IRREVERENT

This morning, Tina sent me a Twitter link to an article that ICE is making international students leave if their classes are moved online, so we commiserated over/celebrated the fact that I didn't continue with my application to the college in New York. If Trump gets re-elected this November, I will have nothing more to say. The global atmosphere of dread would not ever dissipate if that happens. 

She also said it's wild that we have our races displayed in our ICs. 

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Today I re-registered my IC with a new photo as every 30-year-old Singaporean is supposed to do. I just realized it's called an identity card when I'd thought all along that it was an identification card. When I was 16, I was even more of a dork than I am now. I had badly-rebonded hair, I couldn't keep my mouth closed when I smiled because I hadn't gotten braces yet. In the time since then, I've had some pretty heavy times but I have also had the best times I've had in my life. I want to go back to 16, when I didn't think of climate change everyday, when I didn't know about socioeconomic injustices and was blind to my own privileges. Then again, maybe 15 years later, I will also have experienced even more unbridled and as yet unknown joys and passions, who knows. Maybe I will cringe looking at my photos at thirty years old. I look forward to it. (I still really resent the Race marker on our cards, but that's another long story.)

A post shared by 🌻 Sarah Mei Lyana 🌻 (@sarahmeilyana) on Jul 2, 2020 at 7:36am PDT

The Singapore government denies that it's used for racial profiling, but the Singapore government isn't honest about a lot of things. The fact that it says Malay means that I will be put on a back burner if I'm looking for a place to rent, or if I'm applying for jobs, until they don't have any more Chinese people to fill up the space. I used to be able to get away with it better than other non-Chinese people in Singapore, because I'm not religious and I speak their language, so I always stated in forms that I can actually speak Mandarin. I no longer do so, even when I can assimilate, I refuse to because it means making myself less than, or admitting that I'm less than unless I'm similar to them. 

An up-and-coming minority-race woman politician, Raeesah Khan, whom I've likened to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is being persecuted because she's called out the systemic racism that exists in Singapore, and the political party in power says she's sowing discord among us. She's not in my district and the gerrymandering by the PAP is strong, but I really hope she wins in her district. We vote in three days, so the entire country will have heightened anxieties until then. I will have to bring it up to my therapist. I will remember to sit with my feelings and feel them, instead of writing about them.

See you this weekend, with some good news, I hope.