#and they have a PHD! they just know how being a visible poc and being intelligent is priceless

[whimsycore]

The way I grew up reading Franz Fanon and Audre Lorde and Edward Said on tumblr and people paid thousands of dollars for college and didn’t pay attention to any of “those classes” and now take it out on DEI Initiatives instead of admitting to themselves that self educated people are a threat to them.

[keeliuminshort]

Well, I just learned a lot. Thoughts, friends? "This post is about Cr*zy Rich Asians. I've been seeing a lot of people being excited about it and I think it's because they don't know what Singapore is actually like. I understand that many in the Global North, especially Americans, have no real understanding of the complications and nuances of race in other parts of the world. So I’ll give you some context. Singapore is a terribly racist country. The state embarked on a form of eugenics in the 1980s meant to displace its indigenous population and replace it with settler colonial Chinese people. Minorities find it hard to gain employment. Muslim women in hijabs are kept out of certain civil service jobs because of their headwear. (This is government policy that the state has openly defended). Malay-Muslims are told they cannot be trusted in the military because they are Muslims with loyalty to other states. This is really ironic when you think about the fact that Malays are indigenous to the land. Indian construction workers are killed on site due to lax labour safety laws, and instead of being sent home to their families, are buried underneath those skyscrapers y’all love so much about Singapore. Minorities are stereotypically represented or never represented. Chinese people wear Indians in ‘brown face’ and Hinduism is considered something to mimic for Halloween. Minorities are called slurs on a daily basis, and Chinese people proudly say they are racist and don’t care to be otherwise. Scholarships are reserved for the Chinese, heck, entire schools are reserved for them, and these are paid for with taxpayers money. Imagine a purely white school only for white kids that the state pays for with your money, and then tells you that these schools are necessary for the future of America. Cos the Chinese supremacist state of Singapore constantly tells us that the Chinese are what makes Singapore successful, that Malays are lazy, that Indians are violent and that only Chinese people can save Singapore. In case you think I’m making this up, I’ll tell you a few things about myself. I am a) Singapore’s most well-known anti-racism activist. B) I have written extensively on racism in Singapore, and I coined the term and theory around what is now called “Chinese Privilege.” C) I am doing a PhD on Chinese privilege, Chinese supremacy and racism in Singapore. D) I had to run away to Australia because I was being threatened by the Singapore state with sedition for speaking out about race. (Think about the fact that Australia is safer for me than Singapore.) So when you celebrate this movie, ask yourself who you are complicit in erasing. It is the minorities who have been told every day that we are worthless, ugly, lazy, unworthy of being represented. That we deserve to be treated as second-class citizens in our own country. You are celebrating a novel that barely made a splash in Singapore because Chinese people writing about being Chinese and rich is so fuckin' commonplace here. What people celebrating this movie are doing is bringing a Western racial framework to bear upon a Singaporean one. Chinese people in Singapore aren’t oppressed in any way, in fact, they are the oppressors. Asians in the Global North are so happy to see themselves that they don’t care about the context in which this is happening. CRA is set in Singapore and only has Chinese people in it. This isn’t new or refreshing, this is the EVERYDAY FUCKIN LIVES OF MINORITIES. It is only diversity FOR YOU. Why should Western Chinese representation come at the expense of minorities in Singapore? Why is it that so many POCs in America, Europe and Australia lack such compassion for the suffering of minorities in the Global South? If a movie was set in NY and it only featured white people, you’d call it racist. This is set in Singapore, a country where already Chinese people are the only ones who are visible and represented, and where Chinese people hold all economic, social and political power, a state of affairs this movie perpetuates. Yet, this is perfectly all right for many of you. I have been triggered in so many ways these past few days seeing how little Asians in the West care to research or read the things they unthinkingly support. This is my life that y’all think should come second to your ability to be represented. Seeing post after post on what an achievement this movie is really difficult for us because you’re doing what Singaporean Chinese have done to us our whole lives-erase us, talk over us and dismiss us. For god’s sake, for once in your lives, think about the consequences of the things you support. You're not the only people who deserve to be represented, and when you support this movie, that's actually what you are saying."