The Briton and his victim, who is the racist?

When news of the Briton being bashed by his victim for racist slurs, I read some comments that the Briton is not racist because he married a local girl. Is that good enough a factor to clear him of the racist tag? Maybe indeed he is not a racist. Maybe he did not even know that he is a racist. Maybe racism is just part of him and is unrecognisable.

The fact is that this young Briton carried with him hundreds of years of European history and racism. These have probably be in his blood, in his history lessons in schools. How else would a young Briton told a Chink, anyway, to all westerns, Sinkies look no different than another Chinaman, the racist joke of being laundryman and asking him to go back to his laundry shop in China?

This racist discrimination of Chinaman and condemning them into lowly trade like cooks and laundry men, was enshrined in the American Constitution in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Other than tagging the native Red Indians as savages and good for the slaughter, and the enslavement of African human beast of burden, the Exclusion Act is the third most hideous crime against humanity committed by the Americans. Thank God Sinkie Chinks are not Chinaman and can laugh at this Act or simply ignored it as nothing to do with us. I take exceptions to this kind of denial.

Back to the Sinkie Chink that was taunted by the Briton. A commentator posted that the Briton was not racist because of his Chinese wife and it was his victim that played the racist card. So insulting him with the laundry tag on his expensive designer shirt was not racist. Calling him a laundry man was also not racist. Telling him to go back to his laundry shop in China was not racist. Now where did this Briton hide this part of Chinaman/laundryman in his memory for instant recall, to be used against Chinaman?

What did the victim did that was racist? For beating up the Briton for passing all the friendly and innocent laundry man remarks? Maybe the Sinkie Chink could not appreciate Brit humour, or got no sense of humour. Since the end of colonialism, not many former subjects of the Empire would want to appreciate deprecating racist humour from their colonial masters anymore.

How could someone called a Sinkie Chink racist when he spoke and dressed and behaved like a westerner and enjoying every bit of it in a western establishment, a pub. And if you read him carefully, he even called himself Alexander Lincoln despite his parents giving him a Chinese name. Or maybe the Alexander Lincoln was given to him by his parents too. Would this fact be enough to say that Alexander Lincoln is not racist, or at least his parents too were not racist as his name speaks of their aspiration to be more like angmoh?

In my view, if the Briton, Richard Jonathan Mills, would to invite him to his table, Alexander Lincoln could be so grateful for such an act that he would probably buy the Briton a drink to drink to that. The Brit was too full of himself and to me, deserved to be beaten by the Sinkie Chink for not knowing that his racist slur was no longer acceptable even to Sinkie Chinks who would not associate themselves with the term China man. It was double insult really. Sinkie Chinks despised China man and would not want to have anything to do with them. They might even agree and approve the Chinese Exclusion Act as something necessary and the right thing to do.

The frightening tags of the past

There was a time when the British tagged the nationalists as terrorists or insurgents to put them in prison. The tag was changed to communist after the war. The communist tag was very dangerous even after we became independent. It was a tag of death or life imprisonment. Reading or holding a piece of communist literature or listening to communist broadcast was serious enough to have the tag pinned on for a life behind bars.

There were other tags like chauvinist, racist, religious bigots etc etc that were used in the past. Even anti govt or anti establishment tag can be dangerous. Was there an opposition camp tag?

Then, with the resurgence of terrorism, the terrorist tag became the new fearsome one. They are useful and important in genuine cases when terrorists are tagged correctly and kept from mischief and destruction. The concern is if someone is mis-tagged or wrongly branded for the wrong reasons.

There are signs of a new tag appearing. The xenophobia card is being waved furiously these days. Would this become the new tag to be pinned as a badge of dishonour and for more sinister things to come?

Branding is so easy a thing to do.

Are Sinkie smug or daft?

Over the recent furore of xenophobia as claimed by the media and people in high places, it has somehow added fire to feed the anger of Sinkies towards foreigners. There were many comments by bloggers in TRE showing contempt for foreigners for not being able to speak English.

Language has become the latest kid for bashing. Foreigners coming here must speak English and nothing else. Hindi, Tagalog, Thai etc are not acceptable. Sinkies refused to speak to them if they can’t speak English. What is laughable or obnoxious is that they even rejected Mandarin as a language of Sinkies. What’s happening?

The immediate question is whether Sinkies are daft or smug or both. The next question is that our education system and our national policy on bilingualism must have failed miserably. These Sinkies, true blue Sinkies, not newly minted type, did not know that Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Sinkieland. Cannot speak, refuse to speak Mandarin, feeling hurt, insulted when foreigners speak to them in Mandarin! And sadder still, many knew how to speak Mandarin but refused to communicate with the foreigner in Mandarin. The foreigners must speak English.

What is the justification? Sinkies will not bend backwards to accommodate foreigners by speaking to them in the foreigner’s language, which happens to be one of our official languages, and deliberately making things difficult to the foreigners by demanding to speak in English and nothing else.

Other than creating four official languages to level the playing field, other than having the mother tongue as a social ballast to keep the westernised Sinkies rooted to their own culture, language is simply a tool for communication. The basic aim of bilingualism is to arm Sinkies to be able to communicate with East and West, which is one of our strength. Now jokers did not want to speak anything else except English to spike foreigners. Jokers refused to acknowledge that Mandarin is one of our official languages. Maybe some jokers don’t even know of this fact.

It is not funny.

Untitled - A piece of RAR Art

More of my RAR Art pieces can be viewed at www.artofrar.blogspot.com

The innocence of scrapping estate duty

Many rich Sinkies were over the moon when estate duty was scrapped. Now they could hang on to their assets and inheritance forever, and not just one property but unlimited number of properties, assets and cash. This is extremely good for the old rich and the super rich. Even the HDB owners were in a way happy with it as they too were hoping that their flats would be worth millions in the future. And this is not far fetch given the way things are moving.

What people failed to see is the impact of abolishing estate duty on inflating property prices. Without estate duty, no one needs to be concerned about how high the prices of properties can go. The higher the better, $50m, $100m or $1b, it is okay, very good indeed, for the owners. Govt too need not be unduly concerned once this is taken out of the equation. It is no longer a source of revenue for the state.

Seriously, it is this disregard to the high property prices that is directly affecting property prices here. Everyone, from owners, speculators and developers would want the prices to go even higher. And this will trickle down to all other property prices.

And unthinkingly, the people that benefited most from this no estate duty affair are the foreigners. They could come and buy up everything, as investments or to park their money, which in turn drives up prices even higher. And the foreigners are benefiting more than Sinkies as they have much more money to invest in real estates. They need to park their money somewhere. And we don’t have enough properties for them to acquire. If we are blind to this fact, it is only a matter of time when foreigners would own all the properties they are eligible to buy up. The number of rich foreigners is unlimited and so is their wealth.

Another sordid tale of foreigners dumping their money here is that some are ill gotten gains. Unintentionally or intentionally, our property market is turning into the biggest and legal laundry machine for such black money. There were many tales of foreigners buying anything at any price without bargaining or batting an eye lid. They need to wash their dirty money and where else allowed them to do so so freely and easily.

For those who are pissed off by the unfair advantages foreigners are enjoying here, this is another point of contention. Foreigners are taking full advantage of this situation, to exploit the property markets for huge benefits. They are talking in terms of tens and hundreds of millions, not the few millions which Sinkies are talking about or the few hundred thousands of our HDB millionaires.

When property prices are in the tens of millions and hundreds of millions, it is big money for the state in estate duties. Why are the super rich and foreigners given such great privileges to multiply their wealth which in turn fuelled the property bubble at the expense of the average Sinkies?

It may be time to reconsider reintroducing estate duty to tap on this very rich gold mine of properties in tens and hundreds of millions. Considerations can be made to allow Sinkies to continue to enjoy a tax free property at $5m or $10m. Anything more is reasonable for the state to impose an estate duty on them, a tax to defray the country’s expense, and to curb the uncontrollable escalation of property prices. And why not tax on the ill gotten gains of foreigners and also on them to pay for pushing up property prices here. They must be made to pay for the pains and sufferings of those who could no longer buy what they wanted to buy because of them.

The scrapping of estate duty is not so innocent after all and have very wide implications and consequences.