Stories of Hong Kong residents of South Asian heritage being discriminated against resurface in the media from time to time. Such accusations might be difficult to prove, as no landlord or school authority that closed their doors on a South Asian applicant would officially admit to having such prejudices.
Then it is also critically important to ask: Do they really?
There is always a possibility that rejections by a prospective employer or landlord are triggered by reasons other than race. After all, it’s the prerogative of the concerned employer or the landlord to choose who they think might be the best fit. As for the reluctant shop assistants, aggressive cabbies and the odd person openly showing their displeasure at having to share space with another inside a lift or in the MTR, such lack of courtesy happens randomly and most often isn’t provoked by the recipient’s class, ethnicity, language or skin color.
Most Hong Kong people seem to believe in live and let live. Try looking at New York for a sense of perspective. The violent physical attacks on elderly New York residents of Chinese origin in recent months — because the assailants mindlessly assume that everyone who looks Chinese is carrying the COVID-19 virus, or at any rate is somehow morally responsible for the disease spreading in the United States — and the frequency at which such barbaric acts continue to take place is alarming, to say the least. They are a real, palpable, life-threatening menace.
Racism is neither as ugly and nor as endemic to Hong Kong society as it is in certain other parts of the world. At the same time, it might be simplistic to assume the city is free of intolerance. If social media and even feedback columns in mainstream media are anything to go by, Hong Kong’s people of South Asian descent have been resisting both the virus as well as prejudice since COVID-19 happened.
For instance, Hong Kong residents returning from India and Pakistan have been accused of importing the virus and then using up a major share of the city’s limited healthcare resources, although it is unlikely that many of them were responsible for community outbreaks.
Imported infections, if any, would have been detected either at the airport or during the 21-day quarantine period and those testing positive transferred directly to a healthcare facility. And yet, if newspaper feedback columns and social media are anything to go by, people have repeatedly questioned why the returnees from these countries were being allowed in.
During a surprise lockdown in Yau Tsim Mong district in January, its sizeable South Asian Muslim population found that the supplies distributed by the government included pork, which their religion forbids them to touch. Such omissions betray a lack of preparedness, ignorance, even insensitivity, if you like, but calling this an instance of racism seems a bit of a stretch.
The city’s Equal Opportunities Commission is conscious of the ways in which the pandemic has compounded race relations and is making a concerted effort to address these issues. A few dedicated non-governmental organizations are relentlessly working to enhance communication between Hong Kong’s South Asian communities and the rest. An Education University of Hong Kong survey from some years back shows that the majority of young respondents were aware that they could do with a better understanding of people of different ethnicities.
In other words: The stage is set for the two sides to reach out to each other.
Hong Kong’s people of South Asian origin are often perceived or painted as victims of discrimination. Perhaps the onus is as much on them as their neighbors to play a proactive role in clearing the cobwebs of misconstrued notions around themselves. After all, as Hong Kong citizens, they have a responsibility to try to understand and communicate with the mainstream — give something back to the city from whose soil they draw their sustenance.
The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.