Opinion: When our conversations about racism fall short

By Sharanya Pillai

GRAPHIC: TEO HSIN WEI

Being judged on my skin colour has always felt inescapable, but racism reared its ugly head in an especially uncouth manner for me, when I was searching for a rental apartment last year.

My sister and I scoured through online listings and made over 20 calls, only to receive curt replies that went: “Chinese preferred.”

Property agents we spoke to were unapologetic, instead directing us to listings by Malays and Indians only. Of the few Chinese listings that were open to having us, there was the strict condition that cooking is not allowed — presumably based on the stereotype that Indian food is smelly.

It’s been six years since the uproar over the “curry” saga — when an immigrant Chinese family took an Indian family to task for allegedly cooking pungent curries.

I remember being pleasantly surprised that my Chinese peers took the side of the Indian family, ardently declaring their love of Indian culture.

It’s been six years, and I still find myself denied rental on the basis of how my food smells.

On social media, there is no shortage of anecdotes like mine, evidence that racism is very much alive in our multicultural society. With more minorities speaking up, there have been a lot more heartening conversations on the topic.

But what troubles me is that like much of the content on social media, these conversations have limited lifespans.

Some 300 “likes” later, we move on to the next trending story, without really getting to the root causes of racial discrimination.

And perhaps more frustratingly, in the echo chambers of social media, nuance never really goes viral. Only outrage does.

The result is that much of the debate over racism has been dominated by the firebrand #ThisIsChinesePrivilege campaign, spearheaded by independent academic Sangeetha Thanapal.

While lending a sociological perspective to racism, through the works of scholars like Bell Hooks, the campaign also calls for Chinese people to “shut up and listen”.

This is where I find myself in an awkward spot: feeling gratified that racism is receiving social media attention, but uncomfortable with how alienating — and even downright rude — these debates can be.

While I agree that the voices of minorities need to be lifted above the white noise, I’m not sure asking a whole segment of society to “shut up” does any good.

Not only does it make the tone of debate inherently hostile, it also makes the conversation more “anti-Chinese” than “anti-racism”.

And then there are instances when the conversation around racism involves making broad generalisations around race.

In one article for instance, Ms Thanapal makes a blanket claim about interracial couples: “Indian men who date Chinese women are desperate to assimilate. They instinctively realise the privilege of being Chinese, and unable to access it any other way, aspire to marry a Chinese woman.”

It is disturbing that in trying to find a race-based explanation for everything, we lose sight of simple explanations — like how two people might actually fall in love, regardless of race.

The dynamics of interracial marriages is an interesting academic topic, but for people dealing with both overt and subtle racism on an everyday basis, there are more pressing issues.

We need more conversations on how race has affected our abilities to excel in school, to find a job or in my case, a living space.

And we need to be graceful in debate — not imposing silence on the naysayers, but countering hate speech with better ideas.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to translate talk into action.

While searching for an apartment, I also discovered that online property portal 99.co has a special “all races welcome” category that promotes property listings without racial requirements.

The company’s founder, Darius Cheung, started the initiative after he faced trouble renting a home because his wife is Indian.

It is a brave move in an industry that is unapologetically racist.

I hope that more individuals and organisations can take a stand where possible, while we keep raising the standards of how we confront the complex issue of racism.