Recently, my cousin announced his marriage to a girl of a different ethnic group and an opposing religion. The announcement has sparked somewhat of a controversy in the family. His mother, my aunt is incredibly depressed by the news, and being a somewhat neutral onlooker, it's led me to question my own lines when it comes to how socially accepting/tolerant we are when it comes to questions of race, ethnicity, religion and the constraints of social norms.
RaceMy family comes from a predominantly ethnically Chinese Singapore, my family fitting into the typical 70% of the Singaporean population, being also ethnically Chinese. Nobody in my family remembers anything about China, since we were all born here - in our minds, China is a myth of an ancient civilization and a country apart from our own. It's a good place to visit for holidays as a tourist, but apart from that, we know and remember nothing about it, except to understand that some many many years ago, a person with our surnames must have migrated to Singapore from China to start a life in the straits of Southeast Asia. It's probably as much as what an Irish Australian remembers about Ireland, pretty much.
Singapore however is home to several ethnicities besides the Chinese. Ethnicities are known commonly as "races" in Singapore, despite the fact that there is no notion of competition between them. Singapore recognizes four main groups of "race" - Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others for everyone else encapsulating anyone from Caucasian immigrants and Eurasians to the Japanese and Korean populations. If you are of a mixed marriage between any of the three main ethnic groups, by default you end up in "others" as well, since there's no classification for anything 50% one and 50% another.
Nobody in my family has ever had the opportunity to question marrying anyone other than another Chinese Singaporean. True that there aren't that many people in my family of marriageable age, but the truth is, nobody's crossed that line ever since. Until now. My cousin's been seeing his wife for a good number of years now, by estimates potentially more than a decade. My very conservative aunt was previously little aware of the existence of his girlfriend, and until now, I've not actually met his wife-to-be. The reason is little more than the fact that she isn't Chinese, and is from an ethnic group considered, in some perceptions, to not be socially compatible with the Chinese.
Quite obviously the aunt is very much depressed by this fact. All her life she's been commenting on the social life of her friends and their children, the subject of mixed marriages being one for gossip and speculation. But it's a different reality if the topic hits so close to home, especially when one is ill-prepared to take the news. My parents aren't exactly putting out the fire on this one either, with my mum fueling the flames by declaring that she does not mind me "having an
ang moh (Caucasian) boyfriend" and my dad teasing her with pseudo-racist jokes.
I'm embarassed, honestly, but too embarassed to highlight that in popular opinion, a mixed marriage with an
ang moh is considered a better option (blame the British colonists and the persistence of a colonial mentality if you will) than a mixed marriage with another ethnicity of a darker skin tone. Not that I share that thought obviously, but I am scandalized by the hypocrisy of other people telling my aunt that all will be well with trite phrases like "it's the heart that really matters", and "they are all human after all", while at the same time at the back of their minds thanking their lucky stars for not being in the same situation. I challenged my mum on the same today just for the heck of it, only to receive the reply of "well, if you can stand the sight of him, that's your own choice".
Enough said. I think there are limits to the seeming open-mindedness of common society. Everyone wants to be seen as liberal, tolerant, open-minded, but it would probably do us a lot more good to admit that everyone can be a little racist and bigoted in some ways and get it out of the way and into the open than choke on it over
dim sum.
My philosophy is simple. Yes, recognize that it may be an issue and a social challenge, but blood is blood, and you stick by your kin regardless and have a conversation on whether or not he is prepared, together with his newfound wife to face these social challenges that may be coming up ahead. And then all you can do is help them through it.
I see why it's difficult to bring yourself to defend an idea that one has grown up to be inculcated against. But I ponder - what are the boundaries of Love? Love, that is not proud, that is patient and kind - is that not enough to change minds and see the merits of ideas that may not have been held as your own? And even if not your own Love, is it not possible to see that there must have been something that must have been the glue that held two people together despite, and not because, for so many years?
I bless my cousin for paving the difficult way forward. Since I know that in my own life, that would definitely not be the first act of defiance or controversy that I would bring to the table myself in the family.
Religion
When I say religion, I honestly mean that in this case, wars have been started for far less. I have been, as was my cousin, brought up strictly Roman Catholic. And although I have dated men who were not Catholic like myself, circumambulating on the issue, I've come to a decision that I would not settle for anything other than a like-minded person of the same faith. Mind you, I'm not inherently religious myself, but having had experiences with a conflict of faith, it becomes an issue for me when faith turns into a way of life, and a way of life into a waste of time if these two are not aligned.
A friend of a friend of mine with whom I've had this conversation recently said this was a rather biased and bigoted way of thinking. But in my opinion, this is personal choice. Bigotry would be if I had forced my religion and my way of life on anyone else, take it or leave it. But needing to find someone with values in alignment to mine is simply personal choice, in my opinion. Why waste my time with someone with whom I cannot agree on the simple things?
That said though, the needs of the Roman Catholic faith to necessarily marry and bring up children in the faith inherently strikes me as being rather restrictive in a case like this. In my cousin's perspective, he faces a moral dilemma - if you marry someone else with the same requirement, but of different faith, your children become a perpetually spinning cat in a vacuum with a buttered toast on its back. Is personal choice necessarily even an option anymore?
I'd truly love to see how he's going to solve this one. I know that I'd have no answers and no points of compromise of this one. I've given up far more in terms of relationships for far less than this dilemma.
Social Norms
One thing that I know I'd definitely be blessed to give my kids is a sense of open wisdom when it comes to social norms and structure. I sincerely believe that in the next 10 years, the confines of race, caste, ethnicity, religion, gender and geographies will dissolve and begin to disappear.
I'm living for and dreaming of a world and a society where people are people - global citizens and an encapsulation only of the ideas and dreams that they have, where their minds and speeches become the only currency by which relationships and unions are formed. Where we can see that what we believe in is more similar than different, and recognize that the end of the day, we are standing, perhaps on two sides of the fence, but at least on the same playing field.
Perhaps this is a distant dream. But it is one that has become embroiled with my life the way I live it, in such a way that the lack of its existence is the lack of the fullness of my life in its entirety.
