It Matters if You’re Black or White.

Since the mother-in-law went back to Vietnam, I had a wonderful opportunity to catch up on my latest hobby – watching endless hours of Netflix. The great beauty of Netflix is, of course, the fact that you can watch an entire season of any particular series as if it were a movie.

My recent favourite was “Luke Cage,” who happens to be a “Black Superhero,” who is based in Harlem, New York. What made the season particularly enjoyable was the fact that in Season 2 of Luke Cage you had the story arc of “Jamaican” gangsters trying to kill of local “Black American” gangsters. I give credit to the fact that the producers of the series actually got one of the most fundamental things right – Jamaicans and “African-Americans” were two separates people with two separate cultures, speaking two different languages, despite the fact that both communities had “black skin” and common physical features.

I bring about this topic because we live in a world that is dividing itself into smaller and smaller groups every day. Despite every effort of well-meaning politicians and academics, people are finding ways of distinguishing themselves from each other.  Take a look at America, a nation that was founded on the principle of “unity of races, religions etc etc.” For years, America took pride in its Statue of Liberty that encouraged the world to give over its hungry and poor. America talked about being a great “melting pot” of every culture in the world. Then one day, it elected Trump to its highest office because the Trump had an intrinsic genius in recognizing that people liked being different and they liked not liking other people who were like them. The Trump played up to this particular nasty aspect of human nature and won.

To be fair, the nasty aspects of human nature existed long before Donald Trump and he wasn’t the first politician to exploit the human need to be different. He merely did it on a larger scale by the clever use of modern technology. If you go back to his campaign, you’ll realise that the Trump was quick of the mark to come up with a story, that although untrue, was certainly believable – “White America is being destroyed by everyone else.”

Just look at his favourite topic – the border wall. His narrative is simple, “The Wall is necessary to protect the hard-working American (the white variety) from criminals and terrorist from Latin America.” While its easy to pick out the flaws from a logical standpoint (walls aren’t good at keeping out people, terrorist don’t come across the Rio Grande [they fly in from countries allied to Trump] etc) his argument has a certain appeal to it. It’s easy to paint the crowd across the Rio Grande as “terrorist,” based on the fact that they speak a different language, look different and dare I say do certain things in life differently (they go to work).

This phenomenon isn’t limited to America. I’m from Singapore, a country that talks about “Regardless of Race, Language or Religion.” Singapore proudly tells the world that unlike Malaysia, which has laws that favour an ethnic group over others, that is blind to things like colour of your skin or the God that you pray to.

Yet, if you get down to the ground, we – the people are doing what we can to separate ourselves into further divisions. The influx of foreigners, particularly those from India and China helped push our local Indian and Chinese populations into trying to find ways to differentiae themselves from the new comers. I think of the “Diwali” or “Deepavali” greetings I send out. They’re the same festival but there’s sensitivity in what the festival is called. What’s in a name? Everything. I remember a local Tamil who had a prominent position complaining that soon the name of the festival in Singapore would be changed to Diwali to accommodate the new comers.

The Chinese community isn’t much better and last week, I actually had a “Mandarin” lesson from the ex-wife of one of Singapore’s most prominentbusinessmen. She explained that people from China are known as “Chung Guo Ren.” This term is used by people outside of China to talk about people from China. The people inside China do not refer to themselves as “Chung Guo Ren,” because they identify themselves by their region – i.e Guangdung Ren, Fujian Reng, Shanghai Ren (Cantonese, Fujianese, Shanghainese.) The ethnic Chinese outside of China are known as “Hua Ren.” The language that we speak is known as “huayi,” but in China or Taiwan it is “Guoyi,” or “National Language. It’s actually the same language – Mandarin Chinese.

What she said, actually helped crystalise my Cultural Studies lessons in university. Hence, I try to identify myself as Chinese (“Hua Ren”) as opposed to the passport I hold (Singapore), whereas my parents talk about being Singaporean of Chinese descent. I do that because, I want to have an identity greater than the passport I hold (although the Singapore passport is consistently ranked in the top 5 and my parents actually speak much better Chinese than I do.). It seems more liberating to have an identity associated with a people rather than a place and again, this isn’t a point of science but a point of personal observation.

As it has been said on so many occasions, we live in an increasingly globalized world and with the internet, one has to get used to dealing beyond national borders. Yet, at the same time, we became more attached to our local or dare I say parochial identity. HSBC got it right when it tried to be “The World’s Local Bank.”

I believe we need to create opportunities for people of different back grounds to share experiences. In Singapore, we have National Service, which helps people of different backgrounds gel together. When you’re digging a fire trench of the umpteenth time, you lose the ability to care whether the guy digging next to you is black, white, blue or purple. People are bound by certain shared experiences – hence I am at my most “Singaporean” when I talk about “National Service.”

Yet, we cannot “White Wash” things into one global system. People will find a way to divide and subdivide themselves. If’s its not race, it’s language, religion or even sports team. Like it or not, it does matter to people if they are black or white.

The key to success – let people have the shared experiences to give them the common experiences of bonding across backgrounds. Encourage people to create babies with partners of different colours or religions. Yet, at the same time, allow people to be proud of being different. It will always matter if you’re black or white and we need to recognize that people will always feel that way.