In our last blog, we talked about racial harassment in public spaces like on the streets, in parks or other everyday places. However, discrimination can also happen in service settings, often at the gym, in a restaurant, at the bank, in shops, or in a supermarket. An assessment of our survey, and the experience of our members, revealed many instances of such discrimination.

One of our members checked into a gym in Germany and gave her name. The receptionist heard it, looked up and mummered, “Ching chong.” It has nothing to do with her name. It wasn’t a misunderstanding or a joke. It was a clear racist slur, thrown out causally, as if it were funny or normal.

Moments like this catch you off guard, because you are not expecting to need to defend yourself at the front desk of the gym.

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Often, discrimination doesn’t just come from staff themselves. It can come from other customers or visitors too.

One of our members was harassed in a museum and when she reported the incidents to a staff member, they brushed it off instead of intervening. It was only after she called a supervisor who was responsible for the staff that any action was taken.

Experiences like this show how easily institutions can fail to recognize racism when it happens. However, if someone harasses you, verbally or physically, in a service area like gym, restaurant, museum or shops, the staff have a legal duty to step in and protect you. Under the Equal Treatment Law in the European Union, service providers must ensure a safe and respectful environment for everyone. If they ignore the situation or fail to act, they can also be held responsible. Silence is not neutral, it’s part of the problem.

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It’s easy to shrug these moments off as ‘just bad service’. However, that’s how racism becomes embedded in everyday lives of the population. Racism in services, even when it’s subtle or nonverbal, is not only harmful, but illegal in the equal treatment legislations of multiple countries. You have a right to equal treatment, no matter your appearance, racial or ethnic backgrounds, gender, religion, and so on. When someone mocks you or talks down to you because you look ‘different’, it’s not about misunderstanding, it’s about power, and it’s never okay.

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Racial discrimination may be illegal in your country

Across the Europe, many countries have criminalized racial discrimination in Services: Germany (2006), Belgium (2007), the Netherlands (1994, 2009), and Sweden (2008). If racial harassment occurs inside a service environment, the staff has a responsibility to act, because they are responsible for maintaining a discrimination-free space.

I was discriminated based on racial or ethnic background, what can I do?

here’s what you can do:

Gather Evidence: When it’s safe, whip out your phone. Snap pics or video of the person—clothes, car plates, anything to ID them later for a report. Note down the time, place what happened, and who witness it.
Ask for the manager: Ask a responsible manager. They must listen and log your complaint.
Write down what happened: In your own words, describe the aggressor, the situation, time and date, and any other details that you remember. This serves a double purpose: internally processing what happened, and using it to file a report to the police or other anti-discrimination agencies in your country and/or region.
Report It: Report it to the relevant anti-discrimination office: Germany’s anti-discriminerungsstelle, Belgium’s UNIA, the Dutch anti-discrimination service, or Sweden’s DO.
Take time to process what happened, and share it with your friends. Harassment and discrimination takes a toll on our mind and body. Those incidents cause difficulties in our daily lives for days and/or weeks afterwards. Talk to someone, and know that there is only one person to blame: the person who decided to harass you for no reason at all.

I filed a report, what now?

Racial discrimination is illegal in all EU Member States, we already know this. However, very few cases of racism (whether at schools, public spaces, or the workplace) make it to the prosecutor’s office. Even in countries where racial discrimination has been criminalized, very few people choose to report attacks, and even fewer make it into the police and courts. For example, according to the Portuguese law, someone who commits harassment may be imprisoned for up to a year, but we’ve yet to hear a case where this has happened.

However, we do know that these cases need to be reported. For example, since we provided clear photos of the attackers and car license plates, they will be prosecuted if more similar cases are filed against them. More cases filed under discrimination will lead to more resource allocation in the future. We need to show that anti-Asian discrimination is real, in numbers, facts, and stories.

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Filing those cases also helped us process what happened, and to externalize. We were the victims of a crime. We did nothing wrong. We filed a report (it was exhausting), and did everything we could. We also talked amongst us afterwards to share what we felt after the attack.