Thoughts on Race and Ethnicity

Is it possible to have a color-blind world?

It is interesting being an Asian in Poland- my group of friends and I are almost like a tourist attraction. Everywhere we walked, people would turn and look at us. My travel mates recounted to me of how in Romania (where they were before I joined them) a little boy had come to poke them to see whether they were real. Little children here are quite fascinated with us- or scared, as a little ~5 year old kid was when I smiled at him. Apparently, there are not (or have not been) a lot of Asians in Poland.

Race and ethnicity is an important question that I have had to try to understand, especially after coming to the US to study. For the first time, I understood what it was like to be a minority- and on top of that a foreigner. To be fair, Stanford isn’t racist at all- in fact, it is (by far) one of the most open and welcoming places. Rather, it was about getting used to the subtle slights and insensitivities, and more importantly winning my own war within my head- building my own confidence to not be affected by all of it, but rather reach out to society than expect society to reach out to me.

Yet Poland is perhaps the first place in the world where white people have paid me so much attention. Granted, it is more of curiosity than anything else, but it was definitely weird for me. Even weirder was my experience talking to a young Polish man on the train who struggled to speak English to me, and apologized if I didn’t understand him. It did, however, make me realise that a large part of “inferiority” that arises now is that of economic background, and English accent- and perhaps less of race.

PS: My time as a minority in the US has made me often wonder what it is like to be a minority in Singapore. A friend of mine who is Malay once remarked that my experience abroad, reflected his own back home- an interesting thought to keep in mind.