06 May 2007, ST
Of all the foreigners here, I feel least comfortable with Caucasians. Am I nursing a colonial hangover?
By Sumiko Tan
AN INCIDENT occurred last week which I'm not proud of, but here goes.
I'd got into a minor run-in with a motorist over a parking lot, and when I realised that the driver of the other car was Caucasian, my immediate reaction was: 'Stupid ang moh.'
I went on to rant to my mother who was with me in the car: 'Who does he think he is, lording over us Singaporeans? If you don't like it here then go home.'
I continued in this vein for a bit before I stopped, appalled at my outburst.
As a Singaporean of a certain generation - I grew up in the 1970s before Special Assistance Plan schools and community self-help came into the picture and made people more race-conscious - I've been trained to be colour-blind.
It was ingrained in us in school that there were four main racial groups - Chinese, Malay, Indian and 'Others' - and that it was just not the done thing for you to point out how different others were from you.
If we were asked to describe ourselves, the answer would be that we were Singaporean.
If this sounds to non-Singaporeans as if we were being brainwashed, we weren't.
Many of us accepted the fact - even revelled in it - that living in a multiracial country meant being extra-sensitive to how others felt.
We understood that you shouldn't make a big deal about another person's race and, heaven forbid, pass snide remarks about it.
So even today, you will never find me flinging 'stupid Malay/Indian/Eurasian' at a fellow Singaporean of a different race - even if he did snatch a carpark lot from under my nose. It's just not the thing to think or say.
So how have I now become a person who, in a moment of stress and duress, defines a Caucasian by his race?
EVERYWHERE you turn these days, you are bound to see a 'foreigner'.
Although I've been drilled not to be race-conscious, the influx of foreigners has reached a point where I can't help noticing their presence.
There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners working and living here and I sometimes get the surreal feeling that I'm a stranger in my own land.
I feel it most when I'm at Great World City or Tanglin Mall over the weekend when it is packed with Westerners, or Little India on Sundays when foreign workers from India and Bangladesh congregate. As a Singaporean I feel outnumbered.
Of all the foreigners here, I am the least comfortable with Caucasians - I don't really know how to relate to them.
It's puzzling, really.
I'm at home with the English language that many Caucasians speak.
I'd friends in school who were half-Caucasian - I even went out with a boy whose father was Australian.
I've an aunt who married an Australian and cousins who married Caucasians, or ang moh as we call them (red hair, literally in Hokkien).
Goodness, my sister married one, too, making my beloved niece and nephew half-ang moh.
I have Caucasian colleagues and we have no problems getting along.
If I were someone born in an earlier era, you might attribute this discomfort to a hangover from colonial days. It's a curious condition where one suffers from either an inferiority or a superiority complex towards whites, sometimes even both at the same time.
But by the time I came into the picture, Singapore had already shrugged off its British colonial past and so I don't carry that baggage - I think.
Yet why is it that I don't feel as comfortable with Caucasians as I do with, say, Indians or Indonesians?
Is it language? That because English isn't my mother tongue I think I can't speak it as well and so lack confidence in their presence?
Is it because I've watched too many Hollywood shows and read too many Western magazines that my definition of beauty has become bound by Caucasian standards, and because I don't meet the blonde-hair, blue-eyes ideal, I don't feel attractive enough in their presence?
Or could I actually be harbouring lingering anti-colonial resentment?
Or is it simply that I haven't known enough Caucasians to feel at ease?
When I meet an Indian from India, for example, I instinctively feel comfortable because I have many Indian Singaporean friends (the irony, of course, is that the Indian from India might not reciprocate my feelings, not having grown up with the Chinese).
Or could my discomfort be that there are so many 'types' of Caucasians - Americans, Australians, Brits, New Zealanders - all with their own codes of behaviour that I don't even know where or how to begin to communicate?
Or maybe their tendency to insist on their rights scares me?
As a Caucasian colleague herself notes: 'Caucasians take things so personally and the 'I am an Individual' schtick must be a pain to deal with if you come from a culture of doing things collectively and not making people look stupid in front of others.'
Whatever the case, I do realise that the loss is mine.
If only I weren't so wary, I'm sure there are friendships to be made.
IT'S one of the sad facts of life that there will always be people who believe in a hierarchy of race - and they don't even necessarily place their own at the pinnacle.
Most of the time, people keep a lid on their prejudices, but when under stress will lash out at those they have the least common ground with.
But race is a complex thing. While being too dissimilar can bring problems, so can being of the same race.
Take the way Chinese Singaporeans view the Chinese from China.
Twenty years ago when China was impoverished, many Singaporeans either took pity or looked down on their mainland cousins.
Ten years ago when they started coming here in droves, especially the women, Singaporeans started resenting them.
Now, with China prospering and the Chinese making billionaire lists, the tide has turned. They are admired, feared and even envied.
So what is to become of Singapore as more foreigners make their home here? Will society change and will race be an issue?
Given how so many Singaporeans buy into multicultural tolerance, my bet is on how it won't, although the concern about whether foreigners are taking away jobs from Singaporeans is another matter.
Every once in a while, tempers will flare and base thoughts will flash in people's heads. I've no doubt that the motorist last week saw me as a 'stupid local'.
But in the end, that run-in - like so many quarrels between people of different races, or even the same - wasn't about race.
We were just two stupid motorists, from the same human race.
Of all the foreigners here, I feel least comfortable with Caucasians. Am I nursing a colonial hangover?
By Sumiko Tan
AN INCIDENT occurred last week which I'm not proud of, but here goes.
I'd got into a minor run-in with a motorist over a parking lot, and when I realised that the driver of the other car was Caucasian, my immediate reaction was: 'Stupid ang moh.'
I went on to rant to my mother who was with me in the car: 'Who does he think he is, lording over us Singaporeans? If you don't like it here then go home.'
I continued in this vein for a bit before I stopped, appalled at my outburst.
As a Singaporean of a certain generation - I grew up in the 1970s before Special Assistance Plan schools and community self-help came into the picture and made people more race-conscious - I've been trained to be colour-blind.
It was ingrained in us in school that there were four main racial groups - Chinese, Malay, Indian and 'Others' - and that it was just not the done thing for you to point out how different others were from you.
If we were asked to describe ourselves, the answer would be that we were Singaporean.
If this sounds to non-Singaporeans as if we were being brainwashed, we weren't.
Many of us accepted the fact - even revelled in it - that living in a multiracial country meant being extra-sensitive to how others felt.
We understood that you shouldn't make a big deal about another person's race and, heaven forbid, pass snide remarks about it.
So even today, you will never find me flinging 'stupid Malay/Indian/Eurasian' at a fellow Singaporean of a different race - even if he did snatch a carpark lot from under my nose. It's just not the thing to think or say.
So how have I now become a person who, in a moment of stress and duress, defines a Caucasian by his race?
EVERYWHERE you turn these days, you are bound to see a 'foreigner'.
Although I've been drilled not to be race-conscious, the influx of foreigners has reached a point where I can't help noticing their presence.
There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners working and living here and I sometimes get the surreal feeling that I'm a stranger in my own land.
I feel it most when I'm at Great World City or Tanglin Mall over the weekend when it is packed with Westerners, or Little India on Sundays when foreign workers from India and Bangladesh congregate. As a Singaporean I feel outnumbered.
Of all the foreigners here, I am the least comfortable with Caucasians - I don't really know how to relate to them.
It's puzzling, really.
I'm at home with the English language that many Caucasians speak.
I'd friends in school who were half-Caucasian - I even went out with a boy whose father was Australian.
I've an aunt who married an Australian and cousins who married Caucasians, or ang moh as we call them (red hair, literally in Hokkien).
Goodness, my sister married one, too, making my beloved niece and nephew half-ang moh.
I have Caucasian colleagues and we have no problems getting along.
If I were someone born in an earlier era, you might attribute this discomfort to a hangover from colonial days. It's a curious condition where one suffers from either an inferiority or a superiority complex towards whites, sometimes even both at the same time.
But by the time I came into the picture, Singapore had already shrugged off its British colonial past and so I don't carry that baggage - I think.
Yet why is it that I don't feel as comfortable with Caucasians as I do with, say, Indians or Indonesians?
Is it language? That because English isn't my mother tongue I think I can't speak it as well and so lack confidence in their presence?
Is it because I've watched too many Hollywood shows and read too many Western magazines that my definition of beauty has become bound by Caucasian standards, and because I don't meet the blonde-hair, blue-eyes ideal, I don't feel attractive enough in their presence?
Or could I actually be harbouring lingering anti-colonial resentment?
Or is it simply that I haven't known enough Caucasians to feel at ease?
When I meet an Indian from India, for example, I instinctively feel comfortable because I have many Indian Singaporean friends (the irony, of course, is that the Indian from India might not reciprocate my feelings, not having grown up with the Chinese).
Or could my discomfort be that there are so many 'types' of Caucasians - Americans, Australians, Brits, New Zealanders - all with their own codes of behaviour that I don't even know where or how to begin to communicate?
Or maybe their tendency to insist on their rights scares me?
As a Caucasian colleague herself notes: 'Caucasians take things so personally and the 'I am an Individual' schtick must be a pain to deal with if you come from a culture of doing things collectively and not making people look stupid in front of others.'
Whatever the case, I do realise that the loss is mine.
If only I weren't so wary, I'm sure there are friendships to be made.
IT'S one of the sad facts of life that there will always be people who believe in a hierarchy of race - and they don't even necessarily place their own at the pinnacle.
Most of the time, people keep a lid on their prejudices, but when under stress will lash out at those they have the least common ground with.
But race is a complex thing. While being too dissimilar can bring problems, so can being of the same race.
Take the way Chinese Singaporeans view the Chinese from China.
Twenty years ago when China was impoverished, many Singaporeans either took pity or looked down on their mainland cousins.
Ten years ago when they started coming here in droves, especially the women, Singaporeans started resenting them.
Now, with China prospering and the Chinese making billionaire lists, the tide has turned. They are admired, feared and even envied.
So what is to become of Singapore as more foreigners make their home here? Will society change and will race be an issue?
Given how so many Singaporeans buy into multicultural tolerance, my bet is on how it won't, although the concern about whether foreigners are taking away jobs from Singaporeans is another matter.
Every once in a while, tempers will flare and base thoughts will flash in people's heads. I've no doubt that the motorist last week saw me as a 'stupid local'.
But in the end, that run-in - like so many quarrels between people of different races, or even the same - wasn't about race.
We were just two stupid motorists, from the same human race.
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