In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, I was trying to make sense of it all. It was a rude and shocking reminder of how cruel, inhumane and senseless our world can be. And I need to understand how that came to be, how for all the goodness and cleverness of humanity, we have allowed such a thing to happen. So I read, absorb and reflect. There was no shortage of materials, just from my Facebook feed. And I try not to read only one side of the story (good training from my Masters of Science Communication and also because of this TED talk) which often means that eventually I can't really only argue for or against any issue. I don't see myself as standing with only the police or with the blacks.
Of all the articles I read in that time, this one stood out for me. First of all, I aspire to be as humble and open as Jason is and secondly as I read Lori's response, my ignorance and obliviousness to my own privilege became increasingly apparent. There is no way to deny that I have privilege for being a Chinese living in Singapore. It is also with great shame that I admit I had personally questioned someone's intellectual capabilities based on skin colour. I may not had said anything at that point in time but the doubt that had arisen if detected by the other party would certainly had been a source of unjustified pain.
It feels extremely unfair. The world is unfair and unlikely to change overnight. Perhaps because I have myself been in the position of being the minority in other scenarios, I could somewhat empathize with her but I can never imagine having to face and deal with that kind of discrimination on a daily basis. Thus, it was then that I decided I would stand up, speak out and challenge any unfair instances which I may witness in future. We can all do better.
Then Racial Harmony Day rolled by. Although I had never celebrated it as a student, I always looked forward to dressing up for that day as a teacher! Facebook reminded me of the different styles I tried over the years, not one was Chinese. 😆 I supposed it can be seen as tokenism as depending on the school's directive, efforts toward celebration of RHD can be quite superficial. Yet, not having that experience as a student had resulted in me having practically zero exposure to other races until my university days?!?
Besides liking many of my teacher friends' RHD related photos on Facebook, I also chanced upon Preetipls' video which spurred me to pen this post. Highly doubt MOE will even entertain her proposal but after completing her checklist (I ticked 11 boxes) I strongly encourage everyone to check yours! Privilege is really not only based on race and I honestly believe everyone benefits from a heightened sense of self-awareness. Another alternative is to attempt The Privilege Walk (Singapore edition) which actually first happened about 4 years ago. I would be 7 steps ahead.
While preparing for this post, I googled "check your privilege singapore" to search for Preetipls' video, fully expecting it to be the first result but of course I was wrong. This is a topic that has been discussed again and again, (link, link, link, link, link) and until we as individuals begin to acknowledge these advantages afforded to each of us, it will continue to come up again and again.
Finally, as Preetipls mentioned, being highly privileged is not a problem in itself. And I certainly hope that this call to check your privilege does not backfire as suggested by this article! It is what we do with this knowledge and awareness that matters. Allow me to appeal to your moral responsibility that comes with privilege, do what you can or perhaps stop doing what you have been doing. Hopefully together we can prevent the next senseless murder.
