The Value of a Token

 

The Fall Out from the “racist attack” on an interracial couple last weekend has spurned on more stories. We now know that the man who confronted the couple is a senior lecturer at a polytechnic (which only enforces my desires not to be too associated with the well-educated professional class). I’ve also noticed a lovely story in the Today newspaper about the victim who owns a gelato shop. It seems some of his customers actually mistook him for the hired help. The story can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/8days/eatanddrink/newsandopening/victim-racist-rant-owns-gelato-shop-was-told-indian-guy-cant-be#mdcrecs_s

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of incidents like this. I’ve known of senior business executives who have been mistaken for “driver” whenever they’ve gone to meet their Chinese staff. Sad to say it, our perceptions of race and success are intertwined. While we’re all siding with the couple because they were victims of “racism” at its worst.

However, while we may find obvious racism like that abhorrent, many of us will automatically assume that an organization’s hierarchy is dependent on skin colour and I’m not sure if many of us would bat an eye lid at paying someone with a fairer complexion more. I think of my favourite English family that I used to drink with me. They said that they noticed that during F1 seasons, whenever kids applied for part-time jobs for the race that anyone brown or black would instantly get posted to do cleaning while anyone yellow or white was sent to customer service.

This is type of racism is actually worse in as much as its accepted as a natural fact of life. We abhor the lecturer confronting interracial couples. We hate the woman who bangs a gong every time her neighbour tries to perform a prayer ritual. Yet so many of us automatically assume that people of a darker shade must be nothing more than the hired help and therefore less worthy of human dignity.

What can be done? I guess the only thing to do to support more entrepreneurs from minority communities and try and promote successes from minority communities. We need to somehow find ways where it becomes normal to see someone from the ethnic minority as the boss. Interestingly enough, the US army remains one of the most successful organisations in getting the black community into leadership roles.

While I can’t elaborate on what can be done to solve this, I can talk about the fact that people seem to have found a way to profit from our innate biases. It’s what one might call the value of a token. Interestingly enough, I noticed this when I worked at the Bistrot and had to deal with the reverse problem (Only long-established customers knew Bruno, who is a French white boy was the owner and I was the hired help – most customers assumed it was the other way). I remember a customer telling me, “I get it – you’re the Chinaman who puts the Ang Moh in front and you control things from behind.”

There is, as they say, an industry for being a “token pale skin.” China was probably the largest market for this as the following story explains:

https://www.businessinsider.com/now-china-is-hiring-white-guys-in-suits-to-make-the-country-look-good-2010-6

Chinese companies found that having a white man in a suite gave them something of a value add and so they were willing to pay for it. The white boys who did it, didn’t have to do very much.

Think of this as the reverse comprador system with a twist. There was a time when the Hongs (old British trading houses) always had a comprador to act as a go-between themselves and the local Chinese in Hong Kong.

The most common example of this is in Malaysia. If you look at any given Malaysian company of the Bursa Malaysia, you’ll find that the chairman is inevitably a Bumiputra whilst the CEO or the man doing the day-to-day work is Chinese. How did that happen? Bumiputra laws were designed to give Bumiputra’s a leg up in business when competing with the Chinese and “raising the lot of ethnic Malays.”

The results were a little different. The “token” Malays (many of them related to royalty) got rich by being just that – tokens. The Chinese continue to control much of the economic activity and the lot of the average Malay hasn’t really risen to comparable levels (though having said that there is a sizably Malay middle class).

 

Why is he really there?

Human ingenuity has found a way to profit from our lesser selves. In a way its good to see how the human mind works around things. However, let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that its acceptable or good for society at large. We must still work towards untangling assumptions about race and economic success.