A Chinese-Australian influencer based in Sydney said she was the victim of a racist tirade in a carpark, all because she got to a parking spot first. FFS.
Lizzie Cao (@cacaobeann) posted a TikTok right after it happened, tearfully detailing the incident to her followers.
“I’m actually shaking,” Lizzie began, her hands visibly trembling.
She said she planned to go thrift shopping in Maroubra in Sydney’s east and was looking for a parking space when she saw another shopper leaving.
Lizzie turned her blinker on to claim the spot — but another woman, who was waiting in the carpark earlier in a different section, drove up and also tried to claim it.
@cacaobeann Australia is a multi cultural country, I thought people knew better than to be racist 🥺 #storytime #australia #racism #chinese
“As the car pulls out, I’m starting to reverse, she comes up behind me and starts beeping at me, and I was so confused because I saw the spot first,” Lizzie said.
“She pulls around, rolls her window down, and I explain like, ‘Hey, sorry, I already put my indicator on, I was waiting for this spot first’. And she proceeds to be like, ‘But I got here before you.’”
Lizzie then explained to the woman that while she may have been in the carpark first, Lizzie was the one who used her indicator to actually claim the spot. It was then the woman decided she should resort to racism. Over a fkn parking space.
“She was like, ‘Just like this country, I got here first’,” Lizzie recounted tearfully.
“I am Australian,” she reiterated.
“My background is full Chinese, but I just didn’t think in this day or age [that] racism could hit so hard.
“It was such a confronting experience.”
Lizzie then revealed she ended up relinquishing the parking spot to the racist woman and just found another one.
Comments on the TikTok sympathised with Lizzie Cao and called out how casually deployed racism is in Australia.
“Racism is prominent in this country,” one commenter said.
“Even though Australia is multicultural, unfortunately Australians are not. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I know the feeling all too well,” said another.
Others shared their own experiences of racism here in Oz.
“I remember a lady screaming at my friends mum who was speaking Tagalog. Not one person on the packed train platform stood up for her,” a user wrote.
“As an Aboriginal person this doesn’t shock me… but just so you know you are so welcome here!” another wrote.
A third said that for them, Australia had become the “number one racist country”.
Honestly, I imagine many people of colour in Australia have experienced some form of outright racism, let alone all the insidious microaggressions.
I can think of two instances from the last year alone where I, a South Asian woman, was racially abused in Sydney. Complete with the public yelling and everything. One of which I wrote about here.
We still have a long fucking way to go, that’s for sure.
