Skip to main content

Prejudice

 Twenty one percent.

A dismal figure. Assuming, usually correctly, that the bulk of the respondents thought too highly of themselves, chances are that the actual figure was even lower than that. Nevertheless, to think that this was the marriageable acceptance rating for Indians among the majority Chinese population, the figure was damning in the options that I had considered myself to have.

Of late, in the conversations with friends, more often that not the question is posed to me if I am open to the option of marrying someone from outside my race. I have to simply state 'friends' for with close friends, its not a question, but an accusation that I have always preferred Chinese girls. I do very candidly admit my guilt to that charge, though in my defence, that was primarily due to one factor; availability. I have to go back to Primary School to last find an Indian girl who studied in the same class as me. 

It was my sisters who would give me a lesson in the book of race relations. Modern, attractive, compassionate and intelligent, they had no shortage of suitors (unlike me), though they distinctly preferred Indian men and had a strong contempt for Indian men with preference for Chinese girls (like me). On why they spurned their Chinese suitors, they would explain,

"For the Chinese, we are considered a step down. If a Chinese guy marries me, he is looked at with a  are-you-so-lousy-you-couldnt-get-a-chinese-girl? attitude"

The survey proved pretty much that, that despite all the education we claim to have, the openness we claim to embrace, the multi-racial society we claim to celebrate, at heart, we house petty prejudices. I do not blame the Chinese because I myself have them. In fact almost every majority population in any country consider themselves superior to the minorities and minorities consider themselves superior to other minorities (and even sometimes to the majority). In the Canadian Indian community, I once heard that Indian families would set their children the condition they could marry anyone except a BMW (Black, Muslim or White). You have to love the irony that the very minorities whom you would expect to be able to see through racial prejudices, given their experiences with race relations, were sometimes the very ones perpetuating it.

Do I have a solution? Well, no. I do think bringing up the topic and creating that awareness is in itself a step forward, something I have to applaud Straits Times for, given their other articles usually make me question why they have not closed down yet. With time, differences should blur. Until then I will have to painfully put up with the hidden truth in the good-intentioned statement my female Chinese friend once told me,

"Krishnan, if you were Chinese, you confirm have girlfriend by now".

It sounded good then. It doesn't sound so good now.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparing the Rod

 She gave me a look of deep displeasure, not very atypical of the look most members of the opposite gender gave me. “You know you can’t do that in Germany?”, she asserted with the same authority my mother used to tell me about not messing around in her kitchen.  “Yes I am aware”, I meekly responded, knowing well that any kind of argument about this would not end well, so it was better to close off the topic quietly and unlike the kitchen, I could not afford to get kicked out of Germany. She was not the first to respond with such hostility to what seemed like the most natural of things in my experience. The last one who told me the same was a teacher I had met at a party. When she sounded shocked that I was ok with it and said it was not right, I (with some alcoholic courage) had retorted, “How would you discipline them then if they do something wrong?” “I would tell them I am very disappointed with them”. I almost laughed. However, that was very much the theory of my new frien...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Eye for an Eye

"Something that three or four years ago you told me was one of the touchstones of maturity: being nice to people even when they’re not nice to you…" - William Styron It was an plan that came out of nowhere. Perhaps half depressed by the winter and half depressed by the inactivity at work, there was sufficient turmoil in the mind to create these type of plans and then let it fester, until something that started off with a what-if turned into a why-not. It would have been the perfect revenge for the past hurt and humiliation that was yet to completely heal.  The circumstances were similar. On one side, an eager visitor who had traveled far to say "Hello" and on the other side, a host, bewildered and surprised by this visit. In the first case, the host would not receive the visitor, who would turn back humiliated and vowing never again. Now the roles were reversed and I was the host. What if I agreed to receive? What if in reality I did not plan to receive? ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Passage to Vietnam : Part 2 - The Food

Imagine your friend passes you a fully boiled egg, garnished in onion and sauce. You use your chopsticks, lift it up to your mouth and bite of half the egg. It does not tear away as easily as you thought it would. And it tastes queer. Then while chewing away at that half, you look down at the other half on your plate and you see tiny grey feathers and a tiny leg bone staring back at you. My exact feeling at that moment was like I was making love to a woman and she suddenly reveals in the middle that she used to be a man. In short, I wanted to puke. I am not a big fan of Vietnamese cuisine. During my 18 days stay there, my Viet friends were kind enough to bring me around and let me taste about every kind of street food and drink, from snails to sticky rice to Viet baguettes to local alcohol. Other than certain items here and there, I generally thought the food lacked any kind of strong flavour to it. Plus, for some reason, I could not understand why the Viets went to the extent of ea...
Post a Comment
Read more