Otherness & Othering
One time, while I was living in China,
A white woman told me,
“Oh my god, you look like one of them
but you talk like one of us!”
and how I laughed it off.
I think about that moment a lot;
That allowance
to be “othered.”
We talk about the model minority
like there are shades to otherness
but my colonizer doesn’t see that.
He smiles patronizingly when
I speak with his accent
but doesn’t bother to learn
the language of my ancestors
in a land that his stole.
I think about how we are taught
across generations
to police our thoughts
and gentle our words
so that the colonizer doesn’t feel threatened.
I am told that this is how we beat the system.
My model minority is a majority
branded cheats & thieves
of intellectual property, with no original thought
by very original people
who parrot this rhetoric
while stealing our resources.
They are keen to let us know
that we are less than
because we live in a dictatorship,
because we do not have Freedom.
But the freedom my colonizer has
is delusion. Maybe one can only see chinks
in democracy through slanted eyes.
One time, while I was living in China,
An old Chinese man asked me,
“Where are you from?”
I think about that moment a lot.
That displacement of self
from Culture, History & Space.
I think about how I was taught
to colour myself into the lines
our colonizer has deemed Enough for us.
I think about the thoughtless jokes
we were taught to laugh off;
the caustic remarks we were told was acceptable
I think about how we are reminded
of how lucky we are to have escaped
from the persecution of skin
because of the colour of our passports.
I think about how some of us still
don’t understand the problem.
How some of us still
are willing to be “othered,”
as if we were really equals.
