Originally written by Alfian Saat March 2002
I had recently written to the artscommunity e-group saying that
I was willing to hold creative writing workshops, but only for
"indigenous Singaporeans". Somebody asked the obvious, and this is
my reply.
The Racist's Apology
----------------
I walked out of the house this morning and feared I had become a
racist.
I passed by a newsstand and a magazine tells me about 50% of the
world's most beautiful people are from the West, 10% from
Singapore, 35% from Hong Kong and Taiwan and 5% from India and
Malaysia. A JC Decaux billboard says that a lot of people read
their ads and they have faces to prove it: Chinese people of
various ages and occupations and genders. There are some which show
non-Chinese people but they don't have the dignity of individual
names, and they are put under the heading 'The Changing Face of
Singapore'. This can mean that perhaps the media is using more
non-Chinese people in their ads (which I don't see) or that
Singapore's demographic makeup is being altered by the arrival of
other races (which I am not aware of, historically). I take a bus
and TV Mobile is screening a Taiwanese variety programme. A
Singaporean beauty contestant wears a cheongsam as her national
costume and asks for an interpreter to translate her replies from
Mandarin. The Speak Mandarin campaign informs me of what assets are
missing from my life.
Tanya Chua's music video comes on and I unconsciously tally the
number of Malay people that appear; I have been doing this for some
time now, when I was in JC there was a 'My Singapore' music video
which showed images of corporate-looking Chinese women walking
through the CBD and Malay women in factory uniforms walking through
a bus interchange. Tanya Chua's 'Where I Belong' shows three
instances of Malay people populating the landcsape: a husband and
wife riding a scooter; a father and son on a bicycle, the son
carrying a box one presumes is filled with curry puffs or goreng
pisang, and a group of Malay youths playing soccer in a housing
estate ghetto so run down, it looks like an opposition ward being
denied of upgrading, or one of those satellite towns built when
Jurong swamps were still being filled.
But perhaps this is an improvement over other images: the satay
man, the songbird owner, the mee rebus Makcik, the Malay bride and
groom getting married in gold-embroidered finery (and situated on a
dais, we Malays like to call them 'royalty for a day', playing the
illusion of being king and queen in a country where the royal
bloodline has been evicted from their home and told that the ruins
of their palace will be converted into a museum). I think about
what Sang Nila Utama really did when he threw his crown into the
sea to calm the raging storm; whether the gales spoke to his inner
ear: 'if you want to live on the island you must surrender all
memory of having once been a prince'. At the Sentosa Merlion there
are signs that say that Sang Nila himself saw the Merlion rising
from the waters, a fact that the Sejarah Melayu, the Malay Annals,
failed to mention. Evidently there is someone called 'Sang Nila'
somewhere in the executive committee of the Singapore Tourist
Promotion Board.
At the foot of the Raffles statue in Boat Quay there is an
inscription that says the man's genius transformed a 'sleepy
fishing village' into the modern metropolis it is today, this at
the foot of a man who recorded in his journals how he saw the tombs
of the Malay kings, and inscriptions on a fortress wall, when he
first landed: evidence of an empire, of civilisation. In an
interview a doyenne of Singapore theatre laments that all
Singaporeans are 'cultural orphans', including the Malays, because
they migrated from Malaysia and Indonesia, and that makes them
immigrants too, no matter that one can take a sampan from Johor to
Singapore.
I walk through a park in Tampines and see Chinese boys playing
basketball at the court and Malay boys playing soccer on the field;
I am comforted that my complete uselessness at ball games has
prevented me from taking either side, has by default made me a
conscientious objector to such disturbing polarities. In the army a
sergeant major never called be by my name; I was called 'Melayu',
which I suppose was better than 'Ah-Neh', used to address the
Indians in the platoon. I remember a fellow Malay platoon mate who
told me to give it my all when I was fasting, this was to prevent
anyone from saying that we could use religion as an excuse for our
weakness. He was eventually posted to the infantry (not logistics
or engineers, much less the Navy or Airforce) and I used to imagine
him burning up his pre-fasting morning meal to be the first to
charge up the hill, yelling the pain of hunger and the pain of
being different. The Malay staff sergeant in Officer Cadet School
gave me a lot of shit just to overcompensate, to show everyone that
he was not into any form of racial favouritism. I became a victim
of the sidelong glances he made as he watched me doing my pushups,
those eyes constantly seeking approval from the eyes of the
majority.
I see a schoolgirl from a madrasah wearing a tudung on the MRT and
she is filling in the pictures in her colouring book. There are
many choices among her colour pencils which she can use for skin,
but she will use orange, and colour lightly, not brown or black. I
have seen her schoolmates before, eyeing branded scoolbags at pasar
malams, wearing branded sports shoes, like every other kid. I want
to go up to her and hug her, and tell her how her tudung is not
just a symbol of modesty, but a symbol of inscrutability. That
layer of cloth makes her suspicious to others, it can be used to
smuggle in a grenade or an agenda, so she will never get a
frontline desk job, she will be expected to hang around with other
tudung-wearing women in the university. I think about the fathers
who sent their daughters to schools in tudung and reflect on how
the media has framed them as shit-stirrers rather than citizens who
practised their right to civil disobedience, the same way Gandhi
fasted, or Rosa Parks refused to sit at her negroes-only seat on
the segregated bus. If I can tell the girl one thing, it is
'integration is not assimilation', or 'tolerance is a failure in
understanding' even though it is something she will take time to
understand.
I think also of the men who filmed different locations in Singapore
with the heinous intent of planting bombs. Did they not consider
the various innocent Singaporean lives that could have been claimed
by what they were about to do? And I wonder if they had already
chosen another country to live in; a country in which they do not
have to face a creeping sense of alienation, of redundancy. And I
am not talking about an Islamic country, not Afghanistan or Saudi
Arabia or anywhere else, but an afterlife paradise, where everyone
is equal in the eyes of God, where wearing a sarong or having a
beard does not immediately make you a proto-terrorist. Or perhaps a
country that exists in their minds, nurtured by a growing sense of
insularity and isolation, where they walk the streets and everyone
else is just a ghost, in whose dead eyes they cannot find any light
of empathy or understanding.
Once someone told me: 'But the government is bending over backwards
to accommodate you Malays.' I smiled and wanted to ask him if it
wasn't the other way round, that the Malays are made to bend
forward to be fucked senseless. Another time a journalist asked if
the statistical evidence of 'progress' shows that Malays are being
given the same opportunities as everyone else. I told her that
statistics don't do shit for me, as someone who has to live day by
day as a Malay person in this country. I told her one Malay Air
Force pilot poster boy, and a few bar charts and graphs, don't make
me feel more at home. The only thing they do is to convince
non-Malays that the country they live in is truly multiracial, that
there are no tensions beneath the veneer of newsprint and newscasts
and the rosy speeches of Malay MP's.
I have always believed in multi-racialism. I can say with utmost
confidence that I have more friends who are non-Malay than those
who are. And I mean real friends, who I confide in, who I've shared
many things with, who I do love dearly. And yet, of late, I have
the feeling that a lot of the things I'm saying, a lot of this talk
about alienation and marginalisation, only feeds subconsciously
into their sense of how fortunate they are to be born into the
status quo. I have written a poem before where I say, 'But more
than that we prayed for ourselves,/treading the rosary of our
blessings,/for what is pity without thanks for/the opportunity for
such pity?' And sometimes I feel as if the more my voice is raised
on the fast-eclipsing fate of the minority, the more it feeds into
the majority's smugness and arrogance about their assured place in
the sun. And this only makes me feel more powerless than if I had
kept silent.
So I say now, forgive me if you think my desire to work with my own
people marks me out as a racist. Forgive me if you think that my
preferences are actually prejudices. Forgive me for retreating into
something one can so easily call 'cultural chauvinism'. And I will
forgive you for thinking that this person writing this isn't the
Alfian that you know, that he has always been moderate and liberal,
and I will forgive you if you look at me differently the next time
I meet you. For some time already I have felt that as a Malay
writer writing in English I have had to carry the burden of
articulating so many unvoiced concerns. And the responsibilities
associated with this are frightening. I just think it is time I
pass on whatever skills I have to other Malay people, so we may
tell our stories to those who want to hear them, even though they
are stories of loss and loneliness and accidents of birth.
---------------------
Home > Our Columnists > Column
Aug 10, 2008
I wish...
Feeling like the least favourite child
Three writers share their hopes for Singapore this National
Day
Nur Dianah Suhaimi
As a Malay, I've always been told that I have to work twice as
hard to prove my worth
When I was younger, I always thought of myself as the
quintessential Singaporean.
Of my four late grandparents, two were Malay, one was Chinese
and one was Indian. This, I concluded, makes me a mix of all the
main races in the country. But I later realised that it was not
what goes into my blood that matters, but what my identity card
says under 'Race'.
Because my paternal grandfather was of Bugis origin, my IC says
I'm Malay. I speak the language at home, learnt it in school, eat
the food and practise the culture. And because of my being Malay,
I've always felt like a lesser Singaporean than those from other
racial groups.
I grew up clueless about the concept of national service because
my father was never enlisted.
He is Singaporean all right, born and bred here like the rest of
the boys born in 1955. He is not handicapped in any way. He did
well in school and participated in sports.
Unlike the rest, however, he entered university immediately
after his A levels. He often told me that his schoolmates said he
was 'lucky' because he was not called up for national service.
'What lucky?' he would tell them. 'Would you feel lucky if your
country doesn't trust you?'
So I learnt about the rigours of national service from my male
cousins. They would describe in vivid detail their training
regimes, the terrible food they were served and the torture
inflicted upon them - most of which, I would later realise, were
exaggerations.
But one thing these stories had in common was that they all
revolved around the Police Academy in Thomson. As I got older, it
puzzled me why my Chinese friends constantly referred to NS as
'army'. In my family and among my Malay friends, being enlisted in
the army was like hitting the jackpot. The majority served in the
police force because, as is known, the Government was not
comfortable with Malay Muslims serving in the army. But there are
more of them now.
Throughout my life, my father has always told me that as a
Malay, I need to work twice as hard to prove my worth. He said
people have the misconception that all Malays are inherently
lazy.
I was later to get the exact same advice from a Malay minister
in office who is a family friend.
When I started work, I realised that the advice rang true,
especially because I wear my religion on my head. My
professionalism suddenly became an issue. One question I was asked
at a job interview was whether I would be willing to enter a
nightclub to chase a story. I answered: 'If it's part of the job,
why not? And you can rest assured I won't be tempted to have
fun.'
When I attend media events, before I can introduce myself,
people assume I write for the Malay daily Berita Harian. A male
Malay colleague in The Straits Times has the same problem, too.
This makes me wonder if people also assume that all Chinese
reporters are from Lianhe Zaobao and Indian reporters from Tamil
Murasu.
People also question if I can do stories which require
stake-outs in the sleazy lanes of Geylang. They say because of my
tudung I will stick out like a sore thumb. So I changed into a
baseball cap and a men's sports jacket - all borrowed from my
husband - when I covered Geylang.
I do not want to be seen as different from the rest just because
I dress differently. I want the same opportunities and the same job
challenges.
Beneath the tudung, I, too, have hair and a functioning brain.
And if anything, I feel that my tudung has actually helped me
secure some difficult interviews.
Newsmakers - of all races - tend to trust me more because I look
guai (Hokkien for well-behaved) and thus, they feel, less likely to
write critical stuff about them.
Recently, I had a conversation with several colleagues about
this essay. I told them I never thought of myself as being
particularly patriotic. One Chinese colleague thought this was
unfair. 'But you got to enjoy free education,' she said.
Sure, for the entire 365 days I spent in Primary 1 in 1989. But
my parents paid for my school and university fees for the next 15
years I was studying.
It seems that many Singaporeans do not know that Malays have
stopped getting free education since 1990. If I remember clearly,
the news made front-page news at that time.
We went on to talk about the Singapore Government's belief that
Malays here would never point a missile at their fellow Muslim
neighbours in a war.
I said if not for family ties, I would have no qualms about
leaving the country. Someone then remarked that this is why Malays
like myself are not trusted. But I answered that this lack of
patriotism on my part comes from not being trusted, and for being
treated like a potential traitor.
It is not just the NS issue. It is the frustration of explaining
to non-Malays that I don't get special privileges from the
Government. It is having to deal with those who question my
professionalism because of my religion. It is having people assume,
day after day, that you are lowly educated, lazy and poor. It is
like being the least favourite child in a family. This child will
try to win his parents' love only for so long. After a while, he
will just be engulfed by disappointment and bitterness.
I also believe that it is this 'least favourite child' mentality
which makes most Malays defensive and protective of their own
kind.
Why do you think Malay families spent hundreds of dollars voting
for two Malay boys in the Singapore Idol singing contest? And do
you know that Malays who voted for other competitors were frowned
upon by the community?
The same happens to me at work. When I write stories which put
Malays in a bad light, I am labelled a traitor. A Malay reader once
wrote to me to say: 'I thought a Malay journalist would have more
empathy for these unfortunate people than a non-Malay
journalist.'
But such is the case when you are a Malay Singaporean. Your life
is not just about you, as much as you want it to be. You are made
to feel responsible for the rest of the pack and your actions
affect them as well. If you trip, the entire community falls with
you. But if you triumph, it is considered everyone's success.
When 12-year-old Natasha Nabila hit the headlines last year for
her record PSLE aggregate of 294, I was among the thousands of
Malays here who celebrated the news. I sent instant messages to my
friends on Gmail and chatted excitedly with my Malay colleagues at
work.
Suddenly a 12-year-old has become the symbol of hope for the
community and a message to the rest that Malays can do it too - and
not just in singing competitions.
And just like that, the 'least favourite child' in me feels a
lot happier.
Each year, come Aug 9, my father, who never had the opportunity
to do national service, dutifully hangs two flags at home - one on
the front gate and the other by the side gate.
I wonder if putting up two flags is his way of making himself
feel like a better-loved child of Singapore.
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