Is it soft racism or just a prank?
I have lived in Copenhagen for more than 5 years now. I got a job, I moved from London, a design job in the tech industry, and I am of brown ethnicity (not disclosing the country) but from South East Asian descent, so obviously I stand out. I had 3 different events in the span of 2 months that didn’t happen before at all.
First one: Biking in front of The Villa hotel, when some boys in a car took out a water gun and started shooting water at me. They missed and I looked at them. I didn’t react to it because maybe I thought it was a harmless joke kids pull off, or maybe they were trying to do it to everyone, not seeing the race.
Second one: I was walking near my apartment (near Bella Centre) with a bag of groceries, Sunday afternoon, when some people from a car threw a glass full of beer at me. Missed again, but the beer splashed near me. And this time I was the only one on the street.
Third one: Me and my wife (who is Asian) were waiting in Central Station at around 8-ish pm alone on the platform, waiting for our train, when a group of young kids passed by and threw some open salt packets at us. It missed and we didn’t realise, so we didn’t react. I thought maybe they were aiming for the trash can next to us. After they saw us not react to it, they came back around after 5 minutes or so and threw some more salt packs, and this clearly hit both of us. My wife got perplexed as some of the salt went into her eyes. I stood up and screamed at the boys; they showed the middle finger and threw some more salt packets right at me. I took out my phone to record this and they ran away. This was the time I felt very afraid for the first time in Copenhagen. I come from a very unsafe city, but this never happens to anyone, not even to foreigners. This seems very harmless, but it could have been pee, mud, vomit or even acid from the supermarket that you can throw at someone, and what would they even do? Can’t even go to the police with this petty prank.
I have gotten my bike stolen in Copenhagen and even my bag stolen from behind my bike’s rear carrier, but it didn’t really affect me at all. I passed it off as “yeah, this can happen anywhere.”
Maybe I am overreacting and some of you might say that it’s just some boys joking around, but I felt a bit unsafe and this could have gone in many other ways.
Today they throw a glass of beer and tomorrow they might throw a glass bottle that breaks on my head. I know in other western countries the treatment of foreigners is worse, and Denmark has never been anything but nice to me for last 5 years. For these 10 unruly kids, I can never forget those 100s of amazing Danes, my colleagues, my Danish friends, who have helped me in good times and bad.
I don’t know if this is a place to post this, but with all the good things that are being talked about Copenhagen and Denmark on the internet, maybe I wanted people to know about this as well.
And wonder if it was really a soft racism or just some silly prank.