jealousy, turning saints into the sea

Just let that play, I think. That's what I have in my head right now. I think this is a good way of keeping track of what I'm listening to. Because me and volunteer-colleagues were singing this last night, and I kind of think this is mostly universal. I can't remember when I first heard this song. I must have been 12 or something, after checking Wikipedia.

I'm trying to sleep/ trying to get to sleep. I think I have too many words today. I don't know.
Today I had dinner with my mum/dad/sister, and it was uh crazy. I had to walk out for a while in the beginning, because we were arguing, and my dad said "I don't know what she does for 365 days of the year." which was the last straw for me, because I DO DO THINGS like SCHOOL and PRODUCTION RUNNING and WORK, excuse me. Then towards the end my sister kept on talking about how West Croydon was "unsafe" because there were "black people" there. I don't know what kind of privilege is this, and this wasn't the first time I heard this, and every time I hear this I don't know what to say except to refute it, and it makes me angry every time, and this time I lost it and I told my sister what she was saying was bullshit and my dad got mad at me for swearing.

On googlemaps East Croydon and West Croydon stations are a 15min walk apart from each other. According to my sister, East Croydon station is a perfectly okay station to walk to and take trains from. WEST croydon, however, is "unsafe" and she says "my school says it's not safe" "don't go there, there are a lot of black people" and other bullshit. DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT RACE seriously last summer I had this whole hang-up and think about it, I'm supposed to think and read and write about race in class this past year, it bothers me a lot, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and about what anthropologists think about it. We talk about it in class a lot, I am obviously part of a yellow minority living in a white-majority city, it's not something I FORGET. this whole black people= crime= will get mugged/raped thing is fucking racist, obviously, and is entirely not true, at least in london.

It's horrible. You don't want to be typecast or stereotyped, don't stereotype another race. Just because you're from singapore and there are hardly ever any black people there, doesn't mean that they are Other. Everyone is human. Not being black myself, I cannot claim to understand what it means to be black in the UK. But I've been living on this street for almost a year, and there are black people living opposite me and down the street. I shop on the high street, where it's 60% black people, say 10% yellow people, 10% indians, 20% white on a market day. There are black people living in my neighbourhood. I am still alive, I haven't been mugged, my uni friends who live in the area haven't been mugged. I have black friends, but I don't think of them as black first, in my head, for example, they are [insert name] first, who plays guitar and likes to dress spiffy and is really into jazz. "black" is in my head when I think of them, and I don't think that one can pretend that race doesn't exist. But it's pure ignorance to say that black= criminal.

I'm also angry because there have been countless times where I have been judged based on my appearance and my race, and I don't want other people to feel judged the same way I have been. Other people have assumed that I speak chinese, drunk people have said random japanese or chinese words to me, said "happy new year" in my face, asked if I'm from china. All these things I find insulting and in the same way that black= criminal, yellow= chinese is a simplistic, untrue equation. This equation just says how stupid the person is, that they don't know that yellow people can speak with american accents or british accents, that yellow people can be from California or Vancouver or Vietnam, not just China. Yellow people can speak English, German, Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, Korean and not all of them speak mandarin chinese.

this is pretty inconclusive but I'm tired now and I'm not meeting my family tomorrow because I would actually go insane and leave the car while at a stop junction or something, and will try to limit family time.