Being a Loser in the Free Market Open Door System Made Me Detest Anti-Immigrant Populism

 I make no secret that I detest Donald Trump. I was instantly turned off when he started going on about Mexicans coming across the border being “rapist” and how there was a need to build a wall to prevent horrible people from Mexico coming across to steal jobs from innocent Americans (read – the White variety), I wanted to vomit because, well that’s not true. I hated it when I saw people lap it up and what was particularly distressing was when you had people of colour in Singapore think of this as “speaking the truth,” (read if only we Singapore Chinese had a champion like Trump). 

I’m a “loser” of the open market system in as much as I had to take a blue-collar job in my late thirties so that I could pay my bill. My colleagues were predominantly Indian and Pilipino and I developed a good deal of affection for them. 

Maybe it’s just me but I can’t understand this belief that your job is being stolen. Whenever I’d hear “my people” complain about dark skinned Asians stealing our jobs and how Trump was really a great guy for proposing what he did with regards to the Mexicans, I’d look at the Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters and ask myself planet these people were living in. The Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters were the guys who had my back and yet the so called “concerned citizens” were supporting the idea that these guys were somehow my enemy.” 

Birthday with the Kitchen Thambis and Bruno’s Bistrot on Telok Kurau Road.

The same transpired when in my insolvency work. I was involved in a liquidation of a construction company. We had to sack or transfer over 30 workers who had not been paid. The receivables came in but somehow the bureaucracy was all about being fair to all creditors including financial institutions and so on (and to be fair to “my people,” the contact point in the financial institution we were dealing with told me privately that whenever a company went into liquidation, he’d always advise his side to write it off – his word were “You’ll pay me 10 cents on the dollar at most. It’s money that can’t interest me – get it to the people who need it the most). Somehow, paying the workers become less and less of a priority.

In that time, I broke the “rules” of working for an insolvency practitioner and extended money I didn’t exactly have to some of the workers. I remember a colleague telling me that I was breaking the “rules” as if this was the worst thing I could do. I was, as they say, “unprofessional.” It was even explained to me that “Indian and Bangladeshi” workers cannot be trusted.

I didn’t know how to explain to people who knew what I was doing that this was the right thing to do. Firstly, I wasn’t giving a handout but an advance on what they had claimed in their Proof of Debt form. Secondly, I also reasoned that although it was money that I couldn’t afford to toss about, it was money that I could make back by sitting in an airconditioned office for a few hours a day while these guys had to slog it out in the sun for the better part of a day so that they could provide “cheap” infrastructure to people like me and profits to slave traders like some of the creditors in this case.

Sure, I was open to accusations of being “unprofessional” and acting against the rules. How do you explain to people that if it’s a choice of being “human” or “professional,” its always better to be human?

I’m glad to say that when we did get round to distributing the dividends, I got paid most of my money and got to see the gratitude on the faces of these guys. One of them even felt that I was important enough to be the first guy outside his family to know his wife was pregnant with twins. He took me out for dinner the day he flew back to India.

Today, if you ask me about the moments, I feel most successful, I will inevitably tell you its when one of these guys remembers me. It makes my day when they send greeting cards or as one of them recently did, called me from India just to wish me well.

So, I detest anti-immigrant populist because from what I’ve experienced, they’re going after the people who I know to be for the most part, hard working and decent. Its like this, when a group of skin heads walk around town chanting “Jews will not replace us,” they make the case for why they need t be replaced. When someone like Sebastian Gorka gets on TV and talks about how the Proud Boys were started as a “Joke,” I’m tempted to think that Mr. Gorka should be placed at the wrong end of the Proud Boys activities and let’s see how funny he thinks it is.

Sure, I know these communities have their bad eggs but for the most part they are comprised of hard-working people trying to make a living. They are stealing jobs from the natives by doing the jobs that the natives won’t do.  Sure, I’m genuinely against the use of violence, however, when it comes to the nut jobs who chant “Jews (or any other ethnic group) will not replace us and think its OK to intimidate, I’m all for using whatever means necessary to eliminate the problem.

 

He Stung Like A Bee

Thanks to Covid-19, I’ve been consuming lots of Netflix moments. One of my most recent was to watch Ali, the 2001 film that depicts the life of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. This is perked my interest in boxing and the story of the man himself.

I could not have found a better time to get interested in the life of Muhammad Ali. Like most people, I’ve been glued to the TV, watching images of protest and riots caused by the murder of George Floyd, the black man, murdered by a white policeman. The Western world is going through a lot of angst about racism and police brutality. I’ve argued in a previous blog posting that Singapore, which, while geographically in Southeast Asia, has the same underlying problems that the Western World in terms of race relations, particularly with a dark-skinned underclass.

However, if you look at the life of Muhammad Ali, you’d find that there is a glimmer of hope. While his boxing achievements are well known, there are small, lesser well-known anecdotes from his life, which should inspire hope. What I found most interesting, came from the eulogy given by his fourth wife, Mrs. Lonnie Ali, where she told the story of how he got started in boxing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fpiQJH8daA

Muhammad Ali or Cassius Clay as he was known before then, grew up in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1960s. This was during “segregation,” a period of American history that was pretty similar to apartheid in South Africa. Government policy was designed to keep black people poor and while slavery had been officially been abolished a century or so ago, the laws were designed to keep the black population down. Kentucky was one of the places where segregation was not just law but culture.

So, when you look at this era of American history, in which he grew up, the first great sign of hope was the fact that the man who got him into boxing was a white policeman called Joe Marten. Mr. Martin, who had a sideline as a boxing coach. As Mrs. Ali said the funeral, “Something is going on when a cop from the South gets along with an inner-city black kid.”

The main point here is that goodness is possible in culture that is racist and small acts of kindness can make a bigger difference than brute force. The comparison that comes to mind is the American military campaign in Vietnam, which involved lots of bombing and the British campaign against the Malayan Communist, which involved a hearts and minds campaign. Superior force only united the local population against the Americans. The hearts and minds campaign brought the locals onto the side of the British. In the current situation, the cities that have managed the riots best are places where the cops put down their batons and hugged the protesters. The places where the situation that got inflamed were places where the cops treated the protesters like they were part of the battlefield.

The next point from the life of Muhammad Ali was the fact that he was associated with the Nation of Islam, an organization that is effectively promoted black supremacy (the other extreme). His first political mentor was Malcolm X and in between Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali, he was Cassius X.

As he grew in his boxing career, the man known as Muhammad Ali was particularly sensitive about his name. As far as he was concerned, his name was “Muhammad Ali,” and “Cassius Clay” was his “slave name,” which was thrust upon him by white slave owners (the original Cassius Marcellus Clay was a 19^th Century Republican Abolitionist). One of the most vicious beatings he gave anyone in the ring was to an opponent who called him “Cassius Clay.” Legend has it that with each beating he gave, he’d yell “say my name.”

Eventually, like his political mentor, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali moved away from the Nation of Islam’s more extremist ideology, towards mainstream Islam. He embraced people of all colours and faiths and was loved for it. There is a scene in the movie Ali, when his second wife tells him “Those brothers Xs and Ys are only there when you’re the champ and no longer there now you have no use to them.”

What does that say? I believe that this point of Muhammad Ali’s life shows us that going to the opposite extreme is not the answer. Extremist groups are only interested in themselves and you gain so much more when you cross lines of race and religion. At Muhammad Ali’s funeral, there was a point that religious leaders from all faiths would be present and acknowledged.

Muhammad Ali was not a saint. He was a philanderer (four wives and nine kids) and his “trash talking” which promoted fights did hurt. His rival, Joe Frazier, who had helped him out financially in the period where he was not allowed to box because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, grew very bitter towards him because Ali did insult him (called him a gorilla – didn’t help that Ali by contrast was very good looking in his youth).

However, he was a man of great courage, who overcame the circumstances of his birth and rose above the racism of his era. He gave back to the world. In an age where brutality towards the underclass and racist undertones are encouraged at an official level, his life story should inspire us to make a world of what it should be instead of what it is.