Am I worried about hate crime in light of Brexit and Trump?

There have been many reports about a rise in xenophobic hate crimes both in the UK and US in the last few months - this was highlighted in my last post where my friend Amali described the situation in the city of Bloomington where he works. there is of course a direct correlation between Brexit and Trump's win and this rise of hate crime. I have had someone express a genuine message of concern for my safety in London - with me being an immigrant, of an ethnic minority and openly gay of course. But allow me to address this issue directly to explain why I am not worried for my safety despite the fact that I am of course disturbed by this rise in hate crime that has been reported in the news.

Am I worried about my safety? Actually, no. 

1. Crime has always disproportionately affected the poor.

The most unsafe, most crime-ridden neighbourhoods in the UK have always been where the poor people live -  by the same token the safest neighbourhoods tend to be where the rich people live. During the infamous riots of London in 2011 which made the headlines all over the world, the worst neighbourhoods affected by the rampant rioting and looting were all in poor neighbourhoods like Tottenham, Brixton, Walthamstow, Peckham and Lewisham. Did the poor people make the trip across town to Knightsbridge where they could have tried to loot upmarket stores like Harrods and Harvey Nichols? Ironically, no, they didn't bother at all for a variety of reasons: stores like Harrods spend a lot more money on security and protecting themselves against such cases of civil unrest, unless say a shop on a high street in a poorer neighbourhood like Brixton or Lewisham. Secondly, poor people live in poor neighbourhoods - so they went for the nearest targets: their local shops simply because they were there. It did not occur to them to try to target the shops that served rich people in affluent neighbourhoods like Knightsbridge, Mayfair or Chelsea. Thus whilst I was unnerved by the riots then, it didn't affect my neighbourhood at all as it was an affluent neighbourhood.

As explored in a previous post, how you experience crime, how safe you feel where you live depends pretty much on how rich you are: richer people can afford to live in nicer, safer neighbourhoods where crime rates are far lower. Poorer people have little choice but to live in poorer, unsafe neighbourhoods where crime rates are a lot higher. So regardless of whether the UK voted for Brexit or not or whom the president of the US was, if you lived in a poor neighbourhood, you are far more likely to be a victim of a crime. It's not like these poorer neighbourhoods were crime-free before Trump became president or the UK voted for Brexit - they were pretty dangerous places to live in. Allow me to bring up the murder of Damilola Taylor in 2000 - this was a 10 year old boy who was murdered by a group of teenagers in a Peckham estate in south London. Now whilst the murder of a child under such horrific circumstances is of course horrific, one thing that people tend to avoid bringing up is the fact that Taylor's family were poor and they lived in one of the worst neighbourhoods in London at the time of the murder. Most people reacted this way when they heard about the murder then, "what? A ten year old boy was murdered? How horrible! Where was this? Peckham? Aah that figures." Well, thankfully my wealth ensures that I can always afford to live in much safer neighbourhoods.

2. I've settled into a comfortable (and safe) pattern.

I am quite lucky in that I currently work with very nice people - I recently took a business trip to the city of Liverpool with two of my colleagues and got to know them quite well. My boss has a brother who is gay, so he's extremely gay friendly. I was offered the job by one of the directors because I had worked for him previously and had won his trust. How do I say this without sounding like a total twat - nobody in the company is working class, that just doesn't happen in the world of corporate finance. My colleagues are typically very rich, highly educated, have worked in different countries around the world and gay-friendly. Once in a while I encounter unpleasant people when I do acting work, but that's pretty rare and even when that happens, I can handle the situation. I spend a lot of my spare time at my local gymnastics club, where the price for the adult gymnastics classes simply makes it unaffordable for poor people to attend. My work and social circles makes it quite unlikely that I ever cross paths with anyone who is working class.

Let me tell you about an incident I witnessed recently at a supermarket: the supermarket has done away with cashiers and has replaced them with self-service checkout machines. This old man who obviously was crap with technology couldn't get the machine to work and started shouting for help. A customer service assistant ran over to his help and said to him, "it's okay I'll do it for you." The old man then started this incredible rant about how these machines were awful and were designed to put all the people who work in the supermarkets out of work. The young lady helping him didn't respond to that, he then challenged her, "aren't you afraid you'll be replaced by all these machines?" She replied, "No, I'm not worried, not really." He then picked up that she had some kind of Eastern European accent - hardly surprising since many of the staff there are either Hungarian or Polish. He then started on this Brexit rant, about how the Eastern Europeans have come over to take over the jobs of the local English people and because of Eastern Europeans and machines, the next generation of English people will have no jobs. He then told her, "soon you'll have to go back to where you came from, now we have voted for Brexit. So! When are you leaving London to go home?"

I was one second away from intervening when she decided enough was enough and called for security - she wasn't putting up with this crap whilst she was helping him with his shopping. The big tough security guard (who was Polish too incidentally) just grabbed the cranky old man and literally threw him out of the supermarket. He was warned to stay away from the supermarket as he was no longer welcome there. A group of us then joined in and hurled abuse at the old man - oh I don't give a damn if he was old, he's an asshole and sometimes, you have to kick a man when he is down. He wasn't very educated, so I went on my high horse and told him that he was council estate trash who should be ashamed of himself - instead of blaming his problems on immigrants, he had to look in the mirror and blame himself for being a washout and failure. Oh you know, my usual anti-working class rant, ie. "it's got nothing to do with your skin colour, it's got to do with your social class status." I then went back to make sure the Eastern European shop assistant was okay but she was made of stern stuff and she just brushed it off by saying, "yeah, we get shits like that sometimes you know. Don't worry, we can handle it, we're okay. Thank you for your support."

I felt sorry for her because she had no control over whom she had to deal with - when you work in a supermarket as a customer service assistant, you have to help any customer who asks for your help, even if he is a cranky UKIP-voting Brexit and Trump supporter. She's lucky enough to have a team of supportive colleagues who were able to step in and help her when things got nasty, but how many people are in that same position, whereby they are exposed to a far wider number of random strangers on a daily basis at work and may encounter abuse like that? I have a friend who's a teacher and she had this boy in her class who was a real troublemaker, so she demanded to see the boy's parents and the boy's mother came to the school but turned out to be an ignorant, uneducated, unreasonable working class white trash mother who blamed everyone except herself and refused to take any responsibility for the situation. It was clear that the boy was such a terror because of her poor parenting skills, yet she came into the school all guns blazing, shouting at the teachers and even the other students. You see, as a teacher, my friend can't say, "I'm refusing to work if that horrible working class boy is in my class. Please get rid of him." She has no choice in her job but to deal with the boy no matter how awful his behaviour may be. Someone like my teacher friend is in a much worse position than me.

Do you work in a safe environment with nice people?

So people like that Eastern European lady at the supermarket and my teacher friend are probably far more prone to any kind of attack by pro-Brexit and pro-Trump supporters simply because of the nature of their jobs. Of course, I still use public transport, shop at the same supermarket where that Eastern European lady works, there is always the possibility of an unprovoked random attack by someone who spots the fact that I am Asian. But the possibility of that is so extremely low - I have been in the UK 19 years already and I've encountered stupid people before but no one overly racist. Let me give you an example. I was walking home from the gym when I was approached by this very drunk guy and he held out his beer bottle, "hey I am drinking Chinese beer! Beer from you country!" He was holding a bottle of Tsingtao beer. I thought, fine I'll fuck with you since you're an idiot. I said in a mish-mash of Italian and English laced with a thick Italian accent that I am not Chinese but Italian and he should be drinking Italian beer like Peroni or Nastro Azzuro. (And of course, I speak Italian rather well.) He rubbed his eyes in disbelief and said, "wait, what - you're not Chinese?" And I replied, again with a thick Italian accent, "No my name is Mario and I am from Milano. I think you're very drunk now and need to sleep. Ciao!" Nothing I couldn't handle with a bit of humour.

3. I have a great sense of self-preservation. 

Now I am going to drag one of my regular readers into this section: when I was in San Juan earlier this summer, I visited a notorious neighbourhood called La Perla. It's the kind of place tourists are warned to stay away from because of the drug-related gang violence there, but I thought, what the heck, it looks quiet enough. When my reader Di Talasi read on my Facebook status update that I was going to venture into the most dangerous neighbourhood in all of San Juan, she warned me not to hold hands with my partner in public there. And I thought, oh please - I am not one of those dumbfucks who are totally oblivious to their surroundings. I don't go through life like a bull in a china shop, totally oblivious to potential threats. I may be gay but I most certainly am not stupid - why would I want to get into trouble in a place like La Perla for crying out aloud? I'm way too sensible. I can be gay and sensible too you know. I am a seasoned traveler and have been to many countries around the world. Now perhaps that's something I thought would be obvious even to my readers. But a few days later, I got into another argument on Facebook over a similar matter which made me realize, actually there are people in this world who do lack that sense of self-preservation.

I had already moved onto Santo Domingo during this trip when I got into an argument with some of my Polish friends in the UK. Now there was a tragic news about a Polish man who was murdered in the UK by racists - it was a horrific story of course. I pointed out to my Polish friends that the murder took place in Harlow, Essex - now this was a notoriously poor town with very high crime rates. My Polish friends were of course very upset that this seemed like a racist hate crime in light of Brexit - I merely pointed out to them that people get robbed, beaten up, raped and murdered in a rough town like Harlow all the time, would they have been as upset if the victim had been an English local person? No, it would have been just another crime in a part of a country that doesn't concern them. I merely pointed out that if you valued your safety and well-being, if you had any sense of self-preservation, you would not want to walk around certain neighbourhoods in a place like Harlow after dark. Just saying. My Polish friends did not take to my comment kindly - "an innocent man was murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you want to blame the victim for what happened? You monster - this is victim blaming, how could you?"

Well, I told them that I was currently in Santo Domingo and had been warned by my AirBNB host to avoid certain neighbourhoods for they were simply not safe for foreigners. Did I willfully go to those neighbourhoods just to make a point that there's no crime in being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Hell no. I value my well being, I wanted to leave Santo Domingo in one piece. I may speak Spanish reasonably well but I was not prepared to put myself in a situation I couldn't handle, so I obediently followed the advice I was given. I asked my Polish friends on Facebook, "if you were here with me in Santo Domingo right now and we were told not to go walking around Mama Tingo after dark, would you go there and walk around alone at night just to make a point about not blaming the victim when crimes happen?" Unfortunately, I just couldn't reason with my Polish friends - they were blinded by rage over Brexit. I didn't think that I was blaming the victim in the case of the murder, I just felt that when you're not in your own country, you do need a healthy dose of self-preservation to stay out of trouble. You need that even if you are in your own country.

4. I can handle trouble if trouble comes my way. 

There was a report in the NY Times recently about Asian-Americans responding to racism and it was just a load of pathetic bullshit - it's just one sob story after another about Asian-Americans getting verbally abused and NOT responding. Instead, they felt sorry for themselves instead of fighting back. That's fucking pathetic - but that's exactly how my parents would have reacted as well. I'm different. I always fight back whenever I encounter racism and on the few occasions that I have encountered it, I have always fought back instantly - be it against an Italian toilet attendant at the Vatican, a rude waitress who refused to serve me in Berlin or a colleague making a racist joke, I have always gone out of my way and shown them who was boss. No I don't hit people as that would be assault, but I know I am way smarter than these people, I speak ten languages and am so much more eloquent and articulate than them - I know how to make them feel small and put them in their place simply with the power of my words. Knowing that I am capable of dealing with such situations makes me face new challenges with confidence. Bring it on bitches, Limpeh can handle it. You don't want to be messing with this badass Chao Ah Beng from AMK.

5. Crime has always been there, the situation hasn't changed that much. 

It is not as if hate crime didn't exist before Brexit or the election of Trump - there has always been crime in countries like the UK and US. It's not like we had gone from a crime-free situation to total chaos in the streets overnight, oh no. The situation has worsened somewhat, but it was already bad to begin with. Those against Brexit and Trump have been going out of their way to highlight instances of hate crime on social media just to say, "look what you've done, you've destroyed our country - I hope you're happy you xenophobic bigot, you made a terrible mistake and now we're going to make you feel really bad about it" There is definitely an element of that in the mix, however, these people do ignore the role that poverty plays in crime and even if the UK did vote to stay in the EU and Clinton did defeat Trump at the polls - did you think that hate crime would be eradicated overnight? No, it wouldn't, hate crime will still be there because these hateful criminals who commit the hate crimes have always been there, lurking in the shadows regardless of what the political situation is and no election/referendum result is going to somehow make mysteriously disappear just like that. Thus I know what I am dealing with since the situation really hasn't changed that much at all.

For better or for worse, the status quo has remained.

So there you go. The fact is the UK have voted for Brexit way back in June and yes of course I'm upset and troubled by what has happened as a matter of principle, I see a lot of anger on social media but have I been personally attacked in the streets for example? No, in fact, virtually nothing has changed. I'm worried about the long term prospects of the British economy given the uncertainty associated with Brexit, but my new job has been going well and really, virtually nothing has changed since June for me. I reckon if things were going to be really bad, well I would have witnessed it already but so far, it has been mostly angry rhetoric on social media. Many thanks for reading guys.