Singapore — The Progress Singapore Party’s (PSP) Kumaran Pillai shared an incident where an Indian girl wrote that she was called “black monster” in primary school. He added that there are two kinds of racists – an outright one, and one that is more covert in their actions.
In his post on Monday (Jun 14), Mr Pillai, the Central Executive Committee (CEC) member of PSP, wrote: “I have encountered two types racist: one that highlights the differences and tells you that we are different and at the same time holds deep distrust and distaste for the other race.
The second is a lot more covert – he is not in your face and never utters anything that is politically wrong. But, holds deep distrust and prejudices against the other race”.
However, Mr Pillai added that the covert racists were a lot more dangerous as they would deny minorities economic and financial opportunities.
He shared a series of messages from an Indian girl who said she remembered “being called a black monster on my first day of school by a group of chinese girls who ran away screaming”.
She added that as she tried to explain to another girl what their Chinese teacher was saying, the girl responded: “I don’t need an Indian to tell me what to do”.
The girl wrote that in secondary school, as she was pouring the dark sweet sauce over a plate of Chee Cheong Fun (rice noodle roll dish), a classmate remarked that she was so lucky because “if you spill the sauce on urself no one will notice. It’s the same colour as your skin”.
Even as a junior college student, she wrote, she was called “black girl” because a boy did not know her name.
In his post, Mr Pillai added that throughout his life, he felt that he too had been judged very harshly and often had to work twice as hard to get where he is. /TISG