Stuck Between Rich and Race

I preface this post with letting you know that I am aware that the problems I will talk about in this article are privileged ones to have. This article is the equivalent of me wiping my tears with money. I don't literally do that but I might as well be if you see the contents of this post. I will say, however, that any who judge you by your privilege is just as bad as any who judge the impoverished for being impoverished. To say that a problem is invalid because you can smell hints of upper class and therefore deem it inherently invalid is moral relativism and in general moral relativism stinks doo doo. Now without further ado do, let me hit the woes (I'm coining this term, I will publish more under my 'sad Tiktoker' sticker pack).

I tend to label myself the least Malay Malay there is in that I barely tick off any stereotype boxes. I don't play soccer, I do well in school, I don't, in fact, speak Malay well at all and the list goes on. It's just a joke I use, mostly because these stereotypes aren't completely true anyway obviously. But they're only mostly untrue factually, not socially. As Paul Simon sang, "he doesn't speak the language, he holds no currency". My lingua franca has always been English and pretty much only exclusively so. The fact that I used the phrase 'lingua franca' can attest to that. I'm also broke so that second line rings true too. It's the language I speak to my family and all my friends and I do mean all my friends including the few interactions I have with Malay people outside my family. Some people who are bad at their mother tongue say they can't speak it but they can at least understand a conversation if they heard one. I can't. Sure, I know words and stuff but to say I can functionally use the language in any form is just objectively wrong.

Have I mentioned that I'm not close to my extended family? Well I'm not. One stereotype box I do tick are my big extended family. I have over 20+ cousins stemming from 5-6 uncles on my dad's side. Like Yin and Yang, during family gatherings my cousins and I fill opposite roles of the congeniality spectrum. For every pleasant conversation my cousins have about where they're studying or something, I scroll through 10 minutes worth of Reddit posts. For every baby that gets passed around between them like a puppy at a primary school I sit in the corner fascinated by a funny thought I just had. I'm not one of them and that's not to say I have disdain for them. But I think the analogy of Yin and Yang is apt here because everyone agrees there's a good side and a bad side, I just don't know which I am.

I was at a market with my mom and she bought some vegetables from this Chinese lady who called it by its Malay name. I asked what it was in English out of curiosity and the lady told me. As we were walking away she asked our nationality. She guessed we were Burmese, then Filipino then Indonesian. After a pause my mother replied "no, we're Malay." The response she gave back was, "then why did you ask for it in English?"

The first barrier between my cousins and I is the language. I feel so uncomfortable and foreign speaking what is supposed to be my language. And maybe it's only right I am. I never spoke it colloquially, I never watched many shows with it and I never thought in Malay. As far as I'm concerned Malay is to me as it is to a Chinese person, just something vaguely mixed in me because Singapore is a Rojak society and you're bound to learn Malay by happenstance.

My extended family treats English with the same alien attitude, as if the Anglo-Saxon world is so far removed from theirs and it's never something they can identify with. Again, perhaps only rightfully so. When I answer their questions in English and I mean proper grammatically correct, no-Malay-accent English, I think they look at me as haughty, like I can't stoop down to their level and speak 'normally'. I wish me speaking in English and them in Malay and both of us understanding each other would work. But it just doesn't. On me, my language attaches some sort of background in the eyes of my extended family. It's like I'm not one of them.

I feel great shame I can't functionally speak Malay. That's not for lack of trying. It's for lack of nurturing. Let's face it, it's nigh impossible to ingrain a language in you if you never speak it at home. So I don't blame myself but nonetheless there is shame that it's an identity I've lost. Sure, my English totally rocks (I think). I feel bad for the thousands of Malays who only ever get functionally good in Malay and get left behind by an education system that functions in a language they can't understand. I'm thankful that never happened to me. I'm thankful that the majority of the internet that contains all the information I could ever want to know is in English, allowing me to comprehend and learn with ease. I'm thankful I've connected with friends and strangers so different from me because the lingua franca of the world is the one I happen to use. In that sense English is the biggest bubble breaker for me and conversely it's what traps others in their own bubbles.

But the cards aren't gained, they're swapped. One Chinese friend made is a family member ostracised. One article read is a conversation with a family member I couldn't have. Bukan seerti-seiras. It's not commensurate. Hassan Minhaj in his standup talks about paying the immigrant tax as an Indian in America. I can't help but think I'm partaking in the same fees. Oh you want to appreciate English literature? That'll cost you appreciating Malaysian and Indonesian cinema, a cinema that all my relatives relate to. You want to get an A1 in O level English? Take this B4 for Malay. You may argue they're not mutually exclusive and I would agree that it isn't for a lot of people. But it was for me.

I question why cultural identity is so important because morally and practically speaking losing your mother tongue is no harm, no foul. But it does tie you to belong somewhere. You can watch Malay shows feeling they cater to you, talk to Malay people recognising the same speech patterns and slang you know and bond with a family whom you regard as familiar. Some days I feel I come home to a house and not a home, like I felt more belonging in school or wherever I was before i walked through my front door.

After buying what we wanted, my mom came home and set to work cooking in our open-air kitchen. She laid the ingredients out on the single piece marble countertop and began the cooking process. I imagine every day thousands of Malay mothers like her would set up their kitchen just the same, albeit with different decor and space. Meanwhile I sat down on our extra-large sofa and watched movies in our living room connected to our balcony with an unobstructed view, something we paid extra for when buying our house. I imagine many boys too do the same as their mothers cook, just on smaller TVs and on less decadent couches.

The second barrier: class status. During Hari Raya I would visit the houses of my relatives and every year these visits make me wonder. They make me wonder what my relatives feel when they come over to my house. At their HDB flats, I get served simple fizzy drinks and watch a small outdated plasma TV. Sometimes they'll have a stand up fan in the corner of the room and other times their ceiling fans won't work and would be caked in dust. Some houses can't fit all of us so we sit on the floor, other houses have toilets with the default tiling that all HDB flat toilets have and they'd have lots of colourful pails to scoop water. I wonder, to the relatives who call this their home, what they must think when they enter my spacious, fully-renovated and air-conditioned living room with wooden floors. What do they think when my parents bring out a pristine China set to serve expensive tea for my guests as they watch shows using our Netflix subscription on our big 3D-ready borderless TV hung on a custom-built rack? What do they think leaning over our large balcony or using our toilets with bespoke glass doors and marble and ceramic detailing? Do they think we live in the same world as them? Do they regard my house as a Malay household? Do they think that the way I act starts to make sense? Because when I go to their house and I eat their food on their Ikea dining table, I think: I can't pretend that we are as similar as families are supposed to be. I have more in common with my German neighbour who moved here than with my own aunties and uncles.

I feel uncomfortable sitting in the homes of my relatives because they know I'm used to amenities they could never provide me. I see it in their faces when they serve me food on generic plastic plates. I see it when they switch to Suria on their desktop-mounted TVs to let me watch. I see it when we talk to each other like there's an impossible chasm we can't bridge.

As a meritocracy, Singapore is indoctrinated with the mantra that SES doesn't matter. And in terms of determining your future it might not. But to say that in any other regard is naive. The poor make friends with the poor and the rich make friends with the rich. I too make friends with people roughly as well to do as I am. This is not a product of discrimination as much as it is a byproduct of the people we tend to meet because of our SES anyway. You're rich, you're more likely to have parents with high-education, that gives you an advantage during your early education and you get into a good secondary school like ACSI. And the people in ACSI, who make friends with each other, tend to be from well-off backgrounds.

After a few English movies filled with violence that Islam would disapprove of, morals we don't share and characters living lifestyles I never did, my mom was finished cooking. She made a traditional Malay dish, something she said we used to eat as kids when grandma was still healthy enough to cook for us but I seem have no memory of. I ate it and realise that it's not something I have tasted in years. I would then go on to call it by its English name because I Googled it out of curiosity. This is the name I would use when I text my friends about it and how new an experience it was to me. Friends who find it just as alien as I did.

The third and final barrier is upbringing. SES affects more than just my material possessions and therefore my upbringing.I grew up in an upper-middle class home. My parents are educated, my dad could help do my homework as a kid and has a good command of academic subjects. Growing up, I watched Western media on TV and on the DVDs we could afford to rent weekly. I listened to Western music and I generally learnt Western ideas, ones my father himself would learn from his high-paying job as a crewman on shipping vessels. My family never had conversations concerning budgets or really the lack of anything but rather concerns of what destination to fly to for the end of the year and when we should move house. I grew up in excess. I did well in school and I went to the best ones and sat in the top classes in them. Not to contest the racial segregation of our education system but I rarely ever spoke to Malays in my classes because I could count the number of Malays I've seen in my schools on one hand. I went to an expensive specialised Secondary school and I did awesome for my O levels. I got the freedom of choice, despite my grades qualifying me to get into the best JCs, to pursue filmmaking in polytechnic where I mixed with even less Malays in my classes.

I don't know what it is about the choices I made in my education but it seems not to be where the Malays go if ever there is a typical path for us. Inevitably I mixed with Chinese kids much more, upper class Chinese kids to be exact. I learnt more about Christianity which the majority of my friends subscribe to than my own religion just because people around me would bring it up more often than my own beliefs. I talked the way they do, inculcated the same habits in eating, hobbies and thinking as they do and hell I identified with the same sphere of cultures as they do.

But I wasn't one of them. I can't count the number of hours I've sat bored and miserable in my room on CNY because my entire circle of friends disappear to their families, as they should I guess. So many times I've been FOMO when I see all my friends going out together during Hari Raya when I'm busy not talking to my extended family. I can't celebrate their Christmases or go to their churches or go drinking with them as they so normally do. Not that I was influenced by their religion, but it felt so natural being with them to go where they go and do as they do. When in Rome, right? But that's not me. I'm born different. This is no Boy In Striped Pyjamas fencing situation but it is a divide based solely on my race.

I don't think my parents would be comfortable knowing how fully 'Chinesed' I was. Don't you think your parents not being comfortable with your identity rings too many bells from too many gay movies?

At the same time I don't go home to a family where I suddenly fully belong again. My extended family never grew up with that 'only Malay kid in class' starter pack. I can't talk to them about the things I normally think about, the shows I watch, hobbies I partake in, issues I care about or facts or news I just learnt. The cultural sphere that encircles every one of my extended family members shares no overlap with mine. None. It's a separated Venn Diagram, a mathematical concept which I have actually tried to bring up in conversation with abysmal results.

In all this, I haven't mentioned my sister who I'm sure suffers the same problem to a certain extent. She went to good schools, grew up the exact same way I did and has the same troubles with our cousins. But some days I see her bring home Malay friends and I wonder how she did it. How did she retain that part of her while forging a path so off-tangent from the typical Malay? Our President is Ms Halimah Yacob. Hell if there isn't a more Malay looking woman out there. When I see her or Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister for Muslim affairs, I wonder if they face the same issues. Do they wonder whether Makciks are meant to be President? On their off days do they visit relatives they don't understand too? And do those relatives regard them so foreign? If so, they never mention it. I guess I don't either. It begs the question whether all this time the onus was actually on me to get Malay.

I went to a radio station for my internship, where I got to do my own radio show. During the 3 months I was on air, unbeknownst to me, my mother shared my shows with the rest of my extended family. It's funny to think they heard more from me and learnt more about me through that shitty little video camera live streaming my shows than they will probably ever hear from me in real life. I remember halfway through my internship, I went visiting my relatives for Hari Raya. My dad showed a clip of me energetically back-selling a song on air.

My auntie, who I'm sure could on her hands the number of words I've spoken to her, said 'Oh my god! He has a voice after all!" She said 'he' because she replied to my dad, not to me. In her mind she already knew she wasn't going to get an interaction from me. It's interesting seeing them talk about me in third person while I'm right there. So who was I on air that was so free to talk? The answer is: I was me. Rid of all the judging eyes and the guilt and the pulling and pushing of different identities, I spoke freely.

Then, who am I? In the Green Book, the main character who struggles with identity screams, "If I’m not black enough and I’m not white enough and I’m not man enough, then tell me Tony, what the hell am I?"

Sometimes, I guess far too often, I too ask myself "So if I'm not poor enough, and if I'm not Malay enough and if I'm not Chinese enough, then who do I call home?" Because that's what it boils down to in the end. That's why it matters to me. Having people I call home. Not just in the sense of family and not just in the sense of a nation. But really in the sense of a community that makes me feel like we all grew up the same. That I think thoughts and experience life they same as some people. Being individualistic is awesome and I applaud people who strive for it. But you must admit being yourself can only be done by yourself. It gets all too lonely all too quickly. So please, somebody hurry and find me. Because I've placed myself on this lofty perch of unique and I can't climb down.

photo credits: https://lamyikchun.com/