Living in a Goldfish Bowl

 

A few months before Christmas, I had a drink with an Italian and an Asian girl. The Italian started on the topic of how he been misled to believe that Jesus was White when in reality he was from the Middle East. I remember saying, “Yes, Jesus was a Palestinian.” At that point, the Asian girl in the discussion got very upset with me and said “No, he was not a Muslim – he was Jewish.”

It goes without saying, that the girl in question is highly educated and worked in some pretty prominent places. I state this because, I’ve noticed that as much Singaporeans are as a group highly educated, many of them tend to confine how they see people from different parts of the world, through a very strange prism of colonial hangovers.  

You could say that part of this is due to Lee Kuan Yew’s attempt to reorganize race and religion. Mr. Lee, who was a very brilliant man by all accounts had a few quirks. He was, for example, determined to turn the Chinese community a “homogeneous” one, where Chinese dialects ceased to exist and all Indians were “Southern.”

In a way, this was a blessing. Singapore has been relatively peaceful where topics of racial and religious tensions only exist in the history books (or National Education in official speak) or what happens elsewhere in the region.

However, as more migrants from India and China have arrived, much of our perceptions of race and religion are being challenged. This is, in many ways, a healthy sign in that such concepts should be fluid but if handled wrongly, it could move things out of the history books and onto the streets.

Let’s start with the basic facts. Religion and race are separate issues. If you look at the Palestinian community, there is the fact that whilst a majority are Muslim, there are Christians and it’s been argued that the Palestinians today have better claim of being more closely related to the ancient Hebrews of Jesus’s day than many Israelis.

Then, there’s the fact that many “races” in the world are more diverse than we credit them for being and it has become more so. In Singapore, the local Indian population is mainly of Tamil (South Indian) descent. So, we’re told that Indians are Tamil and if you ask the average Singaporean, they’ll tell you that the language of Indians is Tamil. It shocked an aspiring politician I know, when I told him that the national language of India is in fact Hindi rather than Tamil. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, of the Chinese. As a few Main land Chinese girls have explained “They’re better looking than the local Singaporeans because they’re from different parts of China.”

As much as the government likes to bleat about its success in making Singapore “multi-cultural,” “multi-racial,” and “multi-religious,” the truth of the fact was the job was relatively easy. The Chinese were predominantly Southern Chinese and the Indians are predominantly Southern, specifically Tamils. Hence, it was relatively to define “Chinese” and “Indian.” If you were to add the expatriate population, it was for a time, mainly people from English speaking countries, namely Brits, Americans and Australians. So, it was easy to categorize “White” people as being the same.

Talk to enough Singaporeans, and you’ll find that they see the world and its people in the following categories:  

1.    Land of Natural Leaders and Wonderful Looking People where we’re so blessed because they give us our prosperity all that’s good in life – (The USA, The UK and Australia):

2.    Land of People who give us nice cars and brands we want but unfortunately speak funny languages (everywhere in the EU);

3.    Land of People who look similar to us, who give us interesting cuisine and TV shows (Japan and South Korea);

4.    Land where people look like us, could give us some business but they’re just uncouth and slutty (China);

5.    Our cousins the country bumpkins (Malaysia);

6.    The lands where we can sin with abandon because they’re filled with lazy and slutty people (everywhere else in the ASEAN region);

7.    The Land where people have lots of money but we wish they wouldn’t follow the religion that people in the first category don’t like; (the Middle East)

8.    The Land of Smelly People who should be thankful that we allow to clean our s*** (Every country on the Indian Subcontinent); and

9.    The Land where that provides us with sad stories but we don’t really care because they’re a bit dark.

As comforting as it may be to see the world in neat categories and subscribing ethnicities and religions to geographies, the world is not so neat. I’ve noticed that many people in Singapore struggle when people don’t fit into a category. Unfortunately, this does creep into officialdom.

One of the most blatant was from an Afrikaner friend, who went to see the immigration officials and they were stunned. He looks like he’s from category or two but his passport says he’s from a country in category nine. He was asked “What do they call you?” They couldn’t understand when he said “South African” (the place that issued his passport).

Then, there’s the issue of Indian professionals migrating here and the various complaints against them. I do get that there must be a good number from the community that aren’t stand up people. I do get the complaints about people with “fake certs” and so on.

However, one has to get over the idea that people born in category eight are capable of doing the jobs that we’ve been so conditioned to think of as the prerogative of people from category one. I remember someone sending me list of the top tier management of Standard Chartered Singapore, which was predominantly Indian-national and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t emotionally triggered. Here’s the fact, all of them had qualifications from top universities and work experience from large corporations. (As a matter of disclosure, the Indian National Community, where the only community willing to support me during my years of freelancing.)

I remember during the race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. I was in favour Rishi Sunak getting the job (admittedly based on a bias towards the contributions of the South Asian community.) There were many people in Singapore who were upset with me for the apparent inability to understand than anyone from category eight was not supposed to lead anything (for the record, Rishi Sunak lasted longer than Liz Truss and had to stabilize her mistakes).

Then, there’s the fact that the nations in category one and two, are not exactly the preserve of any particular race or religion. People of different ethnicities and religions have made the USA, the UK and Australia home and contributed accordingly. I think of a customer who was ethnically Vietnamese but as German as someone who was blonde haired and blue-eyed. I remember asking her friend blonde and blue-eyed friend if she was German, in German and it was the girl of Vietnamese decent who replied me, in German.

In a way, it’s quite funny to see how people who “ethnically” look like they’re from category four and beyond but born and bred in categories one and two, discover their attachment to their “homeland.” I think of a British banker called “Singh” who had to put “UK” in his email address. Then, there was an ex-lover who happened to be black but American (Georgia) who used to stress that she had a “US PASSPORT” and had to relationship with the Nigerians who had a restaurant in Sam Leong Road, Little India.

The world has moved on from the colonial era and flows of migration have made the world, on the whole, a better place. Our concepts of race, religion and nationality should no longer be rigid. We should celebrate that you can no longer assume a person’s nationality by his or her religion or race and its time we ditch concepts that should have gone the way of the dinosaur.