Are Black and Brown Lives worth Less?

 

During the height of the “Black Lives Matter” protest that started in May 2020, I remember a few people who came out against these protest by saying that they believed that “All Lives Matter.” It goes without saying that these guys were often pillared for being insensitive and the opposite of “woke.”

To be fair to the people who said that “All Lives Matter,” they were utterly right. However, what they forgot was the fact that while “All Lives Matter,” some happen to matter a bit more than others. If you look closely enough, you’ll notice that lives that are brown and especially black, happen to matter a lot less than lives that are say, white.

It happens in just about every place on the planet. In Singapore, its almost acceptable to shit on dark skinned people, especially if they happen to work on construction sites or do things like ensuring that fairer skinned people live in a clean environment. If you suggest, for example, that dark skinned people should ride on the road in the same conditions as the rest of us, you’ll find someone who will inevitably call you “Anti-Business” and lacking in any form of sympathy for the bosses of construction companies, who are inevitably of a fairer shade than the workers they’ve hired. As a British-Barbadian friend of mine says, “In Singapore you have ‘quality’ racism.”

However, if you look closely enough, Singapore isn’t the only place that practices “Quality Racism.” Just look at the way in which the international order works. This can be seen in the difference in which the ruling powers of the world approach the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Everyone gets very angsty about how the Ukrainians, a nation of fair skinned peoples are being bullied by the Russians, another group of fair skinned folk. However, when Israel, a nation where nearly half the population is descended from European immigrants, kills off Palestinians, a group of brown people, everyone seems to believe that the European immigrants are the ones being victimized and anyone speaking up for the brown semitic people inevitably gets tarred with the label of being “Anti-Semitic.”

Just look at the reaction to the news that the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) had issued an arrest warrant for the leaders of Hamas, the terrorist organization that perpetrated the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,189 mostly civilians, including women and children. This news caused outrage and many of the Republican members of Congress started threatening to “sanction” the ICC. Why did they get so upset with Mr. Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the ICC, when he was quite clear that he was going after the “bad guys?”

Well, the problem was that Mr. Khan didn’t just label the “brown” people as bad guys. He also issued an arrest warrant for the fairer skinned people, specifically Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Mr. Khan had made the point and presented the evidence that while the “Bad Brownies” of Hamas had done horrible things on October 7, the Israeli government had also done bad things like using starvation. Mr. Khan’s statement can be found at:

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state  

 

 While the White House did not back the bill to sanction the ICC, the world’s most powerful old white man, President Joe Bidden proceeded to argue that you couldn’t possibly compare the “bad” deeds of the fair skinned people to the “Bad Brownies,” even if the first group had killed far more than the later.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/21/no-equivalence-biden-defends-israel-after-icc-requests-arrest-warrants

 

 In many ways, the world accepted this logic because the fair skinned people of Israel had the backing of the world’s most powerful nations. The position was inevitably yes, we all feel sorry for the Palestinians but they should know their place at the bottom of the food chain. Nobody wanted to antagonize the rich and powerful fair-skinned nations, which were friends with the one nation in a region of predominantly brown semitic people that had a sizeable population of fair-skinned people actively undermined institutions that are supposed to keep the global order a peaceful one, nobody cared:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-have-waged-9-year-war-against-icc-tapping-its-communications/

 

However, things are changing. The proverbial “global” south is waking up to the fact that it has a voice. Brown and Black people want to be treated with a measure of equity in the institutions that are supposed to be deliver justice. Look at Mr. Khan’s statement. He’s made the obvious point that Hamas committed a criminal action from the October 7 attacks. However, he’s also made the point that Israel’s perpetration of the war is also criminal. Two wrongs don’t make a right and Mr. Khan is making the point very clearly by issuing a warrant for both sides.

Making this point is inevitably going to get one labeled a “terrorist” supporter. However, it’s still a point that needs to be made and its progress that plenty of fair skinned people agree with the fact that black and brown lives should matter as much as fair skinned ones. Now, its up to the most powerful old white guy to stop being a prisoner of impotent people and lead the nation onto the right side of history.  

“If People Don’t Know What You’re Doing; They Don’t Know What You’re Doing Wrong.” – Sir Humphry Appleby

 

A friend of mine has just posted an article that he wrote on Linkedin, which reminded me of that wonderful British TV series, “Yes Minister,” which told tale of a politician and his civil servants. One of the jokes that people used to tell, was that “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister,” told you everything you needed to know about how government’s function. One the great teaching moments came in a scene when the chief civil servant explained why government secrecy was necessary. He said “If people don’t know what you’re doing; the don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

In the British context, this remark is something of a joke. While Britain and much of the Western world are far from perfect, issues like government corruption are often things that don’t hit home for the ordinary person. It’s a slightly different matter in developing countries, where issues like corruption become part and parcel of everyday life. I live in Singapore and although I don’t really “feel” the possibility of government corruption in my daily life, I’m just a short bus ride away from Malaysia, where getting shaken down for bribes once in a while is fairly common.

I bring this up because a lot of “democratic” societies (for the purpose of argument, Singapore will be included), are now looking at things at putting on caps on basic freedoms like freedom of the press. One only has to think of the way media publications need licenses or worry about losing advertiser support or the sudden strengthening of libel laws to see how media controls are being subtly imposed.

In Singapore, our system of media management was based on Lee Kuan Yew’s main argument that “he” would set the agenda. His consistent point to media outlets around the world was “nobody elected” you and so, our local media scene has been infamously tame when it’s come to questioning government or for that matter of fact, anyone in any position of authority – ie chairmen and CEOs of companies. I believe the phrase used in Singapore is “responsible.”

So, thanks to this “conditioning” it becomes very easy to assume that when things get reported, that something bad is happening. I remember trying to explain to Thambi Pundek aka The Young Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC who guzzles Pork on a Ramadan Day, that democracy and the loosening of control on the media was good for a country. He countered that this was not necessarily true and gave the example of Malaysia under Mahathir and Malaysia under Abdullah Badawi.

His logic was simple. Corruption scandals appeared in the media under Badwai when they didn’t appear under Mahathir, therefore corruption had increased. To be fair to Thambi, he’s not the only person who thinks this way. One judges the state of the world by what’s happening and the only way you know what’s happening is by what you read or hear about in the news.

However, as my friend from NardelloNardello argues, this is not necessarily true and the slew of reports of the corruption in Indonesia’s state owned enterprises might actually be a good sign rather than a bad one:

https://insights.nardelloandco.com/post/102j8em/frequent-corruption-investigations-of-indonesian-state-owned-enterprises-may-be-a

 

 

He has a point. Just because something isn’t reported, it doesn’t mean its not happening. We need to remember; publicity is not good for crooks. Would you, for example, advertise that you were stealing?

I mean, there is an argument to say that things aren’t reported because they aren’t happening. However, if you live in a part of the world where you can get slapped down for saying things that someone in power doesn’t like, the argument that things aren’t reported because publishers and broadcasters have figured that the cost of reporting is simply not worth it (being sued to bankruptcy, beaten up, harassed, murdered etc).

Let’s remember, that journalist have a legal and moral obligation to tell the public about what’s going on. Yes, there have to be certain laws in place to ensure that journalist write facts and that there is a certain amount of objectivity in their reporting. People should not be “slandered” because they were p***ed off with someone they didn’t like.

However, journalist do play an important role in making sure people know what’s going on. When it comes to things like “corruption,” that role becomes even more important because people then become aware that they’re being screwed over. Let’s face it corruption is like a lot of things. People get comfortable with it and accept it as fact of life and you need public pressure to get people out of their complacency. How does that happen? The usually when people are aware of what’s going on.

So, the next time you see a slew of corruption scandals being reported where there were none before, it’s not necessarily a sign that corruption has increased. Its more likely to be sign that corruption is finally being exposed and change for the better is on the way.

It Actually Matters if You Are Black or White

 

Saw the story of how Mr. Uddin MD Sharif, a Bangladeshi worker and writer is facing deportation amidst unfair dismissal amidst harassment claims, despite assurances from the powers that be that he could stay in Singapore. The story can be found at:

https://gutzy.asia/2024/05/27/migrant-worker-faces-forced-repatriation-despite-claims-of-harassment-victimhood

 

 This is unfortunately, only unusual in the fact that it’s being told. The sad reality is that although Singapore is in so many ways everything a city should be, we are a failed society. Yes, I do like living in Singapore. There’s a lot of be said about having good facilities. As a dad to a young lady, the physical safety of Singapore is a treasure. I like having a passport that allows me to travel to just about anywhere I could want to visit without being shaken down for a visa. Who does not want to live and be proud of living in a place that’s green, clean and rich?

Well, while there’s no way one can deny that Singapore has got it right in so many aspects, there is one crucial aspect, which marks us out as a “failed” society – that is the inability of the system to treat people as people. This can be seen most visibly when it comes to two particular groups.

One group is our elderly. We brag about how we are an “Asian” society that respects the elderly. However, that’s not quite true. The only “old” person that got any form of dignity was Lee Kuan Yew. The late Mr. Lee was such a force to be reckoned even in his twilight years that one could say that he soaked up whatever good will we may have had for people over a certain age that we became unable to respect anyone else over a certain age. We are, for a society that claims to respect our elders, quite happy to ensure that the frailest grandma around is inevitably the person doing the heavy lifting, whilst the young, strong and fit sit around and plan and strategize, which often a code for mental masturbation.

The second group that we seem unable to recognise as human is anyone who happens to have the misfortune of being darker than pink and happens to work in a “menial” job. If you look closely enough, you’ll see that anyone doing the actual work on a construction site, a ship yard or a restaurant, inevitably comes from anywhere except Singapore. These are the guys who do all the jobs that we would never do or accept our children doing. When we want to get our kids to study hard, we warn them – “Study hard or you will end up sweeping the streets,” and the implication is you will be no better in life than a Bangladeshi.  If you head into any particular organisation, you’ll find that it’s the dark-skinned South Asian doing most of the brutal labour and getting the least. Whenever you point that out, the reply is inevitably “It’s a lot compare to where they come from.” Yes, sure it’s a lot compared to their home country but it’s the point is that these guys have to live and they’re not living in their home country – they are living here.

Contrary to what the late Michael Jackson used to say, it actually matters if you are black or white. Never believe anyone when they tell you that age is just a number. If you look at the way we treat our elderly and South Asian labourers, age is actually a demarcation of what you deserve and the difference in being black or white is inevitably about how much you deserve to be paid.

Let’s remember that we are officially a “meritocracy,” where things like age and pigmentation are not supposed to matter. Yet, despite this glaringly obvious point, people seem to accept it as a fact of life. Let’s put it this way, the real problem with Mr. Uddin is not that he was unfairly treated. The real problem is that he was unfairly treated and said so. In our system, the “darkies” of South Asia are supposed to be grateful for whatever shit they get.

This is not about being “liberal” or “conservative.” It’s about being human. The “Darkies” are here to do a job. To anyone who thinks they should be grateful for the scraps we feed, just understand that its not like we were doing the job and then out of the goodness of our hearts we gave the jobs to them and did something else. The fact of the matter is, our people won’t do anything that looks remotely menial. Whenever there was talk of going to the warehouse, the Padwan who is a healthy 28-year-old, would inevitably find that he had too much course work to handle. I’ve asked long term unemployed people to help out and the Bistrot and they’ll inevitably have something on and then ask you to top up their bus card.

So, let’s understand that the “Darkies” are not taking jobs from us. We are not offering them a blessing. We are hiring them because they are an important component of our relatively decent way of life. Let’s get the understanding that they’re willing to put up with certain hardships. So, in return, let’s accept that they should be treated fairly. Making sure they live in places where we’ll only enter without a hazmat suite is part of the bargain. If we want to keep our social contract going, its time we ensure that our part of the bargain is being kept.

Who You’re Taking On?

 

One of the most amusing things one can do is to listen to the way in which the middle class talk about people whom they deem lower than them. One only has to look at the way in which some people started grumbling about the way we moved migrant workers into slightly better conditions during the Covid period or the way in which people started to complain that their lives would turn to s*** if maids were given a day of rest.

As I’ve often said over and over again, being from a well to do family that could afford to send you to school, doesn’t actually make you a superior person. It merely means that you were lucky to be born into a family that could bestow certain things upon you that would put you into a reasonably advantageous place. Yes, if all things are equal, the guy who goes to university usually ends up ahead in terms of the usual signs of material success. However, it still doesn’t mean that the guy with the degree is a better person or even a smarter worker.

People from disadvantaged backgrounds have one crucial advantage over those from nicer backgrounds – namely hunger. The intrinsic lack of opportunities has a way of making people push themselves to create their own opportunities and the experience of having to “claw” your way up often makes you wise in the ways of the world. If you are like me, and hang around “professionals” you’ll find that everyone you meet on a daily basis is intelligent. However, very few are what you might call “wise.”

In my life, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some very smart people with wonderful qualifications. However, I’ve found that whenever, I’ve needed advice on a person’s character, I usually take it from my friends who are what the rest of society calls “down-and-out.” Flesh ball, for example usually gets certain characters right just by looking at their photos. The ex was also pretty darn good at it.

Why do such characters make good judges of character? The answer is simple. We in the professional services often get away with making certain misjudgments. The individuals we deal with may be character deficient but the institutions they represent are not. However, when you work on the streets, you need to learn how to be darn good at reading character. It’s a case of “you’re going to get f***ed anyway, so you need to make sure you deal with someone who will honour his part of the deal and pay.”

Yet, the well educated consistently overlook the fact that the “less educated” they deal with may have certain strengths. One of the saddest examples can be seen in the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson where Mr. Paul proceeded to try and intimidate Mr. Tyson in a pathetic show of “gansta” behavior.

Let’s leave aside the boxing for a moment. Fact remains, young Mr. Paul is a middle-class kid from a nice family. He’s is in boxing for the fun of it and using his genius for publicity to get the fights and get the good paydays. He’s a good career as a YouTube star. His only real experience of “Gansta” life is from YouTube persona.

Mr. Tyson is not the animal in the ring that he used to be. Age seems to have mellowed him. However, the fact remains, the guy grew up in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional part of the world and had he not found boxing, he may well have ended up as a corpse from one of the many gang fights from that part of New York.

Put it crudely, the scene is pathetic, where the actual thug laughs at the wanna be thug. More can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTX-Xn6Olwc

It boils down to this. You got to know who you are taking on. You should, for example, understand that people who have been in fights and have clawed their way up in life, are simply not going to be intimidated by someone who has never really had to fight for anything in life.

I think of a senior professional whose major threat to people was “I’ll block you.” Nobody actually took her seriously. I think another young lady from a developing nation who once broke a bottle when someone with a more imposing physical stature had a disagreement with her. At the end of the day, you have the professional class which talks a lot and complains when people do things outside their perception of the way the world should work. By contrast, there people who refuse to be intimidated and are willing to do what it takes to come out on top.

As I’ve often said to the Padawan – always recognize who you are taking on. Don’t expect them to play by the same rules as you and recognize that situations are dependent on the characters involved.

 

Begging – A Viable Career Option

 

Around two weeks ago, I came back from the UK It was my third trip since I went to my sister’s wedding this time last year. I’ve actually started to like London in a way that I never did when I lived there. I enjoy visiting old haunts like Dean Street, where I used to live and I’ve been really impressed by the way Canary Wharf has turned out.

There is, however, a part of the UK or London specifically, that I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. That is the issue of the homeless. Go into any given tube station, and you are bound to meet someone begging for change. Sit in any given pub or caffe outdoors and you’re inevitably going to meet someone asking you for change.

Like in Singapore, one is inevitably going to ask – “How does a city which has so much wealth have so many homeless people. However, unlike Singapore, the homeless in London are inevitably young people. Just as I often wonder how our “Asian Society” that claims to have “Respect for the elderly” manages to produce so many frail people selling tissue paper and crushing cans to eek out a living, I wonder how a city like London, which is supposed to be one of those cities where fortunes are built, manages to have so many young and fit people begging for a living.

One of the key things that you notice is that the tramps are inevitably local, white English people. Sure, much is made of gangs of Romanians and Poles but the ones I’ve encountered are inevitably local and white.

The homeless are generally speaking “harmless.” The usual process looks like something like this – they’ll ask if you have change to spare and you usually say “Sorry mate,” and walk off. Sometimes tramps can be useful. I had a tramp outside my house called “Zoe” who was an Irish girl. She did admit to having a house somewhere and as far as she was concerned, sitting by my door step and asking people for change was “work” (rather like how the girls in Geylang will tell you that standing on the street side is “work”). Zoe was sweet – she doubled up as a messenger. In the pre-mobile phone days, if Toni dropped by and I wasn’t in, he’d leave a message with Zoe. Or I was stepping out for a while but expecting Toni, I’d leave a message with Zoe.

Zoe wasn’t the only one. Tara and I had a favourite called Dave. He was our favourite because he was inevitably polite and never whined about needing your spare change. He’d sleep in his little corner and volunteered to help the local patisserie. However, as Tara once said, “As nice as he is, it’s like he’s become so content with his life on the streets, that he no longer feels the need to move out of them.”

 

 Believe it or not, he has a career – Copyright Alamy Stock Photos

Zoe and Dave were mild mannered and it was easy to accept them as the characters in your life. They were however, a little exceptional. One of the memories I have was hearing the ding-ding sound of a penny I had left one of the tramps on the street.

There were a few persistent ones. I think of a time I was sitting out at Café Nero with two Finnish ladies. One of came up to us and asked if we had spare change. When he went into a tirade about how we were lying about not having money because he could see that we had our mobile phones on the table. He actually told us, “I know you’re going to say you worked for your money…..I’m just asking ….. you don’t have to lie about it…….I can see you’ve got your mobile phones out.” I remember digging into my pockets to give him the change.

My most recent encounter was in King’s Cross, waiting for our train to St Andrews. Gave a young man a pound and if I was expecting gratitude for having a pound extra, I was dead wrong. He told me, “Come on mate, I can see you’ve got a tenner there. Why don’t you give me your ten and I’ll give you back seven quid change. I need the money.” I ended up giving him five extra.

In a way, it’s annoying when someone begging ask and demands a certain sum. After all, our money is hard earned and when you see someone who is young and fit, there’s actually no reason to give someone who should be working.

However, if you take a step back, you actually have to admire the persistence that some of them show in chasing you for money. It takes a certain amount of gumption to beg a stranger for the sum that you want. You could say that it takes a level of professional pride to ask for more when you’re doing utterly nothing in return.

 

Boxing Like He Won the Fight

 

I came back from the UK about two weeks ago and am only just getting back into the swing of things in terms of my exercise routine. It started like this – I was in reasonably good shape before I went. I had spent the month practicing a degree of intermittent fasting which I compounded with a bout of intense exercise (basic upper body calisthenics till failure or sprinting). I felt great. My resting heart rate reached all time lows and my insulin sensitivity seemed ok. Heart rate recovery seemed good too, so good that I worried my heart beat monitor of my phone had gone kaput.

So, I went to the UK feeling good. Then, I rediscovered dinning in great restaurants and regular drinking. I was, after all, in the land of fantastic single malts and sweets – specifically chewy things made from condensed milk. When I returned, it was back to another good week of corporate entertainment, which meant regular drinks and good food and places which served “interesting” beers. So, by the time I returned my first night of upper body work outs, I was actually sore for over a week and as I write this, I’m trying to shake of a minor gout attack, something which I’ve not had for quite a while.

This personal encounter with my declining physical fitness after a two-week break indicates one of the sad truths of life, namely the sad fact that life’s problems are more often than not brought on by our successes rather than our failures.

There are plenty of examples. One of the most dramatic came from the Fury-Usyk fight. The previously unbeaten and unbeatable Tyson Fury lost a split decision and actually had to take a standing eight count in the ninth round.

Nobody doubts that Tyson Fury like his idol, Mike Tyson, (Tyson Fury is named after Mike Tyson), is a force to be reckoned with. Like his idol in his first professional defeat, Mr. Fury proceeded to compound his defeat by announcing he had won but the judges were biased because his Ukrainian opponent was from a country at war (There was a claim that the referee had counted slowly in the defeat to Buster Douglas in 1990). Just as in the Douglas fight, whatever biases the judges may or may not have had could not obscure the fact that that the Usyk camp had their act together whilst the Fury Camp did not.

https://www.sportbible.com/boxing/boxing-news/tyson-fury-oleksandr-usyk-boxing-news-223456-20240519

 

 The most prominent critic of the fight was non other than Mr. Lennox Lewis, himself a former heavy weight champion, who criticized Tyson Fury’s tactics, saying “Fury was boxing like he won the fight,” and the said, “No boxer can judge and say they won the fight.” Mr. Lewis argued that boxers should “Every time a round was close, they should look at it like a loss.”

Simply put, Mr. Fury assumed he’d win and boxed liked he already won. Mr. Usyk by contrast came prepared and was disciplined enough to do what he needed to do.  

Successful people get lulled into believing that success is “God-Given” and they stop doing the things that made them successful in the first place. Successful people also tend to believe they wrote the rule book for success without fully understanding the context of their success.

If you go back to boxing. Mr. Fury’s idol, Mr. Tyson would later admit in his biography “Undisputed Truth” that the reason why he lost the 1990 fight to Buster Douglas was simple. Mr. Tyson partied the night before whilst Mr. Douglas trained exceedingly hard.

If you look at the “Greats” in any particular given field, you’ll find that its not that they were “undefeated.” In boxing, there’s Mohamad Ali, who is the idol of every professional fighter and known as the “Greatest.” If you look at things, Mohamad Ali didn’t have the “best” record as a fighter. That distinction goes to Ricky Marciano, the only heavy weight to retire “undefeated.”

So, why don’t we laud Mr. Marciano the way we laud Mr. Ali. The reason is simple – Mr. Ali had to face competition. He tasted defeat and he learnt from it. This of the trilogy of fights he had against Joe Frazier, a fighter who made him taste defeat. Both men gave their heart and soul into the fights they had.

Most of us have been fed a false narrative that success is about the absence of failure. We define a successful person as someone who has always gotten what they’ve wanted. I think of the myriad of Singapore government officials that get paraded around as being great because they have great academic results and perfect careers in the civil service.

The reality is that you cannot have real success without failure. If you look at the analogy of Mr. Ali and Mr. Federer in their respective sports, you’ll realise that real success comes from failure or defeat. Both men had their losses, dealt with it and came back stronger. These are the guys who inspire others. Ali lost to Frazier and then came back to beat him twice. Roger Federer set a record and inspired his two closest rivals to surpass him. One only has to think of how Rafael Nadal cried when Mr. Federer retired.

People who have tasted failure understand success is not “God-Given” and so they work to keep themselves there until they are no longer able to. People who assume its “God-Given” collapse once the they taste their first disappointment. It’s something HR departments need to keep in mind when looking at CV’s that fit perfectly.

What Aren’t We Getting?

 

I had a row with someone that I have grown to care very deeply for on Friday night. She took offense at the fact that I had glanced away from her and noticed someone else, whom she deemed not as good looking and thus her inferior. She felt insulted and disrespected and, in her efforts, to rub salt into the wound, she made the point that I had disrespected her on a “bus,” when she could have been with guys who drove Ferrari’s and Lamborghinis. She then made the point that I had been married to a Vietnamese girl, which at that point, I made the point that she had disrespected me previously with people I deemed inferior (graduates who work in offices) and she stormed off.

We haven’t spoken since and without her presence, everything around me feels so much heavier. However, if I look back at that conversation, the one thing that really seems to make me feel that things were off was when she talked about my ex. The thinking was simple – married to an inferior person therefore must be inferior.

I’m not going to pretend that my 13-years with Huong were easy. A lot of our moments were challenging and it’s not that we didn’t try. I’m not going to defend those 13-years we had. What I do take issue with is the innate sense of superiority that many graduate Singaporeans, specifically the local Chinese have when it comes people from third world countries. In a way, its especially prevalent amongst women who feel that the girls from these places are “luring” men and “conning” them.

To be fair this isn’t a complex restricted to Singapore’s Chinese majority. Ethnic majorities around the world tend to struggle when ethnic minorities climb up. I guess it’s a natural thing for people for the “top dog” in any society to feel uncomfortable when the underdogs start barking at their heels. Yet, for all the discomfort that this may cause, the stupidest thing that anyone can do is to dismiss people as being inferior based on their place of birth, education, ethnicity, religion and so on.

Yes, it’s a fact that a lot of girls from China and Vietnam do end up in the vice-trade. A lot of girls from the Philippines and Indonesia work as maids. However, just because someone works as a prostitute or a maid, it doesn’t mean that they are inferior to you, either in a “intelligent/ capable” sense or even in the “moral” sense of the word.

What exactly makes us “superior?” If I look at myself and Huong, I was only “superior” because I was born in Singapore. I had the good fortune to be born into a family that had the fortune to send me school in England. I have a degree and I speak at English. I have been in “professional services” all my working life and even my lowest, I didn’t really have do anything menial. Sure, I worked as a waiter, which was physical hard at times but not really a pain. If you look who I’ve worked for, most normal people would be surprised, I’m far from being a millionaire.

Yet, for all my advantages, I’ve come nowhere close to Huong, a girl from a Vietnamese home town (read – Village Girl), with no educational qualifications to her name, barely speaks anything other than Vietnamese who moved herself to Singapore and now to the USA. She didn’t just bring herself up. She brought two nieces and extension her family up along with her. This village girl ended up at the UN Headquarters in New York, which in Singapore is usually reserved for our Ambassador to the UN.

 

 From rural Vietnam to…..

So, when I look at things in this perspective, I don’t think I can call myself the “superior” one and if anything, she probably ended up “down” when she ended up with me.

What made her “successful,” despite lacking education, or the “social breeding” that we in the “professional class” deem so necessary to work as a street sweeper these days. The simple answer is this, this girl had the willingness to be uncomfortable and to change her path when things weren’t working. Things were not working in Vietnam, she moved to Singapore. Things were getting tough in Singapore, so she moved to the USA.

She also knows how to read people and to work within her community. Relationships are important to her because, well at the end of the day relationships are the key to survival. Will always remember how she grilled a female colleague of mine (Singaporean Graduate Chinese with professional qualifications) whom I used to hang out with. The next day this colleague gave me an earful about how she had done her research and believed Vietnamese girls were only after money. Funnily enough, Huong took one look at her and said the same thing. Her conclusion was “dirty girl – thinks you have a lot of money; I’m not letting her get one cent from us.” (my former colleague had commented on the size of her ring and said something about how I must have bought it for her)

Too many of us in professional middle class get caught up with the fact that we are professional and middle class. It’s as if our qualifications make us special. We like to brag about how stressed out we are at the office but stay in said job because it’s the only way we know of how to make a living. We think that our possessions define us and so we keep at our sad little lives because we’re too scared to do anything that endangers our ownership of possessions and therefore status.

My marriage to her wasn’t the easiest but it was the most educational. Being around her taught me more about reality than over 20-years of school and university. Thanks to her, I learnt how life works. It’s because of her that I am able to exist outside pigeon hole of the Professional Middle-Class world. I took manual labour because I was not afraid of looking low and I needed to have an income. These things I got when I started the marriage and having the mindset and willingness to do certain things my contemporaries won’t do is lesson more valuable than money and I will continue to argue that I will always go back and make the same decision to get together with her.