and may all your dreams and wishes come true.On 26 December every year in Singapore, there is a mad rush – tinsel is hurriedly ripped from banisters and shoved away, red paper lanterns yanked from the dusty boxes where they’d been stored the year before, and Mariah Carey finally shuts up to make way for the dramatic cymbal crashes of 大地回春. Because obviously, when Christmas Day is over, Chinese New Year begins. Immediately. Out you pop and on you go, Jesus, sorry! The thing about Chinese New Year is it’s pretty much the same concept as Christmas – you meet family, drink a lot of alcohol, then cook a lot of food and eat it – and yet it couldn’t feel more different. Even though they’re like…a month apart. Two, at the most. Maybe it’s just my family, but the most exciting thing on Christmas Day would be midnight mass; and strangely enough, I can never recall actually doing anything fun on Christmas. Or anything that justifies the month-long lead up to it, what with the atmospheric hustle and bustle of shopping, sales, and non-stop Christmas music. Christmas Day itself didn’t really need actual celebration, it was very much just about going to church for Jesus’ coming. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy about that. I love Jesus. But nothing truly joyful happens after. We don’t do Christmas parties, or whole-family gatherings, or Secret Santa gift exchanges. And there’s no cake. I recall how I spent the last Christmas – shopping online on lululemon’s winter sale and watching five episodes of K-Drama with my mum. And the one before – taking pictures at Edinburgh Castle (because it was the only clear day that week) then running straight back home to avoid the cold and – surprise! – watch eight episodes of another K-Drama. And I’ve always wondered: where is the joy? The celebration, the jubilation, the upholding of family, the season of compassion and giving? The rebuilding of friendships, the reconnecting over food and laughter? Christmas Day is, to me, perhaps the lamest day in the whole of December. And then dong dong dong qiang season rolls around. And through the endless repetitions of 贺新年 and 恭喜恭喜 in supermarkets, the stacks of empty angpao packets handed out at petrol kiosks, waiting to be filled with crisp, richly aromatic, freshly printed ten-dollar notes sporting the face of Yusof Bin Ishak gazing serenely out, moustache combed ever so neatly – I feel it. This is what I spend the whole year waiting for. Gradually, the whole of Singapore becomes adorned in red – the streets pulsate with life, every GONG XI FA CAI couplet quivers with anticipation. My mother’s voice starts echoing louder and louder from the kitchen, listing off the 537594 things to clean, oranges to buy, cucumbers to grate (because the real ones make their own lohei instead of buying it from DonDonDonki), pomelos to peel, snacks to order… the frenzy is infectious. And I go shopping for my 除夕, 初一 and 初二 outfits as my father lowers himself onto a chair at the dining table, sighing loudly with stacks of bills in hand as he apportions the appropriate sum to each angbao. $100 for children, $20 for first cousins, $10 for children of friends and friends of children, $6 for the random lucky kid who got brought along that day… The whole week before Chinese New Year, no one feels like doing work. Every brain in every school, office, home, is fixated upon the four imminent days of nonstop socializing and face-stuffing; of mahjong rounds and rowdy laughter. When 除夕dawns bright and early, I leap out of bed to go to school in the cute qipao I’d picked out weeks before, the prospect of a half-day, chocolate coins, and lessons replaced with lantern decorating competitions too alluring to miss. School ends, I am off to my paternal grandparents’ house for a quick reunion lunch, then whisked to Malaysia, where the maternal grandparents and packets of fireworks await. And that’s when the true festivities begin. As a child, this was the highlight of every Chinese New Year (it probably still is). I distinctly recall how, sitting at the dining table eating breakfast, I’d see a stack of passports with the familiar white and green Malaysian immigration checkpoint entry card slipped in between and feel my excitement mount, because ‘Malaysia’ and ‘holiday’ were synonymous. Now, with duffel bag and 初一 dress in tow, my family and I confront the agonizing three-hour traffic jam across the causeway. I no longer sleep across the back seat of the car to the strains of GOLD 90.5FM – instead I am scrolling through Instagram story after story of reunion meals, photos of oranges against a backdrop of landed housing estates, and friends’ family pictures. Inch by inch, the traffic crawls, and when we finally get to the familiar maroon driveway, Grandpa stands at the front porch waving his hands in greeting, beckoning us into the familiar warmth of his house. The house is the same as it has always been every Chinese New Year. A pole stands propped up over the garden wall where the midnight firecracker will be hung up, the dark leaves of carefully tended potted plants are punctured with angbaos that have been stapled on and an orange sits atop the corner of every table for good luck. My mother’s old room – which I now think of as mine – smells ever so slightly musty, from almost a full year of disuse. The sheets are clean though – Grandpa’s changed them, in spite of our less-than-24-hour stay. He always does. In the upstairs lounge area, dust motes hang in the air, haloed by the glow of the tropical 4pm sun. I pause. Standing on the staircase landing, gazing out onto the road winding through the estate, time seems to have stopped. Every nook, every crevice of this house has a story. A memory of pillow forts on the sofa, of tiny limbs crammed into a corner behind the speaker for a game of hide and seek, of dances across the expanse of bedroom floor, dark and firm beneath my feet. I close my eyes and breathe it in. Mothballs and wood. Safety. Familiarity. Childhood. My reminiscing is broken by a sharp peal of laughter from downstairs – Auntie’s animated voice filters past the pillars lining the staircase banister and I turn to go downstairs, descending back to the world of the present. Mum is lounged languidly across the squashy sofa, chatting to her, Nana and Datuk. Grandpa and Uncle are deep in conversation at the table on the front porch, and Dad is sat on the armchair, reading the news on his phone. The gate connecting the living room and front porch is open, and a gentle wind whistles in and through to the kitchen, where I can hear Grandma washing dishes. I sigh and melt into the other end of the sofa. I am content. When night has fallen, we return from our reunion dinner full from course after course of rich Chinese delicacies for the highlight of Chinese New Year – fireworks. Because when they’re banned in Singapore, what do you do? Run to Malaysia to light them, obviously. Born of an ancient Chinese folktale involving a monstrous villager-eating creature, the tradition of lighting fireworks still lives on, with their sparks and loud noises driving the creature away even to this day. The selection at hand ranges beyond the basic packet of sparklers – there are little bees that whizz around in greenish-yellow circles, ‘Pop-Pop’ pellets that explode when flung to the ground, tubes with five or six flaming balls that shoot out when lit, and, of course, the long red tell-tale chain of firecrackers. But that last one’s for later – it isn’t midnight yet. I stare at the selection before me, spoiled for choice. Grandpa’s outdone himself again. We have long outgrown our naïve fascination with fireworks, but every year he procures them for our amusement, and every year we play with them for his. The adults watch on as I select my first round to start the evening – some good old bees, which provide a high enough risk of burning oneself to deliver a decent thrill, and a small enough spark to still be relatively safe (it hasbeen a year since I last played, after all, and these spindly limbs need time to practise running away). I squat down, light the tiny green fuse at the end, then leap away to admire my handiwork. I watch with a small smile as the bee darts through the garden, weaving around plants and scorching a tiny trail along the grass. And then ever so suddenly! – I am alight with a childlike happiness once again. The next thing I know, we’re going through pack after pack, lighting and flinging and running and laughing, occasionally stopping to watch the neighbours’ display – they invest more finances and have better ones, I admit – before lighting again. By the flickering glow of a sparkler in my hand, I see the joy on their faces. Grandpa. Grandma. Datuk. Nana. Auntie. Cousin. Mum. Dad. Jie. This moment burns brightly in the warm, humid night as I raise the sparkler and begin to draw against the canvas of my family; a star for you, a star for me, a heart for us – patterns that sear themselves onto the back of my retina, where I pray they never fade away. As the night descends further into darkness, the houses grow more alive. The gates are open, the residents are mingling, the children are playing. Everyone is awake, awaiting the toll of the midnight bell. At 11.50pm, Grandpa goes into the house, and grabs one, two, three chains of firecrackers (one is obviously too little excitement to justify the year-long wait for this moment). He attaches one to the pole in the garden, and Uncle ties the ends of all three together. Adjacent to us, the neighbour does the same, laying his firecracker chain on the floor in a winding snake. All along the row of houses, people are laying their firecrackers out, while the rest of the family emerges and gathers a safe distance away across the street. As the numbers on digital display screens flash from 11.59 to 12.00, Uncle bends down – unhurried, unfazed – and lights the fuse. There is a brief moment of silence in the first few seconds of the new year as the whole world holds still. And then all at once, it explodes. Firecrackers down the street and through the neighbourhood are ignited simultaneously, propelling their still-hot debris across driveways. My eyes and nose are stinging from gunpowder as the seemingly never-ending series of cracks and bangs rains assault upon my ears. All around me, bits of exploded firecracker are flying across the scene and smoke clouds my vision, but muffled shrieks of exclamation filter through my plugged ears. At the same time, the surrounding houses light their grandest fireworks display, which soar into the night sky and burst overhead in a shimmering cascade of gold, green, red, pink and purple. Through the veil of smoke, I can make out the sheer delight on every face as we watch on in delight. These few minutes seem to stretch on for much longer – we are transfixed with awe, trapped in a singular moment of pure jubilation as the new year charges in with the sheer might of a dragon. As the last firecracker finally goes out with an almighty bang, I am engulfed in sticky embraces and shouts of ‘Happy new year!’ which I reciprocate gladly, giddy with delight and high off the smell of gunpowder that lingers in the air. I pass myself from relative to relative, hugging, grasping hands, smiling, celebrating with the ones I hold the closest. And when I finally get to the end, a red packet is placed in my hands, accompanied by a firm whisper: ‘步步高升,心想事成’. This year, as the first rays of 初一 illuminate the pink flakes of paper – remnants from last night’s firecracker – scattered upon the suburban driveway that I spent all my school holidays running about, I will not be sound asleep in the house within. When the car backs out of the driveway to ferry its occupants back across the causeway, I will not be sat inside. Instead I am miles away in the heart of London, at a table with just Jie and me. It is laden not with delicacies, but simple everyday dishes – dimsum and dumplings. In the evening, I have dinner in a flat that I have spent a mere five months in, with friends who have traversed the ocean alongside me. We wish each other ‘Happy new year!’ over an electric hotpot, eat, talk and laugh, though there are no fireworks to play with and no angbaos to collect. The streets are cold and quiet, the gates are shut. But later that night, when I retire to my room, I retrieve an old red packet that was passed to me the year before. Opening it, I carefully extract its contents – I know what is inside, I’ve opened it many times. From beneath the flap emerges a single slip of paper, on which is written in beautiful calligraphy my name, alongside the same greeting I had been hearing for years in that familiar driveway.
‘步步高升,心想事成。’ ‘Climb high, rise above, and may all the wishes of your heart come true.’
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On a cold, wintry Osaka night a few years ago, my family was waiting in line outside a famed restaurant, chatting over a subject too insignificant to remember, when a slight tap on my mother’s shoulder drew our attention to a middle-aged lady. Suddenly aware that loud conversations in public were considered acts of paramount rudeness in Japan, we immediately ceased our incessant yakking and looked at her with what we hoped were apologetic gazes.
‘Oh no – it’s just – are you from Singapore?’ Mildly thrown off by her question – a far cry from the admonishment we were expecting, a sheepish grin stole across each of our faces, accompanied by abashed laughter and vigorous nodding. It didn’t take much for us to realise what had given us away. Our accent, so unlike the twangy drawl of the Americans or the clipped precision of the English, had called out to our fellow compatriot in a foreign land like a siren blaring through the air. Sharp and unmistakable to many a familiar ear, Singlish is a crucial aspect of life in Singapore, and in many ways one we wield with pride. The typical Singaporean’s speech (and by that, I mean from snatches of dialogue you’d overhear in FairPrice) is tinged with recognisable influences from a predominantly Chinese population. Though lacking aspirated ‘t’ and ‘th’ sounds, these are instead replaced with hard and soft variations of ‘d’ – phonetic consonants found across various – while tonality is varied to a high degree. Nevertheless, despite having adopted its lilt from Chinese dialects, it is shaped just as strongly by the intonation of Malay and Indian languages, becoming lively and animated when heard in conversation. Perhaps most discernible of all, however, is the influence of Hokkien on colloquial speech. Hokkien, with its nasality that ends mostly in a downward inflection, is often perceived by the untrained ear as a rude and confrontational mixture of jabs – occasionally even mistakenly identified as an invitation for a brawl. But to a local, it is expressive, explosive, and exceedingly emotion laden. Even out of earshot of another countryman, the sonority of its familiar inflection rings damnnnn clear and true, piercing through the dim hubbub of indistinguishable murmurs. Nonetheless, distinctive though it may be, the local lingo is understood only by a select 5.9 million people and mastered by an even smaller number. It is, as I like to call it, a language of short-cuts (see: ‘cutting corners’). Hopeful ang moh pai’s attempting a transition to the privileged handful spend decades perfecting the art of losing the non-essential – a complex operation involving the identification of words that rarely value-add to one’s intended meaning, followed by the gradual process of learning to extricate them from everyday speech. Sticklers for the Queen’s English might dub the practice as lazy or imprecise, but I choose to believe in the phrase ‘high-speed, maximum efficiency’, which reflects the way of life so many of us have become accustomed to here. Too laborious to pronounce everything you’d like to say? No problem, cut the consonants. Too time-consuming to say a full sentence? Go ahead, purge the pronoun. Too burdensome to use the correct tense… What do present-perfect-past-progressive even mean anyway? Confusing sia. In this way, we convey the largest amount of intended meaning in the smallest time-frame possible, resulting in the machine-gun fire that so many of us have become accustomed to producing and decoding. But its reflection of Singaporean life is evident through more than just speedy discourse – the very language used is a rojak of slangs and abbreviations borrowed from various cultures (and often, subsequently butchered), to form a new means of communication that is entirely and uniquely ours. In this manner, the frequent hybridisation of English, Hokkien, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil unearths our nation’s humble beginnings as a land of immigrants. Years ago, our forefathers, empty-handed and barely aware of what lay before them, docked at our unassuming banks from faraway shores to build the bustling civilisation we know today, bringing with them their individual languages and dialects. Just over two centuries later, our diverse melting pot of different ethnic communities has come together as a society to develop a shared lingo for every member of the country – regardless of race, language or religion. It is to their gift of multiculturalism that we present our tribute of Singlish, honoured with pride through daily conversations, spoken with love to the ones we are closest to and preserved with dignity for generations to come. And yet, the colloquial vernacular is more than a just simple combination of words. As with all other languages, it is rich, complex, and ever-changing. While many of its words are variations of vocabulary from other dialects, over the years it has developed discourse of its own, influenced heavily by tone, delivery and expressive in its own right. Just like English has its 5W1H – ‘questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem solving’ (Wikipedia, 2021), Singlish has its 4L2M – ‘suffixes whose uses are considered essential in information provision or problem identification’ (Every Singaporean Ever, 2021). The similar sounding lah, leh, lor, liao, meh, and mah are in fact capable of giving the most basic of words vastly dissimilar connotations when employed, as evidenced by the legendary ‘Can [suffix]’ test. Unique to Singlish, these particles provide blindingly clear nuances to the well-trained listener. When read with each suffix and the appropriate inflection in turn, the phrase conveys certainty, soft protestation, acceptance, completion, doubt, and assertion respectively. Consequently, those well-versed in the practice of interpreting such particles are miraculously able to grasp the speaker’s intended meaning within a split-second and reply in yet another. Though, that being said, Singlish has even more than meets the eye. When a change in inflection is exercised, the phrase’s connotation becomes – alas, once again! – completely different. Ya lor. Liddat also can. But for all its convolutions and intricacy, the language remains a vital component of Singapore’s heritage, where it should continue to flourish for all the years to come. For the inhabitants of our sunny island, a good command of Singlish enables us to communicate across any and all groups in society. With an ability to transcend generational, social and language barriers, it unites us all under a singular flag, while preserving in each of us a reminder of our cultural roots and origins. It is the song of the streets, the rhapsody of the river, and the poetry of the people. Though grossly imperfect and highly unintelligible to the model English speaker, the local lingo often stirs in one a feeling of warm familiarity, in a country where everyone is your uncle or auntie, kor kor or jie jie, di di or mei mei. The sound of a fellow local is often what I miss the most when travelling overseas. Despite being dictionary-precise and perfect, the impeccability of spoken English in foreign countries is deeply alienating and unsettling, as I yearn for the rapid-fire rattle that has become second nature to me. But in a few months down the road, when, in a far-off wintry land, the faint melody of an irritable ‘Wah, damn cold sia!’ is carried to me on a chill gust of wind, its sting will become nothing but a cool embrace, its bite naught but a tender kiss. And amidst the barren landscape I will smile, for I know it is the sound of my city calling me home. - Ashley To many, a slice of kueh lapis is nothing more than a colourful steamed cake - perhaps a pastry reminiscent of days of yore, before the complications of fluffy Western bakes with three different cups of coffee on the side, all accompanied by different water to milk to espresso ratios. Or maybe a childhood surrounded by banana trees, bicycles and the omnipresent sepia filter that seemed to bleed out of photographs and into the very landscape they lived in. But for me, a kueh lapis slice is much less than that, and yet so much more.
In my mind's eye, the taste of kueh lapis is always accompanied by the warm, comforting sensation of my grandfather's hand on mine, grasping with the protectiveness and tenderness that only a grandparent can muster. Kueh lapis was a treat that only my grandfather would buy for me, perhaps because he was the sole person equally enamoured by the colourful pastry display at Bengawan Solo as I. While I ate a slice of kueh lapis today - a little over a week since his passing - I was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia and longing. For the first time, I was eating the kueh without him by my side. I ate them the way I always had: carefully extricating a layer from the one beneath it, sticking half the layer in my mouth then slowly chewing and swallowing the mound of sweet tapioca flour. Peeling each jewel-bright tone from the next seemed to bring back a rush of memories, each layer unearthing a worn set of innocence that had been previously buried by the convolutions of growing up. Pink. The safety of being held by my grandfather while walking to kindergarten. Green. The crinkle of plastic as I'd try to peel the kueh without touching its sticky surface. White. The excitement of eating something out of my usual home-cooked-food routine, something store-bought. Of simpler times, of quieter days, of a treasured childhood. Funnily enough, the enjoyment I derived from eating kueh lapis was less from the actual eating, and more from the peeling. As a fussy six-year-old child, its taste was nothing spectacular - mouthfuls upon mouthfuls of the same chewy coconut milk flavour - enough, in fact, to make me feel jelak by the time I'd eaten halfway through the kueh. But, oh... the peeling. The very act of gently stripping one whole glutinous layer cleanly off another brought a wealth of satisfaction, fulfilment and intrigue to my young, adolescent mind, which had somehow convinced itself that a kueh lapis layer, in all its flat rectangular glory, was akin to a legal (albeit slightly more flaccid) stick of chewing gum. The rarity of eating something in the likeness of chewing gum gave me a certain thrill, and my enthusiasm for peeling led to my christening of kueh lapis as a make-believe 'chewing gum'. Amused by the overactive imagination of mine, my grandfather took it upon himself to humour me with spontaneous Bengawan Solo trips before school to purchase the 'chewing gum'. Our acquisition of the forbidden goods was conspirational in nature - the evidence of our transgression was wiped out as quickly as it had been obtained, ingested into the stomach of yours truly as we sat on a bench outside Cold Storage. With a kueh in each of our hands, we'd watch the rest of the world go by in a comfortable silence, interspersed only by the occasional exclamation that accompanied a perfectly removed layer. But with a mind fully focused on the intense task of layer-peeling, I didn't realise that the warm presence next to me would one day disappear. Looking back, it is moments like these that I miss the most. Moments that seemed so everyday, so ordinary, that I took them as a given. And yet, though filled with longing I may be for just one more to treasure with the knowledge of it being finite, the carefreeness that fills those times is perhaps what makes them valuable. For to have spent those hours blissfully immersed in simply living framed them with a joyful innocence that can never be tarnished. Of the cool supermarket air-conditioning on a humid day, the starchy taste of coconut milk-infused kueh, and afternoons with just my grandfather and me. Today, eating a slice of kueh lapis is no longer a source of fascination, nor a thrilling, covert operation of stealth - the naivety of childhood has long worn off. But as I routinely chew each sweet, glutinous layer, I am once again reminded of the feelings that I will never let go of: the warmth of family, the solace of those precious afternoons, and my grandfather's boundless love. "Oye, que paso?" (If no one got it, it's an In The Heights reference. And I think no one got it.)
And when I looked at everything I had yet to finish this week with final IB exams in another eight...
I was suffering a burnout. Burnout from what, I'm not quite sure (to be very honest), but it was a burnout indeed; I couldn't concentrate in school for the entire day and had zero motivation to crack on with work. And when my mum reminded me that I had to get started with work, that was it - I went up to my room, flopped on the bed and started crying. Then I took a nice fat 2 hour-long nap (which thank God no one woke me up from) and woke up feeling much, much better. And that's when I realised: we do deserve occasional breaks and do-nothing-days, even if deadlines are a few weeks away. It's funny - we always text phrases like these to our friends, telling them it's okay to just lie down and let time tick away, and yet we ourselves fail to heed our own advice. Or maybe we choose to block it out, perhaps out of the fear of being unproductive. But that's the thing - we can do that. We can not do anything. We are allowed to be unproductive, to bask in our own unproductive-ness, and to be at peace with being peacefully unproductive. Humans were created human for a reason - we aren't robots, we don't comprise of machinery and mechanical gears, we were never geared to have a production yield of a hundred percent, 24/7. We are a grisly mess of guts, emotions, fears, yearnings, knowledge, conscience, thoughts, dilemmas - everything that makes us living, breathing, feeling creatures. And sometimes all this just gets too much. It catches up with us, and we forget that sometimes, it might be better to just succumb to it. I'm not saying we should completely immerse ourselves in our wallowing and sink down into the deep unknown (that would be dangerous and counterproductive), but sometimes we have to let ourselves be pulled along just beneath the waves, and allow them to embrace us, just for a moment. Which brings me to... The Pit of Wallowing In here, we can cry, we can wail, we can rant, or we can just do nothing and float along (refer to illustration above). Like a little stray piece of seaweed, we are suspended near the surface of the water, close enough to the top to see the filtered rays of sun, but far enough at the bottom to mute the buzz of the ever-changing world above until the raucous hubbub becomes a gentle hum. And it is in here that we can find peace amidst the tumultuous, raging storm (otherwise known as life). We learn to listen to all our worries, fears and anxieties, and choose to let them go. Of course, there is a danger to this - being swept up by currents of despair and sinking into the blue hole at the endless bottom of the pit - which is why we can't stay in the pit for long and need others to hold ourselves accountable for re-finding our footing once we've gone under ('friends', 'family' - hope these words ring a bell!). But when done right, having bathed in the water of the pit of wallowing, the negativity gradually sloughs itself off our skin and descends to the bottom, just like a piece of sediment. And when we're finally done, we lift ourselves up, feeling refreshed, rejuvenated and renewed, ready to continue our hike up the mountain of life. Love, Ashley x related links:
20 Scientifically Proven Ways to De-Stress Right Now, by Meredith Melnick Top School Stress Relievers for Students, by Elizabeth Scott Stressed? Tired? Burnt Out? Take A Pause, by Rodger Dean Duncan I am a person of colour. It is, admittedly, a strange feeling to realise that I am encompassed in that umbrella term - a strange feeling that most of you reading this will probably share, with the majority of you being from the same culture, ethnicity and country as I am. All my life, I've been surrounded by people who look like me - ethnicity-wise - and I have grown up in an environment where I belong to the majority race, something that I realise I've taken for granted, having (fortunately) never been shortchanged due to my race. And then I grew older, travelled wider, and realised that outside of Asia, I'm considered the minority. I never once thought that that term would be used to describe me in any way, but the truth is that it is. And along with that categorisation came the unspoken label - "P.O.C.", and with the label came the assumptions, the stereotypes, and the subtle racism. It's the sort of racism that you don't feel too offended by the first time - the kind that is disguised as a compliment and completely unintentional, the kind that you smile at and laugh off and occasionally even thank them for, the kind that makes you stop in your tracks and wonder, five minutes later, Why did the sweet lady at the cookie dough shop even ask me that? - the most poisonous kind. Because you never realise it's there, until you slowly begin to understand the implications of what was said to you, and the indignation creeps in ever so slowly before gnawing away for the next three days, creating a nest of resentment. Something like 'Your English is really good, where did you learn it from?' And this is what concerns me the most - unintentional racism. If you so much as thought, Yes, I've had that said to me before, then you've been a victim of unintentional racism too, whether you've realised that beforehand or not. And chances are, you probably have. Now, the above example is just my own experience with unintentional racism and merely one of the many, because such racism can take many different forms - and, more often than not - is used with humorous intent. Racism is not a one-way street, it comes from people of many different ethnic groups and is directed towards people from just as many other ethnic groups. People often hear about racism and think that it must be from a majority group to a minority group, but that's not true, because racism is defined as 'the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race', and all races and ethnicities are capable of exhibiting such behaviour towards another. Members of minority races can be racist to members of other minorities, or even the majority race, and it would serve us well to remember this when we make meaningless remarks - something even I am guilty of from time to time. Which brings me to one of my points: racist slurs. As a teenager in high school, I have the same fears that most other teenagers do - losing my friends, being judged by others around me, being labelled as overly-sensitive and uptight, etc. - and all these fears have stopped me, time and time again, from speaking out against casual racist comments that have been thrown around carelessly by my own friends (who, I know, mean no harm). And I am embarrassed to admit that most, if not all, of the time, I have forced myself to turn a blind eye to such language, feigning ignorance and oblivion, with the but-I-know-they-didn't-mean-it mindset (a highly dangerous one, might I add). But the recent cold-blooded murder of George Floyd has once again spurred the world into action, and me along with it. The fire of racism is being fed by small, seemingly harmless jokes like these, and will raze everything to the ground unless we take a firm stance against such behaviour. We might not intend it, but those (rather poor) attempts at humour are part of the reason why people still see racist behaviour as acceptable, when it clearly is not. By using or not speaking out against usage of the n-word, for example (or any variations of it and other forms of derogatory language at all, regardless of lack of malicious intent), we're propagating racist sentiments and partaking in the spread of casual racism. And by using it as a joke, we're downplaying the severity of one of the most hate-filled, shameful periods of American history, as well as trivialising the plights of all who suffered through it, which is disrespectful in every sense of the word. And most definitely not okay. Being part of the ethnic group that has been highly targeted in recent months due to xenophobia should have made us more aware of the impacts that our statements have on the groups of people they concern, but the collective fury that we directed together against Chinese-oriented racist sentiments seems to have dissipated when it comes to our treatment of other races. Hypocrites, indeed. But unintentional racism goes way beyond bad jokes and name-calling - it enters the territory of cultural dilution. To many of us in the East, if someone asked us for our race, we'd identify as Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean, Thai, Indian... the list goes on. But ask someone from the West, and they might simply refer to the whole lot of us from the East as Asian. And ask someone white from the West, and we might become just a small composition under the umbrella term 'people of colour'. You see where I'm going with this - as we zoom out further and further on a demographic scale, our cultural identity becomes lost in the sea of colour, eventually becoming one of two blobs: white, or not-white. And this is where I draw the line. For those of you who stubbornly insist that white superiority no longer exists - wake up. The very fact that terms such as 'people of colour' are still being used to separate the global population into 'white' and 'not-white' is proof that white superiority is prevalent. And the very fact that terms such as 'people of colour' are being used by politicians and prominent figures in statements addressed to specific ethnic groups such as black and Latinx folk shows that there are many who simply lump the not-white's together in a bland monochrome, as artfully described by Jason Parham. But we are more than one singular colour, and should not be labelled as such. We are each different, defined by our unique cultural heritage that sets us apart - we are far richer, and far more diverse than the term 'people of colour' gives us credit for. 'People of colour' had been coined to be a safe, non-racist alternative, and its emergence as a go-to term was well-meaning. But what people don't realise is that continued usage of this term deviously, inconspicuously sketches seemingly unnoticeable lines between the whites and the not-whites until the lines are layered on top of each other and a glaringly obvious divide is formed, cementing the foundation of an us-versus-them mentality that was unknowingly created by the 'POC' label. And now that we know this, it's high time we destroy that foundation, to dig up the seeds of casual and unintentional racism before they're allowed to be sown any further. I am a person of colour. But that does not, and should not, define me. Because beyond that, I am also Asian. And I am also Chinese. And I am, undoubtedly, still myself. Love, Ashley x related links:
What We Get Wrong About 'People of Colour', by Jason Parham These are the images of George Floyd you should see, by Alisha Ebrahimji The Death of George Floyd, In Context, by Jelani Cobb |
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