Don't Call me Boy

It wasn’t my finest moment today but I ended up storming out of the office after throwing a few kind Hokkien words at the Living Desert who had made the mistake of commenting of my cleaning the company shredder after jamming it. It didn’t help that the company Grinch, an Irishman who reads Breitbart News, decided to add in his ten cents to a machine he has utterly no connection with.

I’m not proud of being in a situation where I couldn’t think of wanting to do anything else except to do damage to someone who usually inspires feelings of puppy dog cute and to the Grinch. I just saw red and it took control to prevent myself from doing violence on the spot.

However, what I will say is that this incident evolved around the shredder – a machine that is often used by lawyers, liquidators, accountants and anyone who spends any length of time around pieces of paper regarded as “confidential,” or “classified.” The shredder in this office is often used as it is shared by at least six-people dealing with special documents. While the machine is used by six-people, only one person seems to have any knowledge of how to clear the shredder – me. While it doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to clear a shredder, it usually requires a little bit of movement beyond the office doors and its considered degrading work by people who have qualifications. So, when two people who have never even cleared the shredder decided to become experts on clearing the shredder, I snapped.

I raise this very personal incident because it touches on one of the most prominent subjects today – namely the subject of inequality. If you look at statistics relating to the subject, you will note that the world is becoming even more unequal, where the “haves” seem to be getting hold of more of the pie and share of the ever-increasing number of “have nots” seems to be growing regularly.

Singapore, the country that I’ve called home for the last two decades is a particularly good example of how the ‘haves’ have visibly increased their share of the pie and the ‘have nots’ have seen their number grow and their share of the pie shrink. Our hyper efficient government takes great pride in the fact that an increasing number of billionaires have decided that having a home in Singapore is a necessity and at the same time thinks nothing of exploiting people from less fortunate countries. When you talk about the maids being paid a “princely” salary of less than SG$500 a month, the standard reply is that, “It’s a lot of money where they came from.”

One of the most interesting things about “inequality,” is the fact that it’s not produced many revolutions. You would expect the ‘have nots’ to get angry enough to do something pretty violent and nasty in order to get a more “equitable” share of the pie. However, they generally haven’t. Why is that?

The answer, according to the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Dr. Raghuram Rajan, is chance or rather belief in the system. Dr. Rajan argued that the poor don’t rebel if they believe that there’s a chance that they can improve their lot or if not the lot of their kids if they merely work hard and play the game well enough. 

Rebellions only happen in places where the poor see their lot as being stuck there for all eternity no matter what they do. America, despite the inequality remains fairly peaceful. Every penniless migrant to America believe that he or she can achieve the “American” Dream if he or she works hard. By contrast, the Middle East got shook up by the Arab Spring because people found it impossible to achieve anything for themselves whatever they did.

The other key factor is behavior. A few years ago, the Algerians in Paris rioted because they were tiered of being addressed as “tu,” (the informal French version of “you,” usually used by an elder when addressing a junior.) A similar point was made by “African-Americans,” in the deep South who rioted in the 1960s – they were tired of being addressed as “boy.”

I believe here lies the crux of the matter – people can accept income inequality but up to a point, they won’t accept being treated as anything less than human. The poor are not asking for a hand out nor are they asking for pity. What they are asking for is a bit of dignity and respect.

I think of the Little India Riots in 2013, when a group of Indian and Bangladeshi workers rioted and the police had to struggle to contain the violence. Much of the chatter was around how people of South Asian origins could not handle their liquor and didn’t understand our local culture of respecting law and order.

What many people forgot was the fact that an Indian worker was killed and when the police came onto the scene, they seemed more intent on protecting the bus driver who had run over the worker than in providing justice for the worker who had been killed. It was, as they say a clear-cut case of disrespecting people.

The rage of an individual is an ugly thing. The rage of a mob is worse. The best is to ensure that there is no reason for rage and in a society of ever increasing despite between the have’s and have nots is to ensure that those who “have” remember to allow the “have nots” to see a glimmer of hope and to respect menial task as a stepping stone into better things.