Other forms of hatred are also available, Wei Du.

Hi guys, I would like to talk about a video that I've seen on social media - it is a piece produced by CNA and it is about anti-Asian racism in the UK by Wei Du. This is a sensitive topic and being a British-Chinese person living in London, I roll my eyes when I imagine how the typical Singaporean viewer would respond to a piece like this. Obviously, it is trying to portray the UK has a horrifically scary place for Asian immigrants because of all of this hateful racism and I'm not accusing CNA of fake news, I invite you to watch the documentary then come up with your own responses and conclusions to it. This post is not even a response to that documentary, however, I want to talk about the other side of the coin. I don't like the way this documentary series has been presented as, "look how hateful white people are, aren't you lucky to live in a place like Singapore where you don't have to face this kind of racism at the hands of white people?" And I'm like, are you for real? Hate comes in many different forms and racism is just one of the many ways it can manifest itself: Singaporeans are equally capable of hating each other and so in today's post, I want to talk about some of the hate I experienced growing up in Singapore and how that prepared me to deal with the threat of racism here in the UK as an immigrant. After all, I just shrug my shoulders and think, "okay, so there are some racists here in the UK? Yeah, wait till you see the amount of hatred I have had to deal with growing up in Singapore, this is nothing compared to what I faced back in Singapore." So in this post allow me to talk about other forms of hate I have had to face growing up in Singapore.

Racism is often portrayed as an unwillingness to accept migrants because of their difference: migrants stand out because they have a different skin colour, they may not speak the local language well, or even if they do, they may have a different accent, they may practice a different religion and there are so many reasons why they may not integrate with the locals. That's why many people assume that as long as you stay in the country where you were born, you would be able to avoid all of these differences as you would be a part of the majority, thus enabling you to avoid racism. Sure if I lived in Singapore, I would avoid a lot of that racism but there are other forms of hate and social tension in Singapore. Allow me to share with you the hate and discrimination I experienced in the army when I was serving national service because it is unique to Singapore - it has nothing to do with racism since I am ethnic-Chinese and part of the majority in Singapore, but what is behind this hatred then? This form of hatred is centered around money and social class. Let me to state for the record that I grew up in a very poor, working class family in Singapore - if you wanna talk about social class or social status, I came from the very bottom of the food chain. So if you think this piece is about other more wealthy Singaporeans looking down on me, you'll be wrong actually: ironically, I was considered very privileged because I had been a brilliant student who had earned myself a scholarship to one of the top universities in the UK. I learned pretty quickly that I had to hide that fact from the others in the army, because that was a privilege that many of them would give an arm and a leg for - you don't want to stand out in the army, no you wanna keep your mouth shut and your head down. 

So allow me introduce you to this guy in my army unit whom I shall refer to as Lau (not his real name) whom I struggled to get along with. When I first got transferred to his unit, I was desperate to hide the fact that I was a triple scholar bound for top British university so I spoke in Hokkien or Mandarin and when I had to communicate in English, I would use this exaggerated form of Singlish to make it sound very stupid. Perhaps I was so successful at convincing everyone that I was this uneducated "Hokkien peng" (a colloquial term used to describe an uneducated Singaporean-Chinese soldier who speaks only in Hokkien as he is incapable of communicating in English) that I felt that Lau was looking down on me and treating me with utter contempt. I then dig some digging around (hey the filing system in those days weren't that sophisticated) found out a photocopy of Lau's A level results in a file - not only was he from worse school than me, he also had far worse results and it was questionable whether or not he would make it into the course of his choice at the local university. So I thought, let's fix this: I don't like Lau but I still have to get along with him - maybe I can win his respect if I accidentally let slip that I am actually a scholar. Did that work? Hell no, it simply changed the kind of hate that I received from Lau: oh it was a game I couldn't win. He felt very resentful that this working class student could become a scholar whilst he only managed to achieve mediocre results despite having received so much help from his middle class parents. Lau first hated me when he thought he was academically superior to me, then he hated me even more when he realized I was a brilliant scholar. Either way, he hated me even though I had done absolutely nothing to antagonize him.  

You might assume that Lau would only get along with someone very similar to him, like if he had a twin brother who went to the same school and got roughly the same results and was of a similar social class? Oh no, that wasn't the case with Lau. Allow me to introduce you to Chia (not his real name) who joined our unit a few months later, I realized that Chia did go to the same school as Lau and ended up with very similar results, thus they faced the same agonizing wait to find out if they would be able to scrape through into the course of their choice at the local university with their mediocre results. Undoubtedly, Lau and Chia had so much in common as they faced the same problem but did they become best friends? Nope, Lau hated Chia from the start because there was then this rivalry between them - they both spoke very disparagingly of each other and boy, I was just glad Chia came along as Lau had someone new to antagonize. So allow me to recap: Lau hated me when he thought he was academically superior to me, he hated me when he found out that I was academically superior to him and when we found someone who was virtually identical to him when it came to their academic achievements, Lau still found a way to hate Chia. Hate was simply his default response to anyone. Thus my conclusion is that Lau is clearly unhappy with the way his A level results turned out, he felt that they weren't an accurate representation of how smart he was - he thought he was brilliant but his results suggests that he is at best mediocre and average. Lau didn't have the social skills to deal with the situation, all that frustrated turned into hate and anger which he projected onto Chia and I. Whilst I represented the 'difference' that provoked such hate, Chia's 'similarity' only reminded Lau why he was so frustrated and angry in the first place. It was so uncanny to see how Lau and Chia hated each other. 

Ironically, the one thing I learnt during my national service was how to deal with hate - oh it was like throwing me into the deep end of the pool and learning to swim or drown. I witnessed so much hate whilst I was in NS and it was horrific the way the racist Chinese treated the Indians and Malays. Then there was hatred based on resentment and jealousy - the way Lau hated me for having a scholarship to a top university in the UK. Then there was hatred of those who were less successful of you - I always go by the principle, "calling someone stupid doesn't make you cleverer, calling someone fat doesn't make you thinner" but you'll be amazed how many people in the army would go out of their way to do exactly that because such a 'comparison' made them feel better about themselves. You'll be amazed how some poor people bullied those even poorer than them for being poor because it takes years to attain social mobility to lift your family out of poverty, but it takes just a minute to insult someone poorer than you and the latter gives them a cheap thrill. The Mandarin/Hokkien speakers hated those who spoke English whilst the English speakers looked down on those who spoke Mandarin/Hokkien. No matter what language I spoke, I was going to offend someone. I expected plenty of homophobia of course but what I didn't expect was the way the gays hated each other: you see there are the gays who are more "straight acting" (masculine) and then there are those who are referred to as 'pecah lobang' (effeminate, that Malay term is way too rude to translate). I witnessed some cases of how gays from the two different groups really hated each other. I could go on - it was a tsunami of non-stop hate every single day, even if you weren't targeted personally, you witnessed it happening to someone else and hatred no longer fazed me once I got so used to living with it everyday. 

Different guys coped with this situation differently, some went into complete denial and dismissed the hatred by downplaying it as harmless banter as they didn't want to acknowledge the ugliness of the hatred. Others got drawn into it as it was a consequence free environment which allowed their hatred to manifest in any shape or form so instead of suppressing their hatred, they allowed it to come to the surface. Then there are some who went into complete mental breakdown when they couldn't cope with all this hatred, there were guys who fell into deep depression which resulted in suicides when they couldn't cope. Then there were those who simply learned to cope with hatred: if I knew Wong looked down on people who spoke Hokkien, then I would speak to him in English. If I knew that Chang hated the 'A level' batch who spoke English then of course I would speak to him in Hokkien. If I knew that Jay was a pecah lobang gay, then I would be as effeminate as he was when hanging out with him. If I knew that Ahmad had been a victim of racism, then I would make sure I spoke to him only in Malay to make sure that he knows that I'm not one of those racist Chinese people who disrespected his language and culture. I had to learn to navigate my way around hatred, it was just something I had to deal with as part of daily life in NS. Thus when I encounter racism in the UK, firstly, it's just yet another form of hatred similar to the others I have dealt with in NS and it is nothing I can't handle. Secondly, compared to some of the extreme forms of hatred I've seen in NS, racism here is a relatively mild form of hatred. Thus it's like asking me to run a mile in London after I've been running a marathon everyday whilst serving NS - it's great training ground for dealing with hatred.

Allow me to talk about my father on the issue of hate, my father is actually very racist, scarily so. This was mostly because he was born in 1938, witnessed the horrors of WW2 and thus had a deep hatred for both the Japanese and the British. So if my father watched that CNA documentary (which he wouldn't since he doesn't speak English), it would then give him validation that he is justified for hating white people since that confirms his narrative that white people hate us Chinese people anyway. He ignores the hate he experiences in his daily life from other Chinese people who are just as Chinese as he is - sure that kind of hate isn't racism but it is no less hateful. My father has a very antagonistic relationship with my mother and even thought they have stayed married all this time, there's always so much passive aggressive tension between them and if they were a lot more enlightened, they would have divorced years ago and just moved on with their lives. My mother is just as Chinese as my father so there's no question of racism here but they have managed to find plenty of reasons to hate each other. My father's family who are Hakka would point the finger of blame at my mother as she is Hokkien, that if my father had married a Hakka woman instead his marriage would be more peaceful. But my father has fallen out with two of his brothers and parents - things were so bad with his brother that even when his brother lay dying in a hospital in Johor Bahru, my father refused to go visit him one last time to forgive him. It's a long story why my father hates his own brothers so much but it shows how such extreme hate can thrive even within one's own family with people you share so much in common with. It can be this familiarity that breeds such contempt; hate doesn't always come from the stranger who attacks you in the street, but from those people who know you the best. 

I see a similarity between Lau and my father: they are both frustrated with certain aspects of their own lives so when they see someone who is very similar to them, it only reminds them of their own problems so the default response is hate. Now that doesn't need to be the case: a lot of victim peer support groups are helping people channel this pain and frustration in a far more constructive manner. A lot of cancer patients who are very sick still make a genuine effort to support fellow cancer patients because they can express empathy to their fellow patients - it makes them feel useful that they are achieving something by being kind and supportive, it empowers everyone in the process and it is of course a very noble way of reacting to dealing with cancer! In Germany, many of the volunteers helping the Ukrainian refugees were themselves once refugees who have settled in Germany after fleeing war and conflict, thus they are respond with empathy and kindness the moment they see refugees from another crisis. Note the difference between a vicious and a virtuous cycle: in my father's case, he received so much hate and crap from his own family members so he responded with hate. But in the case of the cancer patients, they received love and kindness from other cancer patients, so they are taught how to respond with love and kindness in return to others. I'm not making any excuses for my father here, I'm just pointing out that he was unlucky in that he grew up with some nasty family members who treated him terribly, you wouldn't believe just how fucking evil they were. It was only having been at the receiving end of all this intense hate from his own family that he turned into this hateful person today - I could imagine that Lau probably had a similar experience.

So allow me to tell you about my friend Daphne who has two dogs whom we shall call Dove and Date (get it? They are dogs representing Love and Hate.) Dove was given to Daphne when she was just a few days old, so Dove grew up in a very loving environment with Daphne's family. When you enter Daphne's house, Dove would run up to you and wag her tail, she would be curious and want to play with you. In sharp contrast, Date was a dog that Daphne got from the animal shelter. When Date was a puppy, he was beaten and starved by his owner, he lived with many other bigger dogs who bullied him. Because Date was a small and thin dog, the other dogs would steal his food when Date was rescued, he was in a very bad state. But now when Date meets strangers, he would be very nervous and scared - first he would try to run away and hide but if he couldn't then he would start barking at you to scare you away. Daphne would usually take Date into the backyard when she has visitors to avoid stressing Date out - she wouldn't let me near Date for my own safety. It's not that Date is a "bad dog" per se, but because of the horrific experiences he has had in the past, he finds it very hard to trust anyone whilst Dove has been a lot luckier in this aspect. So why does one person turn out to be a loving, kind and trusting person who volunteers for a charity whilst the next person becomes this hateful bigot who harbours so much hatred for people that he has never ever met? Please, I'm not justifying any kind of hatred or bigotry, I'm just pointing out why it happens by using the example of Dove and Date: we're simply a product of our environment.     

What I didn't like about the way the CNA documentary presented racism in the West is that it made it look as if there was something terribly wrong with the culture here, that hating Asian people was a result of the local culture, politics and religious landscape whereas I view it very differently through the Dove vs Date framework. An individual (regardless of their nationality or colour of their skin) can be taught to love or hate based on the way they were brought up and we do have a choice about our actions. Let's take the Brexit episode for example: it was so close, the "leave" side got their way with just 51.89% vs 48.11% who voted to "stay" but because of the way democracy works, the majority wins, no matter how slim that margin may be. Yet a lot of documentary makers ignore the fact that they won by a razor thin majority and a lot of British people were indeed part of that 48.11% who didn't get what they wanted; the narrative presented is that the UK voted for Brexit and hence everyone here hates foreigners, even white ones from other EU countries. Likewise when you look at the period when Trump was president, did all Americans vote for him and supported him? Clearly not, America is a deeply divided country with certain states being staunchly Republican and others being staunchly Democrat. My friends who were Democrats hated every minute of Trump's presidency and deeply opposed a lot of the horrifically xenophobic policies during his time in the White House. This reflects the fact that societies from the UK to the US to Singapore are essentially made up of a mix of 'Doves' and 'Dates', some react with love and others react with hate.

Thus my reaction to this documentary is very much yes sure there's hate in the West but do you realize just how much hate there is in Singapore? And if you want to talk about racism, do you know how much racism is experienced by the Indians and the Malays in Singapore? If you don't care about that because you are of the Chinese majority, then you're just as evil as all these white racists that this CNA documentary tried to demonize. This reminds me of a comment that someone from Malaysia once left for me on my blog and it was bizarre to say the least. He said something like, "you think life in London is so great, wait till you meet a real racist there then you will be running for the first flight back to Singapore." Where do I begin? Yes I've met racists here before - I've stood my ground and dealt with the situation. I'm not some kind of feeble damsel in distress incapable of defending myself or taking care of myself when in a crisis, in fact I am intelligent, resourceful, I have great social skills and my job involves solving my clients' problems. I have managed complex projects and I'm the first guy to fix anything that goes wrong. Life for me in London hasn't been easy, the streets of London are not paved with gold but I have found success not because "life in London is so great" but I take full credit for overcoming all of these obstacles and challenges. Thus I get very frustrated when people in Singapore (and Malaysia) imagine that I have a good life here because I have simply been lucky enough to avoid any really difficult issues like racism, whilst refusing to give me any credit for everything I have had to do to become rather successful here in London.

Why are Asian people so fixated on racism then? Well I have a simple answer for that having lived in Singapore where I was part of the ethnic Chinese minority and also now living in the UK where I am an ethnic minority. Singaporean society can be very harsh on those who are poor - there is no welfare state and thus individuals are expected to simply work harder if they want to earn more money. This has resulted in some senior citizens still working because they simply don't have any kind of savings to allow them to retire. Thus most Singaporeans just turn a blind eye to the sight of 80-year olds still clearing plates and cleaning tables at the food courts and hawker centers. If you're poor in Singapore, people would assume that it is because you're stupid and lazy, that you deserve to suffer as a result of your character flaws. But when it comes to racism, it's a get out of jail free care for anyone who has failed. It is thus so easy for a Chinese person in the West to claim that he didn't get the job or the promotion because of racism. There could be so many reasons why a Chinese person didn't get the job or promotion but once you pull the racism card, you absolve yourself of all blame and default to the role of the victim who was cheated out of what was rightfully yours by the scourge of racism. The problem when Chinese people play the race card is that they miss the chance to identify what may be the real root of the problem: say this Chinese candidate didn't get the job because he lacks experience in a certain area, then once we've identified the problem we can try to fix it by helping him seek work experience in that area. But if he defaults to claiming it was racism, then we will be effectively ignoring that problem and not getting him the solution he needs to rectify the situation. 

Finally, whilst racism is a form of hate that is clearly a problem in our society, I don't like the way Wei Du focused on racism at the exclusion of all other forms of hate because she made it seem as if it is a white people vs Chinese people problem but hate doesn't fall neatly into that simplistic division. There is a lot of Chinese on Chinese hate in Singapore and by the same token, plenty of white on white hate for the simple reason that racism is but one form of hate: other forms of hatred are available too. Yet somehow when we watch this CNA documentary, she presents a very simplistic picture of victims of anti-Asian racism getting help from other kind and nice Chinese people here - there was this implicit assumption that Chinese people do somehow automatically just get along with other Chinese people and that the threat of hatred is from outside the Chinese community when of course, having lived in Singapore, I know that's completely false and thus this CNA documentary is thus quite misleading. This article is already very long so I shall stop here and you would have to wait for part 2, when I will deal with some of the incidents of hate crime in Wei Du's CNA report. We need to talk about hate openly to understand it rather than pretend that it is something that happens else where and doesn't happen at home. Please let me know what you think about this issue. What kind of hatred have you faced before? Why are Asian people so fixated on racism but choose to just ignore other forms of racism that they have to put up with on a daily basis? Have you met anyone like Lau whose default position is hatred because he hates himself and hence projects that hatred outwards to others around him? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.