Hi. As a POC who lived through NZ in the 90s, I've got a few words (giant tirade) on dealing with racism, with regards to "give nothing to racism". 1/n

(A caveat: I'm a Hong Kong born male from a middle class family who arrived in the 90s. It's very specific set of experience that doesn't represent the experience of many others.)

1. "Give nothing to racism" as intepreted as "confront racism at every opportunity" is not how POC live. We gotta get jobs. We gotta get lunch. We gotta get on the bus. If we stopped to confront everyone who looked at us funny, we'd never get to live *our* lives.

2. That's not an invitation for people to use their white privilge to be our saviours. I'm saying look closer. Speaking for my cohort (well, for me), race plays a role in how we comport ourselves, how we talk, how we walk.

Sometimes it's meeting a new person and we're conveying: hey man it's cool, I'm just a human being you don't need to get weird.

Sometimes it's seeing some drunks and conveying: Keep moving buddy, I'm not the easy target you're looking for.

The alarm bells probably went off before the first word was uttered, and all the behavioural mechanisms to manage the situation would've kicked in. But you probably wouldn't see it, or notice that work has been done - because the whole point is to defuse and disarm.

3. But is that... good? The underlying assumption of defuse-disarm (aka make white people feel comfortable) is that once they get to know us, they'll like us. Or at least like us more than their preconceptions about "what Asians are like", which will erode those prejudices.

The problem is that this only carves out a narrow space - for people who speak and act sufficiently white. So no, it's not enough.

But it's also the lived experience of my cohort. It's very much a real tool for changing people's behaviour. Yet this gets such little space.

4. Here is the ugly truth about confrontation: it is a zero sum game of status, someone has to lose... and that's why it is exciting and motivating as a strategy.

It's not that confrontation is inherently bad. Sometimes, a win-win strategy won't not work. Sometimes, you *want* people to lose. But it should be a deliberate choice of the right tool for the right situation: confrontation shouldn't be the first or only tool that you reach for.

5. The other major problem: a failure to read the power dynamics.

Just because they're being racist doesn't mean they're more powerful than you. When you (high-income/university-educated/well-travelled) confront a small shopkeeper who is a bit racist because...

...they've never had any real exposure to other cultures, *you* are the one in an unequivocal position of power. If you confront them in a way meant to belittle them, it will feel to them - and to the people around them - like you're punching down. And it would be true.

It's not that you're the bad guy, it's that you can't assume and act as if you're the underdog all the time. Because behaviours that are heroic for the underdog is bullying when you're the powerful one.

Read the room.

Maybe just give a 10 minute chit-chat with some reassuring body language to racism, if you can spare the time and the emotion energy.