Antipodean Anecdotes 1: Naomi's story about racism

Hi! Here's the first of a series of my observations from my month long trip to Australia and New Zealand (via Singapore). I shall kick things off by sharing a comment left to me by a reader a while ago and I promised her I would write a post on the topic once I had returned from this month-long trip. So, this is what Naomi said to me, prior to my trip to Australia:

Being the tourist at the Sydney Opera House.

Naomi4 September 2017 at 08:07

Hi LIFT, I have read a few of your posts commenting on (perceived) racism and race issues in Britain, Singapore, even Prague just to name a few. I've had a handful of Chinese Australian contacts who spin a very scornful image of Australians - the whites discriminate against them, the aboriginals are rude and uneducated. Claims include being bypassed in the queue for purely being Asian/Chinese, being treated coldly by service staff compared to other white customers. Would you be able to share any stories regarding race issues and racism you may have experienced in Australia? I'm really curious as to whether the white Australians are genuinely racist the way Germans did towards Jews during the Nazi rule.

Thanks for the comment Naomi and I want to point out that Naomi was merely reporting what she was told by some Chinese Australians rather than talking about a personal opinion. Let me offer what I have to say on the issue - I did meet up with some friends in Australia whilst I was in Sydney and Melbourne, I also did the AirBNB thing and had some very long chats with my hosts about a range of issues ranging from the gay marriage referendum to immigration. So what I am about to express is mostly based on those conversations as well as my experiences I had travelling through Australia. I had meant to be spending a lot of time in Australia with my partner, but two things happened whilst I was there. Firstly, in Brisbane, whilst my partner was still extremely busy with work whilst I was there, so I ended up exploring Brisbane on my own most of the time. And secondly, when we were finally supposed to have escaped to Sydney on holiday together, very strong winds had closed one of Sydney airport's runways - I was on Virgin Australia so I was fine, but he was flying Tiger Air so his flight was cancelled and he was offered another flight 48 hours later. Given the amount of work he had to do, he chose to stay in Brisbane and work another 48 hours more there, whilst I had 48 hours to explore Sydney on my own. As a result, I ended up talking to a lot of Australians in those 48 hours - what can I say, Sydney is a very friendly city and so many people were happy to chat to me (I was equally grateful for the company).

So let me introduce you to a word you may or may not be familiar with: "Pommie" (sometimes spelled as 'Pommy'). That is a slang word they use in Australia to refer to someone from England and given the strong links between the UK and Australia, well there are plenty of Brits in Australia today. So when I got talking to the people in Australia, one of the first questions they asked me was, "where are you from?" That's always a difficult question as I've just celebrated my 20 year mark in the UK and even though I'm from Singapore, I've not lived there in two decades and I have a UK passport. So I would answer that question with, "London" as that seems like the most appropriate answer, rather than tell my life story to a stranger I've just met. And so many of them told me, "oh you're a Pommie!" Their words, not mine, may I stress. Here's the thing that struck me: not a single white person challenged my 'pommie' status of being a Brit - the only people who weren't prepared to accept that answer were the Asian people I spoke to, who then asked a follow up question like, "yeah but where are your parents from?" You see, the Asian people were like, "you're some kind of Asian and I want to know what kind of Asian you are" whereas the white people I spoke to didn't seem to have that kind of mentality at all.

Welcome to the post-racial world, some of us have already gotten there before the others but allow me to invite you to come visit as it is a pretty awesome place. You see, the white Australians I met were far more interested in things like where I was living, what kind of work I did, what brought me to Australia etc rather than my skin colour per se. But the Asians I spoke to, well, they seemed to have a need to check my ethnicity to establish or not, for example, we had a language in common or shared some kind of Asian cultural heritage. I can see that if you were a migrant say from China who didn't speak English well, that would affect your social circles as you would naturally find it easier to befriend others who spoke Mandarin and understood your culture, rather than constantly be working hard to try to fit into another culture whilst speaking a second/foreign language. Let's not pretend that process is easy: it is extremely difficult and for some people it comes naturally, for others it can take a lot of effort. I do have some sympathy for such people having worked in Germany and let me put my hand up and admit that my German is not good enough, so yes I have been in that position before and I can understand what it is like to be an Asian immigrant in Australia struggling in English. I suppose after having lived in the UK for 20 years, I speak English as a first language and my accent is definitely distinctly British and not Asian, and that's why the Aussies I met were quite happy to accept me as a Pommie regardless of my skin colour.

Doing the Bondi to Cogee walk.

One prerequisite to be able to embrace this post-racial world mindset is to be able to speak English fluently: I met not just Aussies but people from all over the world in Australia and usually when you meet other travelers, we tend to default to speaking English (unless I speak their language, which was the case in a few instances when I met tourists from Germany, France, Spain and Wales). But it takes more than just the ability to hold a conversation in English to be able to embrace this new mindset: you also need the right social skills to be able to establish common ground quickly enough with people you have just met and an ability to figure out quite quickly if this is someone worth talking to because let's face it, you're not going to get along with everyone you've just met. There are times when you have to cut your losses and just move on. Let me give you an example: I met a lovely couple in Milford Sound in New Zealand - we had to share a table during the dinner on the cruise and immediately, I realized he was an interesting character. He's a Dutch engineer with a Turkish wife working in China. So we started out making polite conversation but the evening ended with us exchanging business cards and now we're connected on Linkedin. Would I be able to establish that kind of rapport with say, an older Dutch man who lives in a small Dutch village and has never lived outside Holland? Probably not, that would be highly unlikely but with this guy, establishing rapport was surprisingly easy. After all, given the way he has learnt to socialize with his Turkish in-laws and Chinese colleagues, he had great social skills so chatting with him was a pleasure.

So, please stay with me on that cruise in Milford Sound: there were loads of other people on the cruise liner but I only really had a real connection with a German couple and that Dutch-Turkish couple; as for the others, well, I said hello when I passed them in the corridors but didn't really make any real effort to connect with them. Take this older Australian couple for example - I did help the old lady get her coffee from the coffee machine as she stared blankly at it, not quite knowing which buttons to press but I didn't even try to engage her in any kind of conversation because let's face it, what are the chances of us actually having much to say to each other? You see, a vital part of building successful social relationships is being able to identify whom you have the best chances of success with and avoiding those you know you are probably not going to ever become friends with. Given that boarded the cruise at 3:30 pm and left the boat the next morning at 9:30 am, I had 18 hours only and it wasn't a speed dating task or some kind of popularity contest on a reality TV programme - I wasn't that interested in trying to get to know everyone on the boat, I only focused my efforts on trying to get to know the people I found interesting and more importantly, whom I knew I could probably get along well with.

Do you know how to make new friends easily?

Let's apply the same principle into a university - say you are a foreign student at an Australian university. You are never going to be able to get to know every single person on your course, let alone become friends with all of them. So what you'll end up doing is becoming good friends with a small number of classmates you have a lot in common with and being acquaintances with the rest of the people you make polite small talk with should you sit next to them in the lecture hall. So the conversation would revolve around things like, "how was your weekend?", but you would never make plans to hang out with them. The same thing would apply in an office: we would maintain cordial working relationships with our colleagues but tend to draw the line when it comes to doing things like hanging out together during the weekend with most of them - don't get me wrong, you may become great friends with some people at work and if that happens, great. But don't be disappointed if you don't become buddies with them because there simply isn't the element of choice when it comes to whom we want to work with, whilst we have plenty of choice when it comes to whom we wish to spend our leisure time with outside work. What I am saying sounds like common sense, right? Of course, but some people do lack this basic common sense and they can't figure out where they are going wrong when they fail to make friends.

I feel I need to make a disclaimer at this point: I don't pretend for a moment that I have such brilliant soft skills that I can get along with everyone in London where I live - what I do have however, is enough common sense to judge whom I know I can get along with and whom I need to stay the hell away from. As a gay Asian immigrant, I suppose that is a pretty important skill to have - I need to be a reasonably good judge of human character if I were to be able to build myself a good social network of friends I can rely on. Thus if I have any inkling that someone is going to be bigoted in any way (homophobic, racist, anti-immigrant etc), then I would distance myself from them. So if you were to look at my circle of friends for example, they are all extremely gay-friendly and open minded when it comes to immigrants - I tend to come across people who are more right-wing when it comes to my work (well, I do work in banking you know) but that's when I maintain a very formal, polite but distant relationship with them the moment I realize I do not actually see eye to eye with them on a number of issues. So far, I have been pretty careful in exercising my good judgement when it comes to human character and I am happy to report that I have barely experienced any racism over the years - but that's a combination of the fact that I do have these soft skills and of course, let's get practical here: I am quite rich and can afford to pick a better quality of people around me. My money and privilege does go a very long way to protect me from racism. 

Do you know if he would make a good friend?

Let me explore the role of money in this context: now I come from a humble background, I grew up in Ang Mo Kio in a big family, I've survived NS and I don't mind roughing it. So back in 2014, I found a super cheap deal for a holiday in Greece. It was for a week in a one-star budget hotel but given that I got it at the last minute, the price was rock-bottom cheap. I didn't mind roughing it out, given that it was just a place to sleep at night and I was going to be out sightseeing all day. And hey, we all love a bargain, right? Now the problem with going for such a cheap option is that other poor people will go for such options too because they cannot afford to stay in a five-star hotel. I had the neighbours from hell that week, there was always some drunk working class lout doing something stupid at 3 am in the morning whilst the rest of us were trying to sleep. I confronted some of them and it was no use - they were very drunk and impossible to deal with. Boy that was awful and ever since then, I have used AirBNB to make sure I stay with very respectable middle class families (staying the hell away from anyone working class) or simply forking out for a five-star hotel that I know working class people can't afford. Am I discriminating against poor(er) people who cannot afford the more expensive options? Yes I am but after the really rough experience I had in Greece in 2014, I would be a fool to stay in a budget hotel or hostel ever again. I am using my wealth to protect me from undesirable characters both when I travel and where I live in London - however, not everyone has that luxury if they are struggling to make ends meet and they face much harsher conditions.

In Naomi's post, she talked about Chinese people in Australia being treated rudely by service staff or even refused service by white people - now she didn't clarify where those incidents took place and I bet you they wouldn't be in five-star hotels or expensive restaurants. Is it racism or is it simply more a function of poverty? If you can afford to pay for a five-star hotel, then you're guaranteed excellent service but if you take your chances with a one-star hotel like I foolishly did in Greece, then good luck to you. But hey, I wasn't exactly spending hundreds of dollars a day in Australia - I was frequenting places like McDonald's (or "Macca's" as the locals call it) for their McSpider (it probably has a million guilty calories but it tastes oh so good for just AS$2) and 7-Eleven for their coffee melt (vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso on top of it for just A$1). I'm not exactly drinking A$15 a cup fancy coffees in Sydney but going for the cheap options - I used public transport and ate at food courts, you can get such excellent Thai food in Sydney at the food courts for just like A$12 even at dinner time. I found the service staff I encountered to be really friendly. There certainly wasn't a single time when any service staff was rude to me at all even when I was getting my A$1 coffee melt fix from 7-Eleven.

The only time when someone was abrupt with me was in a Malaysian restaurant called Sedap in Sydney - I asked her for the Wifi password and she barked at me, "Our wifi only for staff one". And I was like, okay, fine but what's with that tone of voice? You could have said no without being so rude. In fact, the only people in Australia who were rude were the Chinese people I encountered. I was getting my fix of Chinese food in Melbourne Chinatown when I observed a waitress bring a tray of noodles to two Chinese guys dining - the two guys didn't even take their eyes off their iPhones as she carefully placed the noodles in front of them. And just as she turned to leave, one of them barked at her to bring some chili sauce and I was like, woah. If I was that waitress, I'd spit in his chili sauce as he did go out of his way to show the waitress that she was beneath him. Aussies and Kiwis are extremely polite people, in sharp contrast to the Chinese, who are extremely rude. So for me to hear Naomi's story, well - I just don't recognize what she said at all. In fact, I had a major argument with another Chinese woman at St Kilda's beach when the white Australian staff were too polite to confront her about the way she used flash photography when photographing the baby penguins. What can I say: the Chinese people I met in Australia were mostly extremely rude and awful whilst the white people couldn't be nicer.

I have spent the last 20 years in the UK, another country where we pride ourselves in being very polite and I had witnessed just how bloody rude Chinese people (including Singaporeans - yes, you guys are terribly rude too compared to most white people) are on my SQ flight back to London from Singapore. The lovely air stewardesses were serving the meals and they would ask you, "Good evening Sir, would you like to have the beef stew with potatoes or the chicken stir-fry with egg noodles?" Here's the difference between the a polite white person and a typically rude Chinese Singaporean.

White person: "Hello! Could I have the beef stew please? Thank you very much."
Chinese person: "Give me the chicken. / I want chicken."

"I want otak! Give me otak!" 

I don't know why Chinese people just don't have any basic manners and I observe this with my own family: everyone from my parents to my nephew use the "I want chicken" kind of tone when talking to service staff and quite frankly, I find it all quite embarrassing but I realize that a lot of Singaporeans are really that rude. Singaporeans rarely ever use the words 'please' or 'thank you' when addressing service staff and I think that is appalling because most white people would do that as a matter of routine. Okay, maybe it is because in places like America, you tip the service staff so they go out of their way to provide you with great service whilst in Asia, we don't really have a tipping culture in Asia, but still being polite to service staff is just a basic, decent thing to do. I even get the feeling that some Singaporeans actually enjoy being rude to service staff because they want to show they are further up the food chain as the customer and so to hear Chinese people complain about white people being rude to them. I'm like, excuse me? Seriously, for real? Do these Chinese people ever look in the mirror and realize just how embarrassingly rude they are and how they lack basic manners sometimes? It is bad enough dealing with Singaporeans but PRCs take being rude to a whole new level. And so that is why I am extremely skeptical when any Chinese person claims that a white person can be rude to them.

At this point you may say, okay Alex, I get it - a lot of Chinese people can be quite rude with service staff. You've made your point, so what? Let's stay with the air stewardess on my SQ flight. I had long heard accusations of SQ staff being very polite with white passengers but rude with Asian passengers - Singaporeans who make this hideous accusation often assume that the stewardesses want to seduce a rich white man in first class to marry or that they simply think white people are superior. I think it is a lot more basic than that: when you treat service staff with respect, they are far more likely to treat you well in return. I had a most pleasant experience chatting with the air stewardesses on my flight back to London because I simply asked them questions like, "how are you? Are you going to get a day or two in London before having to fly back to Singapore? How long have you been flying with SQ?" Whereas the Singaporean man who sat next to me barked orders like, "I want chicken. Gimme coffee." Well guess who had better treatment from the SQ staff then? Given how bloody rude that Singaporean man was, if I was serving him, I might have accidentally experienced some air turbulence whilst pouring the coffee and emptied the pot of boiling hot coffee all over him. "Oops I'm sorry, it seems we are encountering some air turbulence now. Please fasten your seat belt sir. I'll be right back." Given my intolerance of rude people, thankfully I don't work in the service industry!  Let's watch this classic clip of the crazy "McFreak" woman.

Thus in the case of Naomi's story - the allegation that Chinese people were treated badly by white service staff in Australia - I'm saying there's probably another side to the story we are not hearing. Were these Chinese people rude to the white service staff in the first place? Were they barking orders like, "I want chicken! Give me coffee!" If that is the case (and I strongly believe it is - given the track record of Chinese people being so incredibly rude, especially to service staff), then you can take racism out of the equation altogether because it then becomes personal. People who work in the service industry are humans too, they have feelings and when a customer (black, white, Asian or Martian) treats them like crap, then some of them may just take it on the chin whilst others (if they are anything like me) may react by being equally rude in return. It then becomes intensely personal: you see, from the service staff's point of view, being rude in return is simply a matter of revenge. Whereas in the eyes of most Chinese people, they think it is their right to be rude and even abusive towards service staff because they are the paying customer. This is a classic case of Chinese migrants failing to understand Australian culture and changing their attitudes, in order to integrate more successful into Australian society - by that token, I completely place the blame on the Chinese people and not the white people. Oh and since I'm Chinese (well, mostly anyway though I am mixed), I can say that without worrying about being accused of racism.

Thus in my opinion, Chinese people (and I will include Chinese Singaporeans in that category) with their poor manners and appalling lack of social skills will come across like a bull in a china shop in a country like Australia (pun intended). Here's something I witnessed at Brisbane airport - anyone flying into Australia would dread clearing customs because of the infamous quarantine laws: you're not allowed to bring any food items into Australia. After you have cleared passport control and picked up your luggage, you then have to join a painfully long queue where you have to hand in your quarantine form and they may then search your bags for food. I saw this Chinese couple try to cut the queue then and a white member of staff told that Chinese couple to go to the back of the line and queue up like everyone else. The couple then kicked up a big fuss about being singled out because they were Chinese - but clearly, their skin colour had nothing to do with them being asked to queue up. But of course, if you were to ask them for their side of the story, they would tell someone like Naomi that they were unfairly treated because of the racist white Australians. People like that are unreliable witnesses who will give you their side of the story - a version which will paint them as blameless victims of racism, when really, they were completely responsible what happened and the white people involved were not racist.

There are two sides to every story.

I am making an important point that when someone tells you a story, you have to realize that they are giving you their side of the story which may or may not be an accurate reflection of what actually happened. I have to constantly deal with this with my own parents as they are severely autistic and are very unreliable witnesses when it comes to relating any kind of event from memory. The classic example I would give you is the story involving Mr Foo - my former gymnastics coach in Singapore. Now my father claimed to have been at Chinese High School at the same time as Mr Foo and that they were friends back then. Mr Foo disputes that story - he said he cannot remember my father at all from his time at Chinese High and that my father might have actually been from a different year altogether, so they may have been at the same school at the same time but because my father was his junior, they had never actually met. He even suggested that my father had confused him with someone else. Mr Foo was still very friendly with my dad of course, as he was my father but to Mr Foo, my dad was "the father of one of my gymnasts" rather than "my old friend from school". Nonetheless, my father still claims up till today that his friendship with Mr Foo goes back a very long way as he is conveniently ignoring Mr Foo's side of the story. I on the other hand, am a far more reliable witness because I know both sides of the story. Is my father deliberately lying then?  No, I don't think so, but because Mr Foo's story contradicts his, he has conveniently decided to ignore/forget Mr Foo's version of events. So I would advice Naomi to take those allegations with not just a pinch of salt, but with a more discerning attitude to try to find out if there is indeed another side to the story.

You may wonder, why does it matter whether or not Mr Foo remembers my dad or not from school; as long as he extends his hand of friendship to my dad, does it matter? Well, sorry to split hairs here, but it does. Allow me to explain: I was one of Mr Foo's favourite gymnasts because I worked very hard, had a good attitude at training and I never complained. I won his favour the hard way, the old fashioned way. And to me at that time, well that meant a lot to me, to have my coach praise me for my hard work since my own parents weren't interested in what I did as a gymnast. However, then for my dad to claim that Mr Foo was his old friend and that Mr Foo took good care of me on the basis of this (non-existent) friendship that goes back decades: well, that's a slap in the face for me because my father was claiming credit for something he didn't do and more to the point, he's removing credit from me because I was the one who earned Mr Foo's trust and respect. I could give my father grief over this of course but what's the point? My father's autism makes him very unreasonable to deal with and he would refuse to see things from my point of view or Mr Foo's point of view.  So if someone decides to conveniently ignore the other side(s) of the story, there can be consequences. I'm still pissed off over this Mr Foo issue up till today but well, at least my blog allows me to share my side of the story.

There are (at least) two sides to every story. 

So there you go. That's it from me on this issue. What do you think? Are Australians racist? Are Chinese people bloody rude and lacking in social skills? Am I being fair to put 99.99% of the blame on the Chinese people and refusing to blame the white people? Am I being fair to Naomi by asking her to question what she has been told? Have you been to Australia and what have your experiences been like? Have you actually witnessed any racism whilst in Australia? Let me know what you think please by leaving a comment below guys, let's talk about Australians. Many thanks for reading!