Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

One big personal downside for me if National loses this election: it will render obsolete my overused device of transitioning seamlessly from making fun of Don Brash's Singaporeanwifeisms, to making fun of Singaporean politics.

You might just have to put up with a lot more anecdotes about my mother. Liddat also can.

Although I barred his nomination for last month's Asian Freedom Slag Awards, Singapore's Mr Brown has just linked to me as part of some grober culture thing called Blogday. I worry for all those S'poreans who clicked through and wondered fruitlessly, like Don Brash undoubtedly has, just what a 'Maori' is. They may also be wondering who the hell 'Brash' is, whether you can eat a 'Brownlee', if this 'Treaty' is something to do with free trade agreements, and what's an 'election' anyway?

Dear S'poreans: New Zealand is having one of its free and fair general elections campaigns. We have them every three years, and they are loads of fun, honest! Politicians get heckled, mud gets slung, race cards loaded, policies get made up on the fly, people decide on the fate of their country, usually by voting for the person they despise the least, and best of all, no-one gets sued, imprisoned or bankrupted. We have this thing here called 'healthy disrespect.'

Most relevantly for all of you in Singapore, the leader (Don Brash) of the main right-wing party (the National Party) uses his Singaporean wife as a symbol of his... uh ...I dunno, international-banking commitment to human rights and free speech? Preference for a one-party corporate state? Or... um... a love of pretty secretaries?

Depending on how the next few weeks go: that may be one of the last gasps of this torturous motif, or the beginning of a longstanding tradition.

Director of Singapore Rebel Martyn See was interviewed on Radio New Zealand this morning, and chose his words very carefully. It's very likely that he is facing prison or an enormous fine for producing a 'political film'. He said he's trying not to think about it, as stressing too much about becoming a political prisoner would really interfere with his daily work routine.

Linda Clark: Is there anything in this film that is seditious or dangerous?
Martyn See: Not at all, I was very careful of that, the defamation culture in Spore is well known...
The film does not contain a single mention of the Singapore Democratic Party at all. It was basically a portrait of an opposition politician going about his work. [...] It’s [beyond] censorship, it’s like I’m making pornography now. [Also illegal in Singapore by the way.]
Clark: What does [the way you've been treated] say about your government?
See: If you ask me these questions off the air, I can answer you honestly.

Singapore Rebel is receiving a free screening in Christchurch, next Wednesday. Or you can just download it here.

Brainwave! If Brash isn't racist (against Chinese) because he married a China-doll, nor sexist (anymore) because he's raised a daughter, he will start relating to Māori as people not problems if we send in a femme fatale Māori secretary to have his Māori baby through a torrid Māori Affair!

Do we have a volunteer for such a task?

No?

What about for Gerry Brownlee?

A little disappointed I missed Brownlee being asked on Campbell Live (as I ranted about yesterday) what he'd do with the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, in the name of consistency. Did he really say it could be absorbed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? What - so Pacific Islanders in New Zealand are... foreigners??? Is Manukau City our French Concession? For god's sake man, get it together.

There's something rather limiting about only being able to relate to groups of people with different life-perspectives from you because you've been lumbered with them through familial ties. People should be smarter than that, shouldn't they? There is a theory that lack of empathy for Others and therefore the inability to do justice by them is symptomatic of a profound lack of imagination. Arendt says of forming ethical opinions, "one trains one’s imagination to go visiting." If your imagination can't get as far down the road as GI from Remuera, well... no wonder Foreign Policy isn't shaping up to be your strong point either.

But what's this? Hmm, a familiar feeling of wanting to throw up and leave the country, not necessarily in that order... hey, it's 2004 Orewa-retro season! Since we're all indulging in the rehash, here's a quick quote from what I wrote for Landfall, post-Orewa, post-Hikoi:

Our high-profile migrant politicians exhibit no noticeable drive for political partnerships with Maori. But here on the ground, we can't fool ourselves into thinking that we can dabble in horse-trading when we are the horses.

Leading to the Pansy Wong update: Still no answer to my request for an appointment. I know she google-searches herself every morning, so she knows I'm monitoring her ignoring me. Hi Pansy!

Missed Brownlee's astounding performance last night for the media-screening of Unleashed, the new Jet Li movie directed by Luc Besson which, sadly, sucked ass. It supersucked. I don't just say that as a part of the 'Asian empowerment' school of objecting politically to the sight of China's greatest living wushu action hero infantilised and humiliated, as well as not get any action-if-you-know-what-I-mean. I say that from the 'me watch big fight good' school of film and television. Apart from some good-big-fight material at the beginning and end, the slow flabby cheesy middle section may as well have been a miscast Brendan Fraser teen-out-of-place movie. With our Li Chenlong not 'becoming a dragon' [edit: why on earth did I confuse Jet Li's Chinese name with Jackie Chan's Chinese name? I think because Jackie would have been a far better clown for this role] but becoming some kind of dorky Chinese Classical-piano-loving language-student learning the ways of the West. La-aaame.

Imagination is in short supply of late.

No Māori in Cabinet. No Māori in Caucus. No Māori in the Public Service. No Māori in schools. Where exactly does Don Brash want Māori to go? Back to Hawai'iki?

Exaggerating just a little, but only a little. Witness:
1. No Georgina.
2. No Māori seats.
3. NO TPK!
4. Having, through steps 1-3, set a blinding example of abolishing tokenism, further ensuring that all teachers continue to have the right to mispronounce Māori, perhaps even when they are teaching it.

Gerry, Gerry, Gerry - as one nightmare of a possible future Minister of Māori Affairs (who will seemingly only exist to abolish his own job), and a former teacher of Māori - we know you have a sore spot over your struggles with "ko Gerry ahau." But as Howard Morrison says, "there's only five vowels for goodness sake."

I mean, you should try Cantonese. Nine tones. I tried out my new line of Canto-swearing on a Hongkie recently, and he said "yeah, you sound like a Mainlander." GodDAMNit!

For all this reheated talk of abolishing race-based Ministries, Brash has stayed pretty quiet about his much earlier indications of boosting the 'Asian Relations' portfolio into something meatier. Bringing it up again would throw some tricky questions in his face. Are... some races better than others? Is that it? Do they bring in more funding? Is that it? Are you... married to some races ...but not others? Is that it? How can you justify any of your Māori policies and let the other race-based bureaucracies, MPIA and the Office of Ethnic Affairs, survive at all? The OEA is the closest thing there is to a real 'Asian Relations' ministry. Are you going make it a full Ministry? Or destroy it? Are you going to take the 'Asians' out of OEA, give them a Ministry and ditch the non-Asians? Too scared to come out swinging against Pacific people? Since bro'Town, do white people not hate them enough anymore?

Or are you gonna ditch us all?

And if not: WHY NOT?

Go on, be consistent. I dare ya. Or... or... oh hell, it sounds so stupid to say 'or else you'll just look like a racist.'

I wrote last year that 'If Māori are expendable, we are all expendable.' A year later, the National Party immigration policy release proved it. I don't like being right that much, to be honest.

Given that everyone has an ethnicity, the Office of Ethnic Affairs has a rather convoluted explanation of what 'Ethnic' means for their very necessary purposes. But a more concise term for the so-called "Ethnic Sector" would be: Non-WASPs-without-own-Ministry. NWwoM. Not only does this acronym mimic some awesome 'ethnicky' temple-gong noise, it has an acronym within the acronym! But if Māori are stripped of their Ministry, and MPIA and Ministry of Women's Affairs follow, there will be an enormous population of non-WASPs and non-males battling discrimination Without-own-Ministry. Maybe we will all be WoMs, or WoMbles together, living underground and surviving on trash and ingenuity alone.

*****

An alarming discovery: Brash has regularly referred to his wife as "Singaporean Chinese." But this is the reverse formulation of what he himself has proscribed for Chinese people in New Zealand! He doesn't want "New Zealand Chinese" remember, he only wants "Chinese New Zealanders." I uh... wasn't very happy about this.

If Brash's wife is "Singaporean Chinese" rather than a "Chinese Singaporean", then by his standards, Je Lan is 'not a real Singaporean'. And all his touting of his 'Singaporean wife', therefore a terrible lie!

The bidding wars, the debate circuses, it makes a girl switch off. I only realised how sick I was of this election when I laughed out loud at, and VOTED for, these three efforts from the 'make-your-own-election billboards' website because I thought they said everything that needed to be said about the whole affair. I always knew Dr Dre would again become politically relevant.

Then I realised how lucky I was that I was experiencing fatigue with a party political system relentlessly trying to give me what they think I want. And that I'd actually get to vote for more than just a make-your-own-election billboard. Damian Christie, if he's reading this right now, is probably puking: 'it always comes back to the tanks with you', he wrote to me a couple of posts ago... Well actually, it might even be little closer to home than that.

I said to a fellow-yellow on the weekend, on an outing with my New Zealand-Mainland-Singaporean-Chinese mother, "Singaporean wives? We'd only vote for Brash if he was married to Lee Kuan Yew..."
"Oh Miiing!" said my Ma, shaking her head, wondering, as usual, what on earth I'm on about and hoping it's nothing terribly offensive.
"...'Cos we'd be too scared not to!" I finished. And we all cracked up.
"We'd have our individual IC numbers on the votes, so he'd know exactly who didn't vote for him!" Ma chipped in, hilariously. Ha-bloody-ha!

Singapore cancelled its presidential elections a few weeks ago: have a look at Rockson Tan's piss-your-pants-laughing take on it.

In the newspaper, "Cheebye and sibei toolan got no election!!!" become write in English as "Yay Singaporean very the happy no need to choose president!!!". Maybe the newspaper hokkien not so good, never translate properly.

Cyber-buddy Martyn See, maker of 'Singapore Rebel' is experiencing a mounting police crackdown. Singaporeans are also experiencing via the postcast of webstars Pilot n' Jo, their first ever competent and fair interview with S'porean opposition leader Chee Soon Juan, and are suprised and shaken that he seems like an intelligent, rational human being rather than a psychotic anarchist - and that they had fallen for the propaganda all along. If you're a S'pore, spread the word.

Ah crap, I just wrote an 'Asian' law and order post, which was cruelly eaten by the system. So in the spirit of load-sharing that this 'Asian election blogging' fever has engendered, here's what Alistair Kwun has to say on the subject on the Herald Election Blog:

I read Errol Kiong's piece in the Herald yesterday Crime big worry for ethnic groups and it made me wonder: what are Asian communities afraid of? Is it:

a) racist sidewalk attacks and harrassment
b) non-racially targeted robberies on modest small businesses, like dairies or taxis
c) racially-profiled burglaries of affluent-looking 'Asian'-style houses
d) being incompetently kidnapped by members of their own community
e) their children listening to 'underground' hip-hop music and turning into 'wild childs' or
f) the perception that mainstream society and the police won't step in to defend people still treated as outsiders to New Zealand society?

I'm a NZ born Chinese living in multicultural Auckland where people have mostly overcome that 90s sidewalk Asian-harrassment habit. Law and order are not a strong voting priority for me. Errol's article highlights that my generation of 'Asian' voters are less defined by conservative or 'ethnic' concerns. Insulting immigration policies, however, still rile them up.

I hope recent Asian immigrant voters realise that while the Right-Wing may try to woo the 'Asian' vote by promising to bring back flogging and hanging, draconian punitive measures [are] only useful [for] amplifying people's fears. They don't affect how much crime occurs. Today's 'PC-leftie' regime has followed through on actual diversification of the ethnic make-up of the police force to allow it to work better with ethnic communities. This is incredibly vital, and builds stronger and healthier communities.

A talented actor and youth-worker, whom I met recently on a trip to Wellington, used to regularly get in trouble in his teenage years around a refugee area of the city, where he'd challenge and shout down the neighbourhood racist shopkeepers who would call him a nigger.

I recall what he told me: "Whenever they sent out the white cops, I'd get arrested. Whenever they sent out the Chinese cop, he'd talk it over with everyone, and I wouldn't get arrested." If there hadn't been that (one) 'ethnic-beat' cop, he could have been one of those hip-hop criminals our parents' generation is so afraid of now, rather than a community mentor for at-risk youth. More Chinese cops please!

Nice work Al. YOU are the new Keith Ng being the new Tze Ming Mok being the new Manying Ip. He's right that our generation of assetless young Auckland 'Asians', are rather less likely be suckers for the politics of fear. But we do worry about our parents being worried. What concerns me about Errol's article is that it shows that the older generation (not to be confused with the 'Old Generation') are still afraid in their own country. There's something very wrong with that.

My original post was totally awesome, I swear. Anecdotes about my mother losing her rag and siccing the cops on racist teenagers, Nelson race-attacks, Singaporean political podcasts, 'It's in the Bag' jokes, practical tips for dealing with racial-harassment drive-bys (use those PXT-phones ESOL kids!), references to Aeon Flux and Three Kings Mall in the same sentence... everything! Them's the breaks.

It makes far more sense for Breakfast to ask Keith Ng what an 'Asian' is, than for Mark Sainsbury to ask Don Brash what a 'Maori' is. Al Kwun notes a follow-up to Brash could have been "and have you ever seen one on the street where you live?"

Or maybe, "have you ever suspected your wife is a Maori?"

Keith did well on Breakfast this morning, pointing out how both major parties have alienated Asian and migrant voters with on one hand, the Ching affair, and on the other, an immigration policy that treats migrants like economic units (or 'robots' in his private phraseology) rather than people.

I also liked how he looked really really yellow.

The interview should be accessible from this page at some point today.

Fellow pointy-headed ethnicity-geek Kumanan called me out for being 'soft' on Keith in the last Yellow Peril, vis-a-vis the South Asian Blindspot perpetuated in his Listener article. Maybe so. I'm still feeling guilty for punching him during the Leader's Debate. And... he wrote my blog for me at 4:00 am when he should have been numbercrunching! Even after I'd punched him! Thanks Keith - keep punching that calculator.

Keith's use of the '300,000 Asian voters' figure in the Listener, combined with a focus on exclusively Chinese political figures, did reflect the mainstream culture's misleading use of the term 'Asian'. This morning's Breakfast show tried to repeat that pattern, by trumpeting that figure intercut with shots of... Chinese people. They kind of looked like international students hanging out downtown, who are not eligible to vote. And some shots of maybe... Northcote Chinatown? But Keith did attempt to rectify that perception straight off, perhaps wary of a repeat Yellow Peril assault. Okay, now let's get this straight: a super-quick pre-breakfast number crunch of 2001 Census data shows that pan-Diaspora Chinese made up only 44% of the 'Asian' statistic. Combined with Koreans and Japanese ('Asian' in the white public discourse meaning CJKs, or Yellow Asians, or 'those ones we can't tell apart with that picture writing we can't read but would look real good as a tattoo') it bumps up to about 57%. South Asian ethnicities made up 30%, compared with the Chinese 44%. But South Asian and non-Chinese Southeast Asian ethnicities combined, come to 43%. Get the picture? The Yellow-to-Sepia ratio in 2001 was only 57:43, and I have yet to be convinced that it has swung wildly in either direction since then. I have a foot in both camps - in 2001 I ticked both ethnic Chinese and ethnic Vietnamese. That's right, at least an eighth of me is not Chinese. Where else do you think I get my great summertime tan? I don't get called The Bitch from 'Nam for nuthin'.

Alistair Kwun's latest Herald Blog entry also mentions a gathering at my place of a few of our friends to watch Tessie Chen, Michael Hsu (Cultural Signals) and Ken Ginn (Kiwi Asian Club) on Nightline, where they were again, marketed as 'Asian voters' when they are all different shades of Chinese. Two Taiwanese 1.5ers and one New Zealand-born Canto-classic. But they were good - check out Al's comments (although the dumb Herald Blog doesn't have individually linkable entries, you'll have to scroll down), and my pan-Asian pan shot of our crowd that evening which even had ...a token Indian.

[Edit: ah hell, scrolling is annoying - I'll just paste it in here for you]

They got a kick out of being interviewed, and it's a testament to how far the public discourse has come. Five years ago nobody would have bothered wanting to know what their opinions actually were.

However, the piece was edited into less than two minutes, and my friend Tessie Chen, one of the interviewees, was rather unhappy with them cutting the ending to make her sound like she would vote for tax-cuts at the end of the day.

Tessie's family knows that a vote for National would no doubt be a vote for cutting much needed settlement services to migrant communities, as a part of trimming government 'waste' to fund tax cuts. The Chens are just one of many cross-cultural community efforts to integrate new settlers which have been developed and supported by our 'PC gone-mad régime' for some years now. Where some people see 'PC nonsense', other people see life-saving infrastructure.

Tired of the election? Have a look at my extended InvAsian flickr set for some gorgeous screenshots of alternative-reality Japified Auckland, an Asian Invasion of Rising Sun for a sneaker swap-meet, a suggested name and logo for our 'Movement', and Wellington Chinese Association President Steven Young's disturbing visual interpretation of how we can all be the new Manying Ip: before; after. Are you ready for this Keith?