Images above are from my photo story, W, The Worker From Xiangxi in This Is Not A Safety Barrier, Singapore, Ethos Books, 2016.
A good summary of recent events and analysis concerning ‘Brownface’ in Singapore can be found here at Yu-Mei’s blog. For a good summary of brown face in an Australian context see here.
There are echoes of the right wing reaction against Yassmin Abdel-Magied in the treatment of preetipls and Subhas.
In tribute to Toni Morrison, here are some quotes that seem relevant:
“The very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.”
From “A Humanist View,”a 1975 speech Toni Morrison gave at Portland State University
"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.’”
And here is her answer to a racist question from Jana Wendt, which is similar to a question Charlie Rose posed here.
Structural and casual racism needs to be addressed and called out.