In a corridor, deep in the bowels of the hospital, I saw a Chinese woman heartily greet a Sikh woman. The obvious warmth expressed between these two women of different ethnicities just made me feel so grateful that I live in a society where there is so much freedom from ethnic discrimination and strife.
Something we shouldn't take for granted.
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Six Years
13 years ago
2 comments:
Hi Gigamole,
When I read your post, it struck a very personal cord in my heart.
I'm a strong believer in ethnic freedom and had believed for a long time this truly existed in our country till I saw first hand the depth of deep rooted racism.
My neighbours are a Sikh family, and have by all accounts shown great warmth to all our chinese neighbours and friends. In fact, the Sikh matriach had a Chinese lady as her best friend. By all accounts, it seemed that ethnic freedom and expression had truly transcended, until the son of this Sikh family decided to date a chinese girl seriously.
According to the son, the families had met under strained circumstances due to the violent objections of his family, specifically the mother. The reason given, she was Chinese and she would not allow her son to marry another ethnic group. Eventually, the hurdle of racism could not be overcomed and they split up.
I wonder often, if we truly practice ethnic blindness, or do we just appreciate it as close as we can and as long as it doesn't hit home.
Hi Anon....thanks for sharing.
Yes, sadly there is no real ethnic blindness. We are all intuitively tuned into finding differences rather than not. Ethnic tolerance therefore requires conscious effort to mitigate.
Unfortunately we all harbour some level of ethnic intolerance, some more than others. If we are not careful some of this intolerance does spill out when certain pressures are faced.
It is sad, and often very tragic when it does occur.
We just need to keep reminding ourselves, and the others around us of the stupidity of such ethnic intolerance.
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