The Sick Tree: On Racism (A Hong Kong Perspective)
With regards to racial issues, although I understand the sentiments of the statements like ‘that’s just how things are’, ‘life is better now than ever’ or ‘change takes time’ we should not be negating the fact that we can still communicate more to understand each other’s experiences and each other’s plights to build a better world. We need to understand each other and see others not as ‘others’ but as people. Like the person in your reflection.
I understand people are angry and frustrated as they have every reason to be so. However, demands for immediate and extreme actions, and the antagonisation of dissenters are by no means the correct course we as people should be taking. I do not know of anyone who would not want to see their desires of the world enacted immediately, but the fact is, that is simply not how the world works. Humans are made with flaws and all, what makes people think that just because their beliefs are perceived to be morally greater that they can be infallible?
Things can surely be blown out of proportion, but that does not take away from the fact that, that person had that experience. We shouldn’t be belittling them, we should be listening to them incorporating their experience with our own.
A great worry I have seen lately is that of the antagonisation of people based on assumptions of what they know. “You would never understand, you’re [insert race/ethnicity].” “You can’t support them, you’re [insert skin tone].” In what a world we live in, that people can determine your thoughts and experiences for you based on your skin. Is this not the cause we should all be uniting against? Should we not be looking beyond skin and look into the eyes of lived experiences not only of some people but of all people?
We will never get anywhere if we don’t communicate, share experiences and quit antagonisations. It can be tiring to keep telling the same story over and over again. But with such a great cause, we must never tire. We have to keep telling our stories.
I am not demanding much of people, only that we share our experiences to each other and see each other as humans. So I guess I’ll start.
Growing up in post-colonial Hong Kong, my first experience of understanding the colonial system came in the form of seeing my grandfathers certificate from the Queen honouring his contributions to the city. With a picture of the Queen in the centre, and only written in English it was quintessentially British. I would ask who the lady was only to be told she used to be the leader of Hong Kong. A woman who has been to Hong Kong twice. This is the deep rooted issue we are trying to address here.
Going into primary school, I vividly recall being told not to speak Chinese in school, that “your parents are paying a lot for you to learn English.” This type of language would usher me into, what I would like to call my ‘anti-Chinese’ phase. I despised speaking Chinese, and there was a growing subconscious divide between what many described as ‘locals’ and English speakers like me. Chinese was foreign, it was the lesser.
In tandem, this phase coincided with a growing anti-mainland Chinese sentiment (which after reading Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ I understand all too well as a manifestation of an inferiority complex) Worse than the ‘locals’ were the ‘mainlanders’. I would only be able to break out of the phase had it not been for self-defence. One day on a walk home from school I was bullied and teased by ‘local’ school students about my age for speaking English. I responded with a snarky remark and got back at them in Chinese. That was the moment I saw first hand the failure of English, it had not brought me admiration or defence. Slowly my admiration for Chinese began to grow, however, the subconscious inferiority complex never left. It would take more years for me to fully free myself from such a destructive state of mind.
In secondary school, colour began to play a visibly larger role in life. In the early years whiteness never seemed to be much of an issue. But as the years went by it seemed clearer that the colour of the skin played a bigger role as puberty took hold, and relations began solidifying. I have heard suggestions that teachers preferred white students over Asian students and I will not fully disagree with that. But personally, I was close to most of my teachers. In retrospect I do notice that white students got preferential treatment (I’m not entirely sure this is racially based, as it was also often the case white student and teachers lived in the same areas). A clear observation was that white eventually became synonymous with ‘popular’ or ‘hot’ in the greater international school community. The white people were no longer people, they were objects of desire to elevate one’s status.
It often bothered me that my local school friends and peers would often say I was lucky for being close to white people. Again this was a clear sign that the colonial structure had not vanished. My worth was in direct correlation to my proximity to a person of a different skin tone. The most obvious of this residue would be the blatant hatred and aggression shown towards mainlanders, who were the furthest from “whiteness”. Being called a “mainlander” often came with negative intentions, as to say you were less civilised.
It really bothers me how the mentality of ‘white is right’ still so strongly prevails in Hong Kong. What also bothers me though is the fact that anti-whiteness is also growing, and neither is that the answer. We can only be free from this hatred when we see people as people.
Personally, my secondary school experience was quite wonderful. It was multicultural and multinational. For most, our experiences were positive but that doesn’t mean we should negate the negative experience of our peers. We must never stop the introspection, reflect on how we treat others, and never stop questioning the things around us.
It’s not helpful labelling everything as racist, we need to understand progress, progress which is slow and requires a hefty amount of patience and a certain understanding that great progress might not be achieved in a single lifetime.
We live in a society that had been under colonial rule for a century. Problems will arise, they always do. But it’s up to the individual to decide how they want to tackle the issues. The tree is sick, will you pull the entire tree out and leave a hole in the ground? Or are you going to try tending to it and grow it better?
