It's an age old issue. Just like expectations it is ubiquitous. Unfortunately it is a mindset that is innate in everyone of us. Only difference is that it varies accordingly to the individuals taste. A condition that has been predominant in every aspect of our lives right from infancy.
The shiniest toys..the nicest looking presents..the sexiest babe... the hunkiest dudes.. the movies with the coolest actor/ress(s)... Everything explores the value of the surface packaging and not of the content inside. Judgements based on looks and nothing else.
The most common aspect that unites everyone is about people and their preset notions of what is beautiful and what is not. From how we want our partners/ spouse to look like to freaking racism. We all fall somewhere in between
The schooling days. From first love to first fight... somehow everything tethered on the packaging. Every guy would have had aspirations as to how he wanted his girlfriend to look like. I wanted mine to be fair ( didn't matter to me that i wasn't), pretty, just nicely tall enough to lean on my shoulders, slender with a lovely smile and smooth straight hair. I know fat hope. Fat it was. As i matured, my ridiculous expectations did as well. I realised that i had been in the foolish conception that fair was beautiful? Who has the right to determine that fair was beautiful? It's just a complexion, just like dark. We are all the same beneath our skin.
Through hard learned lessons, i added depth to my superficial notions of what is pretty and what is not. An angelic smile doesn't necessarily constitue an angel's heart. Neither does a foxy chick constitute to an easy going slut... a very valuable lesson that i paid a fortune to learn. I learnt that content matters more than its gloss.
Been labelled everything from "pariah" to "anjing hitam [black dog in malay]", being a minority was never easy. I am an Indian. I have brown skin, not black you bloody idiots. Even if it was black, i still would be equally proud of it. Nope, my skin does not carry any communicable disease nor does my hands exude black dirt when i touch anything. I have hair on my hands not tentacles that inject AIDS when you accidently rub against me. From being the target during soccer practice to being a moving punching bag.. Why? why this uncivilised notion based on my appearence? How does me being brown threaten their existence? I thought all these stupidity ended as of secondary school. But what happened today in the trains proved to be a gruesome reminder of the filth that still exists in our society.
Give up your seats to the eldery and the needy they say. I gave up mine today to an old woman and i felt like slapping myself for being too helpful. I got up and offered my seat in the crowded train. Reluctantly she proceeded to the seat, took out a tissue paper and started wiping the seat and commented on me to the neighbouring passenger. Then she decided not to take the seat and neither allow her grandson[assumingly] to sit on it and instead puts her bags on the seat.
Another crowded train scene. I was standing by the door.. Cabin was brimming with people, compacted like sardines. A woman and her son jammed in just moments before the door closed. I could already sense that the woman was not comfortable but dimissed it thinking that it could be due to the crowd. What i saw in the reflections on the glass panel literally shocked me. I knew that she was tugging the child towards her but i thought that it was due to her consideration of other people and that she didn't want her son to knock into others. On the reflections, she was signalling her son to be careful not to knock into me and followed it up with commenting by rubbing on the skin and then pinching her nose. Should have seen the shocked look on her face when she realised that i was looking at her. I just saw racism being passed on from one generation to another. I felt a surge of emotions but decided not to do anything especially infront of the child. For whatever i retaliate, it will only be conclusive for the child of the impressions stacked on me by the mother.
In this day and age... where Indian with a Chinese couples are a very common sight, where Malays with Caucasians are an upcoming sight...where cute EurASIAN babies are abound everywhere.... why nurture racism? Like Russel Peters once said... " the world is one day going to be Cream .....". Then why the social demarcations based on the skin?
5 comments:
its an inbulit human thing.
We all have a sickness that cleverly attaches and multiplies
no matter how we try. that's the lyrics to a song which feels so true today.
on a side note; lets catch up soon before christmas.
there will always be these sorta people who do not progress with times. the bets u can do will just be to overlook and forgive their ignorance.
Sad to say that despite Singapore being a multi-racial country, racism still exist everywhere.
Racisim is an ugly form of communism.
The public should be educated on about the fiction of race, the ignorance behind racism and the need to relate people as individuals, not racial categories.
But then again, racism will endure for as long as people like the mother still exists. With people like her, they are just going to conrupt their offsprings, generation after generation.
So much for good upbringing.
I heard at a talk that racism was caused by migration of people. Developed in the developing, conquerer over the conquered and so on. Before that, only social status and tribes existed. Cultural differences came up and racism was born.
Oh ya, and funnily one of the scholars had this version that if you're not white then you're black. So even the chinese fell under the black category long time ago!
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