White Culture

As a kid growing up, we were constantly exposed to images of a foreign world, mostly which included countries like America (of which Malaysia seems to be a staunch supporter), the UK, Australia and France. Images that manifested itself in places such as the telly down to what we wore and what we saw sitting on shelves in local departmental stores. It was interwoven with the stories we heard at bedtime and the gossip we heard at tea.

The issue was not that we had nothing of our own to be proud of - sure we had our regular fix of nasi lemak and char kuey teow (as with every other Malaysian who loves his food), or the occasional Yasmin Ahmad films that invaded our cinemas. There were national icons to be reckoned with such as our Communist style Putrajaya with its long wide boulevards and huge but otherwise empty buildings that were built around man-made lakes and hills to impress, or our KLCC and Malaysia Boleh chants that got us through the Commonwealth Games and beyond, Nicole David (whom we hear so little of now), and the Orang Utan that whiteys pronounce as o-raeing-ge-taen. But there were always these images from a foreign western culture that were to be reckoned with, more powerful than the Red White Yellow and Blue on our national flag. We could sing the verses of Star Spangled Banner backwards when prompted, but not so with our own Negaraku.

Thing is, I grew up alongside Siti Nurhaliza and the Spice Girls. There was always that duality, the 'local' and the 'foreign' in our lives, one that we could never do away with. The latter, particularly, seemed to attract quite a lot of attention. Perhaps because of waning nationalism and the 'white-is-good' mentality, kids my age grew up in surroundings where the 'West' was always regarded as something unique and beyond our reach, something grand almost, but definitely powerful.

People would do anything to own a piece of this elusive culture. Be it a handbag from Gucci (even though it is RM45 from Petaling St and made in China) or the latest David Beckham hairstyle, everyone was involved in White-Worship, as we kids called it back then. And for good reason. Asia is a shit place to live in terms of the quality of life, from long and strenuous working hours to low remuneration and an almost non-existent welfare system. Even the cars we drove were Milo tins that got smashed in the lowest impact.

To me, it seemed as though we viewed our own backyard as 'something to be dealt with because it was there', and the Western World as 'something to be desired and to be accumulated because we had so little of it'. It felt as though you were missing out on a huge slice of the High Life lived by these people abroad whom you've never met in person but have heard about all your life.

And that's the way capitalism crept into our lives as kids; we grew up yearning for all that we did not have, be it Playstations or Flat screen TV's or access to cheap LV hotpants. The West was a force to be reckoned with, especially since it took 400 years of colonisation by Westerners who came over to pillage the land and cheat the dumb locals before we could become what we are today; an independent and prospering nation well ahead of many other countries in the region. I do not deny that without the British we would not be half as advanced as we are today, and even though in our history books we outline a lot of the atrocities and injustice that the British (and other colonisers such as the Dutch and Japanese) did to the locals, it did not erase the fact that they brought along capitalism which drives our economy today and the economy of other countries worldwide.

So naturally a kid like me filled with his own insecurities about the world and about his own body image would find comfort in the glitzy cities like New York and the art infested capitals like London Paris and Melbourne. I grew up thinking that Teh Tarik and Roti Telur was not culture but English Tea on the lawn with toast and jam was.

I was young.

But then I started growing up and these feelings did not dissipate. In fact they only strengthened further. Being a minority in a country where you are denied many benefits based on the colour of your skin or your religion, you automatically seek justice in the Free World where images of equality and multiculturalism make you feel as though you were missing out.

I hated the colour of my hair because it was not blond. I wanted to get eye implants so that my irises would look as blue as the sky, and get rid of all the hair on my body so that I would be smooth. I wanted to have height so badly that I did regular stretches in the morning (but my genes took care of that for me naturally; I now stand at 5'11"), and read books about faraway lands and the fantasy lives these people lived. So what about the crisis in South Africa (during post-apartheid) and Yugoslavia. I was more interested in Prada and The Louvre.

Plastic surgery. I remember calculating the cost to get my nose job, double eyelids, jaw realignment, etc. I read maps of the cities I wanted to visit so that one day when I had the chance I'd know all the roads and the major attractions I would see when say, I visited Fifth Avenue or take a cruise down the Seine.

And so I worked hard to get the scholarship that took me abroad, and I remember telling myself, 'Up-Yours' to all the people who told me I couldn’t do it as I stepped into the Boeing 777 on that very special day, the 7th of February.

I remember feeling as though I've achieved greatness and I was destined to also live this high life that I so firmly believed in.

And the MAS food on the plane didn't help either. I was glad to get out of Malaysia.

~

Digressing a little from the topic, I realised how arriving here posed a whole new set of problems to me. How will I make people accept me for who I am? What if my accent was different? My taste for food different? The way in which I think and view the world different? What about the clothes that I wore, or the things I believed in, or the values I cherish; what if they were different from the majority of the people who were Australian?

Many people do not seem to adapt well to the sun and the dry air of Australia. Also, the people of Melbourne are very suspicious of newcomers into their social groups such that they keep a safe distance from you until they are absolutely sure you are fit to be in their social circle of friends. Well at least that was my experience anyway.

Which is why many people give up the moment they step out of the plane. Some I know set rules in stone to seek out people who are from the same countries as they are, mix around in a little ghetto eating food that they are most familiar with and hanging out at venues where only other people they could relate to would hang out. Develop a whole sub-community here because of their inability to adapt and to embrace all that is new and different.

Which puzzles me. Some whom I know personally still hold on tightly to that preconceived White Power and look down at their own cultures, yet they fail to venture out into White Culture and embrace it. They instead find it safer to keep a distance and mingle with familiarity. Others develop an anti-white policy, where all that is white is dirty. At the extreme end, others denounce their identity and leap right into western culture, embracing it wholeheartedly. It is interesting to see these three differences in opinions develop from a basic initial preconception that white-is-good.

~

Coming to Australia, I started to question my preconceptions about western ideals. Initially I shrugged it off as an inability to adapt and to blend in, but soon after I could see that all that my view of White Culture was highly distorted. All that I thought was gold did not glitter.

Many shops closed at 5pm. People walked slowly and did things slowly. VERY slowly. Asian food, even supposedly authentic, is a pile of shit. Shopping was an expensive and unfulfilling affair because bargains are few and far in between and choices are limited. Corruption? Yup. They have it here too. Housing is expensive, bills are expensive, red tape and procedures held you back 99% of the time when you wanted to get something done fast. My funny accent was interpreted as 'American' by my Maccas boss when I was working there (and God these people, they really HATE the Americans).

Their approach to life was different. That energy, spontaneity and ferocity was not there. Everything was at a level that was neither challenging nor worth anticipating. I found that some people were outright lazy and dependent, much like back home, but also the culture of extravagance and Credit spending did not match up with my belief in Term Deposits and payments-in-cash (which is very Chinese I must admit).

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things I love about Melbourne. Like public acceptance of noxious weeds like Agapanthus and Lantana. Good coffee, cheap apricots and blue berries. Openly gay culture where I can be myself without being worried of getting arrested by the Secret Police. Safeway and Coles that shuts at midnight. I could rant all night.

But after 1+ years of living here, I realise how much I miss my Sarawak laksa and 3am Nasi Ayam Goreng. How I miss the dirty unkempt streets of KL and the heavy rain that knew no end till it fucking flooded the drains.

I realise that after all this while, it’s not fair to say that the whites are better than us Asians. We were told as children to want all things that were western and we believed in it strongly because we didn’t know what else to believe in. But now I’m all grown up and I can make my own judgements; I can see that we are just different. They just do things differently, see things differently. They believe in different moral and ethical issues. They champion different causes and things that I may find close to heart may not be important to them at all.

Though they may be pioneers in certain aspects, and can take pride in their achievements in spurring the development of a truly modern globalised world, it does not put them high up on a pedestal where everybody else can just look up from below in envy.

I mean after all, many white men I've met have expressed their love for the food which I am all too familiar with. Like Bak Kut Teh and Mi Goreng. We Malaysians, undoubtedly, have a remarkably different food culture to them, where expensive is not necessarily good, all because we love our food much much more and are more passionate about being stingy and economical. They envy our affordable and massively diverse range of flavours which are not available here.

It is not about who wins or loses in this, or who is more superior to another, rather, the realisation that racism is only for those who try to defend their differences and seek justification for a perceived superiority.