source: The Age
PRIME Minister John Howard blundered yesterday, wrongly assuming a high-achieving Asian Australian was born overseas.
Hosting a reception at his Canberra residence for Australian of the Year candidates, Mr Howard asked mathematician Professor Terence Tao about his origins.
"When did you come to Australia?" Mr Howard is heard to ask Professor Tao in television footage.
When his guest failed to catch the question, the Prime Minister said: "What part of the world were you born?"
"I was born in Adelaide," Professor Tao, 31, replied.
The South Australian teaches at the University of California in Los Angeles, and last year won the world's most important mathematics prize, the Fields Medal.
The son of Chinese parents who migrated from Hong Kong, Professor Tao was a child prodigy who obtained his first university degree at age 16.
The Australian of the Year Awards website says Professor Tao is "a true-blue Australian with a fondness for meat pies, football, cricket, and our easygoing, honest, and relaxed culture".
Don't you just love it? I saw this blunder on the news and it was apparent that the PM knew he'd done a boo-boo as soon as he asked the first question. It was so obvious from his body language to the 'uhmms' and the 'ahhhs' that followed that he was thinking, 'Ohhhhhhhh shit!'.
We can harp and preach about how we shouldn't stereotype or judge people from their appearances but in fact, it's much easier said than done. Sure, we can try and control these emotions but I'm sure all of us have been in situations where it happens, like reflex. We might not verbalise it but we sure think it. I know I have.
Seeing a tall black person on a basketball court, I automatically assume he's athletic and could dunk the ball on my hairy yellow ass but it's almost never the case. I remember another incident years back when I was crossing the street with my girl and a bunch of mates. There was a bunch of hoons in a pile of junk they call a car being all rowdy and probably piss-drunk at the traffic lights. As we were crossing the street, one of them yelled out to my girl asking her what she was doing hanging around with Asians saying that we have small dicks. Obviously, we ignored them but I swear, they must have gotten that perception from Japanese porn or there might be a Japanese tourist in the trunk whom they're taking turns sodomising.
Seriously, there has to be better screening for porn actors when they produce Japanese porn. Most of them are downright offensive to Asian men out there. Have you seen the guys in most of them (not that I focus too much on that gender when watching)? All you see is either a scrawny guy in sunglasses and his microrganism, or a fat dude pushing 40 with his sorry excuse for a dick buried in thick bush. I pity the chick that has to perform fellatio on that cos' she'll be choking up pubes for the rest of the day or maybe die from it.
With that said, I wonder how many males chatting on the internet got their hearts broken when they learned that their Swedish female friend, Inga, is not really a blonde with blue eyes and a hot body willing to give oil massages at a whim? DRATS!
