanted to bring something more to the conversation than another hateful tirade.
