#3: What Do You Mean?
I told myself this was going to be a quick one but it's a 500 word post :(
Hello! Here’s a quick one before Chinese New Year properly kicks off. I’ll be back later in the festive season with something more substantial. Bonus points will be awarded to anyone who manages to guess what I’m going to focus on in my special CNY edition. The points aren’t worth anything but I’d like you to guess anyway so I can steal ideas for future newsletters from your responses. :)
If you’re a Chinese Singaporean celebrating the New Year this week, you will probably find yourself in rooms full of only Chinese people. (To be honest, I know a lot of Chinese Singaporeans are frequently in only-Chinese rooms but I’m trying to give my readers the benefit of the doubt here.) These environments are especially hospitable for anyone looking to volunteer their racist opinions on racist things.
You have two main options* if you realise that you’re the audience for a racist comment: ignore it or challenge it. If you ignore it, you’re sending the signal that you’re someone who’s fine with racist speech in your presence. I know you could find loopholes because there are a bunch of scenarios where that isn’t true – like being in an abusive family situation where it isn’t safe to speak up – but please save your secondary school debate skills for someone who cares. :)
I’ll do a longer post on how to effectively challenge someone’s racist statements some other time but here’s a quick tip: play dumb. It’s my favourite game. Just keep asking questions! Hear a racist joke? Ask the clown to explain the joke. What’s funny about the statement? Which bit am I supposed to laugh at? A reasonable person will quickly get embarrassed when they peel back the layers of their joke and realise that they found humour in primitive assumptions about entire groups of people. This method may not work for the most hard-boiled bigot but it’s worth a shot.
Ok! That’s it from me for today. Have a good break! Send me an email if you try Socratic questioning with your racist relatives and let me know how it goes. And if you know me in real life, feel free to tip me in pineapple tarts. They’re my favourite.
*There are other options, of course. You could tweet or send an annoyed text to your brown friend about how unreasonable your relative is being… please don’t do that. What it demonstrates is that you’re smart/woke/sensitive enough to know that Racism Is Wrong but not courageous enough to bring this up with people who may not agree with you. Boring!
Further Reading
Here’s an article in New Naratif about the construction of racial categories and ideas in colonial Malaya. I was going to gift you the article but I realised that it would reveal my name. I know most people already know who I am but let me just pretend I’m good at anonymity. You should absolutely subscribe to New Naratif! They do important work and everyone knows independent journalism in Singapore needs all the support it can get.
Mahogany Journal is a new online literary space for South Asians in Singapore. They’ve just opened up their call for submissions and you can find all the information here. I don’t usually share unpaid writing opportunities but I don’t think these rules apply to initiatives that are by and for a specific community. I’m looking forward to seeing what they publish!