Are people really afraid of anyone different?

I thought I'd do a follow up to the piece I wrote recently about anti-Asian racism. I thought it would be useful to look at what triggers racism in the first place and explore another dimension of it that we seldom talk about. Firstly, the root of racism is when some people reject an outsider or newcomer to their community - thus in the case of anti-Asian racism in the West, it is the Asian migrants who are targeted because they are the minority in these countries. They face rejection because of the fact that they look different and have a different culture: this is the most common and simple explanation of racism but I would like to examine a different aspect of this kind of mindset which is ultimately the other side of the same coin. I want to talk about a kind of hatred that I am only too familiar with: as an Asian person living in the UK, you might assume that I am talking about anti-Asian racism but actually, it's quite the opposite. It is the hate I often receive from other Asian people for not being as Asian as them or not being Asian enough for their liking. Allow me to share with you a recent experience to illustrate my point: a casting director recently asked me if I had any videos of myself doing wire work and I actually do have a rather old video dating back to 2014 on Youtube. So whilst I was searching for that video on Youtube, I actually stumbled across a piece I did for a British newspaper about British people who speak other languages. I had not seen that video in years but what shocked me were the hateful comments from not white people, but from Singaporeans who really hated the video. This troubled me and so I wanted to find out what was going on here. 

Some Singaporeans really hate me because of my accent.

The bone of contention was my accent, specifically the way I spoke English - they claimed that I had a 'fake accent', that I was pretending to be something I wasn't. Why do some people have an accent then? It is usually because they don't speak English as a first language and are heavily influenced by their mother tongue - think about the way a French person is instantly recognizable when they speak English with a French accent because that French accent is so distinct. That happens with some Singaporeans who happen to speak another language like Mandarin, Hokkien, Malay or Cantonese as a first language and English only as a second language. The second reason is that if everyone in your community speaks with a certain accent that is considered non-standard, then even if English is indeed your first language and mother tongue, then you're going to have that accent. This is case in Ireland, where the Irish speak English with a really strong accent and have certain distinguishing features (such as the inability to pronounce the TH digraph. So in the case of Singapore, people there usually have a fairly strong accent because of a combination of these two factors: the older generation may speak a first language other than English and the younger generation are surrounded by people who all have a very local accent. Would you expect someone like me to have a typical Singaporean accent and sound just like the haters who left those awful comments on Youtube? The simple answer is no for the following reasons. 

So why is my accent so different then?

Firstly, most Chinese Singaporeans speak English and Mandarin, along with a little bit of Hokkien, Teochew and/or Cantonese. The Chinese influence on their English is strong, given all the other languages that they speak are Chinese languages. However, I speak 25 languages - Mandarin is my 3rd language, Hokkien is my 7th language and Cantonese is down at about 17th. So I am far more likely to allow French (my 2nd language), Spanish (my 4th language) or Welsh (my 5th language) to influence the way I pronounce some words in English. Furthermore, I'm 45 years old: I've spent the first 21 years of my life in Singapore and the last 24 years in Europe - do the maths, I've spent more of my life in the West than in Singapore hence for the last 24 years, I've not been surrounded by people who speak English with a Singaporean accent for 24 years. If I may state the obvious, my experiences and the languages I speak make me extremely different from even my sisters or parents. A combination of both of these factors has resulted in me having an accent that's hard to place - it is not Singaporean, it doesn't come across as British either given that British people tend not to speak French and Spanish fluently the way I do. But do these haters care to consider these factors? Of course not - they have clocked onto the fact that I was born in Singapore but I do not speak English with a Singaporean accent, thus disregarding all the other factors that have shaped my accent, they have launched a stinging attack on me, accusing me of being disingenuous and duplicitous in the way I have crafted an accent which isn't authentic. Thus they were hurling all these absurd accusations about me me being a narcissist showing off - that my accent is fake, exaggerated and feigned. 

I'm an Asian person hated by Asians but not white people?

Thus in this case, it's not racist white people saying, "look at that Asian guy with that weird foreign accent, I'm going to make fun of him for sounding different." No, I have not actually had that from white people here in the UK at all - instead, all the hatred I've received have been from Singaporeans who take the stance of, "how dare you have a different accent from me despite coming from Singapore? I'm going to hate you because you dare to be different from me." It doesn't even make sense - logically speaking, I ought to be the one making fun of Singaporeans with very strong Asian accents. I could accuse them of being uneducated and really stupid, of being painfully inarticulate, unable to express themselves clearly in standard English. I'm the one who is not only eloquent in English but speaks 25 languages - so in a normal world, they should be jealous of me but in this warped reality, they're the ones attacking me: go figure! The irony is that Asian people (whether they're in the West or in Asia) are usually so obsessed with racism from white people, they completely ignore this kind of Asian-hate that they experience from other Asian people. It isn't racism because this is hatred inflicted by Asian people on other Asian people, but it is a kind of bigotry that is nonetheless vicious, evil and nasty. This is in fact a kind of peer pressure, whereby members of a community go out of their way to force others to conform to their norms and punish those who dare to be different. Of course, peer pressure doesn't sound as evil as 'anti-Asian racism' but I witnessed a lot of bullying stemming from 'peer pressure' even when I was growing up in Singapore and Asian people are capable of finding new ways to detest each other even in a homogeneous environment. 

Case study: Emna in France and Nadya in Indonesia

I recently came across a piece on the BBC about peer pressure that resonated with me - it was a conversation between two Muslim women, Emna is in France and Nadya in Indonesia. Both women face harassment because they are going against the local cultural norms - Emna is choosing to wear the hijab in a country where that is not normal whilst Nadya has faced rejection from her own family because of her choice to not wear the jilbab (a hijab-style headscarf). In Nadya's case, even her own grandmother has rejected her and she faces harassment daily even from strangers who challenge her decision not to cover her head in public. In both cases, these women faced discrimination, harassment and abuse simply for not conforming. People in their community didn't respect the right of these women to choose for themselves when it came to this issue or how their personal circumstances may have led to them having a different perspective on the matter. Thus I can imagine many people imagining that there is an element of racism in Emna's situation in France, because she is a Muslim immigrant from Tunisia. But in the case of Nadya in Indonesia, she was a local Indonesian woman living in the country where she was born and bred - unlike Emna, she is not an immigrant and is a part of the Muslim-majority population in Indonesia. However, even in the apparent absence of racism in Nadya's case, she is still having a hard time simply as a result of this kind of peer pressure and intolerance from people in her own community. So why would a complete stranger in Indonesia give Nadya a hard time over what is a personal choice about wearing a headscarf; thus by the same token, why would complete strangers in Singapore attack me for having a different accent?  

Calling someone a sinner doesn't make you a saint. 

So what is happening in the case of Nadya in Indonesia, where she is being harassed for not wearing a jilbab (headscarf)? In Indonesia, women have a choice whether to wear a headscarf or not and so Nadya isn't breaking the law when she chose not to cover her head in public. However, those who do choose to cover their heads may view women like Nadya as immodest and even indecent. However, there are many ways to be morally deficient: you could wear a headscarf everyday and still be cruel, selfish,  greedy, lazy and dishonest. However, by focusing on the issue of headscarf, it becomes a useful scapegoat they can use to draw attention away from their own immoral behaviour. "Don't look at how I treat my colleagues at work - look at that woman who is not wearing a headscarf! She is so immodest, she is more sinful than me despite the fact that I am bullying my colleagues at work, but at least I do wear a headscarf!" Of course, calling someone a sinner doesn't make you a saint. The same way calling someone stupid doesn't make you a genius and calling someone fat doesn't make you thinner - however, many people do fall prey to that kind of thinking. If you're fat, then losing weight is a really difficult, long term project that can take a lot of will power and may involve professional help. But it is so much easier to feel better about that fact that you're not that fat if you can point to someone who has put on even more weight than you. It is so much easier to fool yourself into believing that your problem is not as severe if you can find someone else much fatter to point the finger at, but make no mistake, after you go out of your way to bitch about someone else, you are still just as fat as before - bitching about others is not a viable alternative to dieting!

So why is my accent pushing all the wrong buttons then?

Why is my accent so offensive then? Well, there is a simple reason why I have a different accent. I'm a lot more highly educated than the vast majority of Singaporeans but more to the point, I've had the chance to study at some of the top universities in the UK and France. I have also lived 24 years in Europe as opposed to just 21 years in Singapore. I do not take this privilege for granted of course, I do realize how very lucky I have been. After all, I was from a poor working class family and without three scholarships along the way, my further education simply wouldn't have taken the same form. But for someone in Singapore who hasn't had this kind of privilege, their choices would have been a lot more limited to local options that would not have had an impact on their accents. Thus in this case, they can react in two ways: the first is to acknowledge that they have had bad luck beginning with not being born into a family that could give them an upbringing that would have afforded an overseas education. There's also that element of losing the genetic lottery - they weren't born with the brains that would have made them scholar material. Picking this option would probably leave them quite disappointed, frustrated and angry at their sheer bad luck (through no fault of their own), so instead they go for the other option which is to ignore all that and assume that the only reason why I have a different accent is because I am vain and disingenuous, whilst conveniently shoving all these more logical explanations into a massive black hole. Hence the fact is these people feel rather insecure about how they speak English and thus that's the way they have chosen to deal with it. 

Case study: My mother vs 'Mrs Lee'

Allow me to recycle a story I have told on my blog already (so pardon me if you have read this one before). When I was about 9 years old, I did something that made my mother extremely angry in a way that totally puzzled me - I came home from school one day and told her that my friend's mother (whom we shall refer to as Mrs Lee, not her real name) was "very beautiful". My mother reacted by calling Mrs Lee all kinds of names, she was an immoral whore who was probably having an affair. I challenged my mother because she has never actually met Mrs Lee before - my mother has in fact met some of the other parents of my classmates but not Mrs Lee, thus I was wondering if she had confused Mrs Lee with someone else. In hindsight of course, I realized that I had praised Mrs Lee in the presence of my father and this was a thinly veiled threat by my mother, she obviously didn't want him looking at other women. I found out that Mrs Lee was an estate agent - in hindsight, she wasn't stunningly beautiful the way one might describe a supermodel, but she took pride in her appearances: because of her job, she dressed formally for work and made an effort when it came to her hair and make up. At best, she came across as very corporate and that made her stand out from the other mothers who were your typical working class mothers who barely made any effort with their appearances. On top of all that, Mrs Lee even used perfume, something which my mother found totally abhorrent. The philosophy for working class married women for my mother was simple: I've found a husband, I'm a mother so now I can stop caring about my appearances; I can relax and get really fat; screw diets and exercise - pass me the candy jar, so I can stuff my face with all my favourite sugary treats. 

In this case, Mrs Lee found herself on the receiving end of my mother's hatred despite never having met my mother in person. My mother was clearly very insecure about her appearances and was worried that my father might notice a 'prettier' woman like Mrs Lee - she certainly got my attention with her looks. The rational way to deal with this situation would be for my mother to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if she was happy with her self-image: if she wasn't, then she could have taken concrete steps to deal with the matter. Was it a question of improving her diet and doing more exercise? Did she need a different hairstyle to create more youthful image? Or was it her wardrobe - what did she need to wear to achieve the image she desired? And if it was a question of using the right cosmetics for her face and skin - was there somebody she could approach to try to get useful advice on which products to use? Obviously, all of these would take much time, money and effort but I would like to think that it would be worth it because you can't put a price on your self-image. It is important to look in the mirror and be happy with what you see. However, my mother had decided that it was simply easier to condemn Mrs Lee as an adulterous, immoral slut trying to seduce every man she meets whilst in contrast, portraying herself as a good mother and wife who doesn't look like a painted whore. In taking this stance, my mother justifies that the fault lies entirely with Mrs Lee and it is Mrs Lee who needs to change her immoral ways; whilst no action is needed on her part. That's clearly not the case as my mother has struggled with issues relating to her self-image all her life but each time the topic comes up, she chooses to demonize others instead of facing her own problems - she chooses such an approach to justify not taking any actions to rectify a situation that bothers her. 

Case study: Colin, the guy who arrives at the office very early.

My mother's reaction to Mrs Lee reminds me of another incident at work a long time ago -  this was around the year 2001, a good 20 years ago when everyone had to turn up at the office every morning for work and working from home was simply a concept that was practically unknown. So I worked in this company where we started work at 9 o'clock in the morning - as long as you were at your desk ready to start work at 9, it was okay and some people would even come in about 15 or 20 minutes late and say something like, "sorry sorry, such delays on the trains this morning." Then this new guy - let's call him Colin (not his real name) started turning up at around 8:30 am in the morning - it turns out that Colin lived in a suburb really far out of town where the trains were not that frequent. So if he got the earlier train, he would arrive at 8:30 am but if he got the later train, he risked being late. The boss who always turned up early started noticing that Colin was always in the office very early and thus in a team meeting, he praised Colin for being so early everyday and suggested that everyone should be coming in early just like Colin. Oh this really pissed off a lot of us given how we all struggled with our commute to work in the morning on public transport and now thanks to Colin, the boss has just put pressure on us to come in even earlier. We have a term for this situation in Chinese, "破坏行情" - that translates to "spoil/distort the market." Colin was shunned by the rest of the colleagues after that incident and he was punished for not conforming with the others - the colleagues made the working environment so unpleasant for Colin that he resigned. 

Are people punished for spoiling the market, ie. "破坏行情"?

So in both the case of Mrs Lee and Colin, they were punished for refusing to conform, for doing things differently. Fortunately for Mrs Lee, my mother deciding to shun her and speak badly of her behind her back didn't really have any consequences for Mrs Lee - but Colin faced so much discrimination at work that he felt he had no choice but to quit his job. I have to admit, I was part of the group of colleagues who gave Colin the cold shoulder and refused to give him any help because I felt angry about being made to show up for work half an hour early. There was a part of me that wanted to see him fail because of what he had done; I suppose it was because I really didn't like the idea of having to get up half an hour early for work just because of Colin. Sure enough, after Colin left the company, everyone just went back to the norm of starting work at 9 in the morning. Thus that is a clear example of how peer pressure can punish someone who has the gall to be different. Unfortunately, us humans have this capacity to act out of spite and hence by that token, the way I treated Colin makes me no better than my mother, when she acted out of jealousy in the case of Mrs Lee. For some reason however, society has decided that racism is absolutely abhorrent but in the case of Colin, some people might even blame Colin for what happened - was he totally oblivious to the effects of his actions? Even if he had to get the early train, could he have gone for a coffee at a nearby cafe and just show up at work at the same time as everyone else in order to fit in? Should Colin have made a greater effort to speak to other colleagues to try to find out why they were giving him the cold shoulder and try to fix the situation? Whereas if Colin was discriminated on the basis of his skin colour then nobody would dare to even ask such questions; instead he will be perceived as a blameless victim of racism.

But wait, this process is neither linear nor logical.

Thus humans have this capacity to exert peer pressure and target anyone who doesn't conform to the norms within a community. Immigrants tend to experience such discrimination because they stand out: they have have a different skin colour or have different facial features, they may not speak the local language fluently, they may dress a different way (such as in the case of Emna the Muslim lady who lives in France and wears a hijab). But when we're in a situation where you're in a seemingly homogeneous environment, people will still find a way to discriminate against someone who is slightly different. Both my mother and Mrs Lee are Singaporean-Chinese women of the same age, yet that similarity wasn't enough to stop my mother from finding fault with Mrs Lee. In the case of Colin, he was white and British like most of the people working in that company - neither his skin colour nor his nationality was not the issue of contention; rather it was his behaviour that made him stand out. Thus even if you live in a totally homogeneous society or if you're part of the majority, don't ever let your guard down because your fellow humans will still find a way to discriminate against you. The fact is such people are looking for a scapegoat to blame, to project their insecurities upon. Of course this is never a linear or logical process: so in the case of the Youtube video that attracted all those hateful comments, you would have logically assumed that it would be white people who would make fun of my foreign accent but no, it is in fact Singaporean people from my hometown, who turned out to be the haters even though this difference is rather superficial - it is just my accent. 

So how do we navigate this minefield of hatred then? 

Actually, it is not as bad as you think. Allow me to appeal for some calm please: people will only hate you if you push the wrong buttons. In the case of Colin, his behaviour deprived me of 30 minutes of my beauty sleep for five nights a week and I took that sleep deprivation very personally. Likewise, my mother felt aggrieved by Mrs Lee because it only revealed her own insecurities about her own image. As for the Singaporeans who left all the hateful comments on that video, I suppose they didn't want to be reminded that they never had the opportunity to study or work in another country - perhaps they have fantasized about what it would be like to live in Paris, London, New York, Melbourne or San Francisco but never made it out of Bukit Batok. Thus hearing someone like me with a very different accent only reminded them of all those missed opportunities and dreams that would never be fulfilled. In sharp contrast, my neighbour is Italian and speaks with an Italian accent - the fact that he sounds different to me doesn't really bother me, in fact I rather welcome the opportunity to have a brief chat in Italian with him when I run into him. So it isn't the difference that is the problem per se, but how we react to this difference. Most people are actually quite happy to interact with others who are completely different from them and rather enjoy the experience: I watch a French reality TV series called Pékin Express and it makes the American version of that show The Amazing Race look like a luxury holiday. The French teams are given only the equivalent of 1 euro a day, brought to an exotic country far, far away and they are expected to cover up to 200 km a day through hitchhiking (though sometimes teams are made to use other forms of transport like rowing themselves in a boat) - even when they are done for the day, they have to look for a place to sleep for the night and they are completely dependent on the kindness of the friendly locals, to welcome them into their homes and invite them to join in their dinner. 

Case study: Pékin Express (the French version, though there are other versions as well)

I was amazed at just how friendly the locals were in countries which are actually quite poor, despite having a massive language barrier with the French contestants (some of whom really struggle with even basic English). The teams can just turn up totally unannounced in a little village somewhere like Philippines, Guatemala or Japan and still find someone willing to take them in for the night and cook them dinner for free. The teams would then use this opportunity to experience the local culture and the hosts are often quite eager to showcase some aspects of their culture such as traditional costumes, local delicacies as well as their folk music and dances. This makes Pékin Express very different from The Amazing Race - in The Amazing Race, contestants are given enough money to spend on food, travel and accommodation whilst they are on the race but on Pékin Express, they are completely dependent on the generosity of strangers. This formula creates a very different kind of reality TV programme where it isn't just about the competition but it is as much about the interactions of the competitors with the locals they encounter along the way. I have really grown to like this show - it is the kind of programme that will revive your faith in humanity and remind you that there are plenty of helpful, nice people out there. In short, it is not the differences that makes people feel uncomfortable, but whether or not the fact that you are different could trigger some kind of defensive or negative response. If your difference did somehow managed to trigger such a hostile response - well, then they are the ones with the issues that need sorting out, not you! 

In conclusion, some final thoughts.

The moral of the story is that you can't please everyone - that's impossible. If Mrs Lee wanted to please my mother by dressing more plainly, then she risked alienating her colleagues and clients who expected her to adhere to a more corporate image. If I wanted to appease Singaporeans out there by speaking with a very strong Singaporean accent, then I risk alienating the British people whom I live amongst by sounding like a foreigner. Even Colin was in a no-win situation: he could either please the boss or he could try to appease the rest of his colleagues in the office but he couldn't do both. And in the case of Nadya in Indonesia: she could either try to please people like her classmates and her grandmother or she could choose to please herself but she couldn't please both parties - hence she chose the latter which was definitely the right choice. The real world presents us complex situations where there are no perfect solutions, you can't please everyone no matter what you do, so you may as well choose to please yourself and simply deal with the consequences of whoever gets offended or upset by your actions. This may sound like common sense but it is actually a very rational way to do with a classic no-win scenario. So just be yourself, be confident if you're different because you're a unique individual in the knowledge that you're never going to please everyone in the process so you may as well reap the benefits of being comfortable in being your true self. So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Have you ever been in a position where you knew you simply couldn't please everyone? Why you think those Singaporeans really hated me and my accent so much despite the fact that I probably would never ever meet them in real life? Why would some people behave like that - especially on the internet? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.