AMEN TO THAT ALYB23!!!!!!
I definately think that the amount of time that you spend here has a lot to do with how you perceive the racism here. You are the first person that I have heard on one of these sites express the same sentiment that I feel and I thank you for being honest about your experiences and your feelings even though they may not be popular. I have been here for about a year and I feel the same way as you do that BA is extremely racist and provincial especially when you consider that it is a huge city and very much tied into the rest of the world. You always hear Portenos talking about how much BA is like Europe and, having been to Europe, I feel that there is clearly a lack of sophistication among the people here that would seem to negate that comparison. I have had a variety of things happen to me personally here that have never happened to me with the same frequency anywhere else in the world.
For example, just a few months ago I was living in a building in Palermo. I would always smile and say hello to my doorman and he would never return the greeting. Every once in a while he might grunt or something but he clearly didn't seem to approve of my being there. I attempted to go out on the roof once and take a look at the city. His apartment was on the top floor and he saw me trying to go to the roof and he started screaming, "You can't go there because of security, blah, blah, blah. Even though he was acting like an idiot I didn't make a fuss and turned around and went back to my aparrtment. The next day I came down to leave my place and he was standing there. I smiled (like an idiot) and he WOULDN'T EVEN OPEN THE DOOR. I was furious. He sat there reading his paper while I got my key out and did it myself. About a week later I tipped my maid 50 pesos for the holidays. He must have found out about it because the day after I did it he was all smiles. All of the sudden I existed and he wanted to know all about me and have a chat. I told him that I was from the U.S. and he told me, "Oh I thought that you were Brazilian but you come from a strong country." I was like yeah whatever. If you think that you're getting a tip you are dreaming.
I remember being in Asia de Cuba and meeting this Argentine girl. We talked for a while and she assumed that I would be a great dancer just because I was black. This actually didn't bother me (because I am a good dancer) but I do think that this is a form of stereotyping and racism. What did bother me was when I asked her to go out in the future and she started asking me about my friends. I remember thinking "what do my friends have to do with us going out." She was asking me what kind of friends did I have. I started to think and began extolling the qualities of my friends (personalities, temperament, etc.) She asked, "Well do you always hang around with Black guys." It kind of caught me off gaurd because I really had never thought of whether or not I hang out with too many black people or not. In fact, I was there at the club that night with a bunch of Europeans that she saw me sitting with. It turned out that she was worried about being seen by people that she knew hanging out with a group of dark-skinned people. After hearing that I put as much distance between myself and this girl as I could while still being in the club.
Another time I was in Recoleta and was walking down the street minding my own business when this 30 something year-old lady came out of an apartment next to me with her friend. She saw me as I passed and started saying, "No me gustan los negros." repeatedly and then she and her friend bursted out laughing and disappeared around a corner. It was strange because I didn't even know them and until this day I don't know what that was about.
I have had numerous experiences where the people coming out of my apartment buildings visibly recoiled when they saw me coming and going. I don't think that it was necessarily hatred in every case but it was fear. It was like here comes the dark-skinned guy whose going to come in and murder all of us. The ironic thing is that I am paying at least 3 times more money to be in that apartment than any of them are so clearly an "assaulto" is not necessary.
Then there are the little things, like for instance, I have a friend from Germany who is mixed racially but is dark-skinned. We were in Bar Danzon talking and a group of Portenos next to us started a conversation. They asked where we were from and I said the U.S. and she said Germany. The guy started laughing. He said, "How can you be German. You don't look like any German that I've seen before." She explained that her father was African, blah, blah, blah. He then replied, "Oh so you are African." She said, "No, I am German." They couldn't accept that this girl thought of herself as European as well that she should have because SHE HAD NEVER SEEN AFRICA IN HER LIFE. Can you imagine someone in a club in New York or even Paris or Rome being that ignorant.
Then I started noticing that clerks in stores and restaurants never seem to want to put the change that I recieve in my hand even if I am holding it out waiting. At first I thought that this was a cultural thing but I began to get suspicious about it and started paying attention. It was only happening in most cases to the dark-skinned customers and the people who looked different in the line. One time I was in a convenience store monitoring this phenomenon when it suddenly occurred to me what I was doing and how ridiculous that it was. I thought to myself, "Look at what being in this place has done to you." I can assure you that "change to hand watching" was never a hobby of mine before I came to BA.
At that time I decided to stop internalizing the ignorance of the people here. I decided to stop letting these incidents make me angry and just go ahead and live my life. I realize now that, in a way, the experience of being here and dealing with this has been a gift. I haven't had an opportunity to experience this level of racism at home because, for the most part, the U.S. has progressed beyond that. Being here has afforded me the opportunity to experience first hand how my older relatives would have been treated in previous times and they would not have had the option of going home and escaping it.
