To Kill A Mockingbird
Monday, February 1, 2010
5:09 AM
By yeeharkk
In the 1930s, right after the Great Depression, the African Americans in the US were under even greater depression. Why do I say this? The African Americans were crippled under segregation in the nation.
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, has pointed out how the African
Americans were treated. They were segregated, separated and even blamed for every small deed committed by others. This can be depicted from how they blamed Boo 'Arthur' Radley for every small deed that took place in Maycomb County. So was Tom Robinson's trial. It was obvious that Tom Robinson was no guilty of raping Mayella Ewell. No evidence proved that Tom Robinson was guilty. Despite all this, he was voted guilty. What is this? This is injustice, this is prejudice. This is absolute racial prejudice. They had already decided it before.
What I am going to talk about today, is neither the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird, or the important quotes. What I will be talking about is the hidden moral in the book. The value of having no prejudice.
Singapore has always told the young to have racial harmony. To further emphasise it, different schools celebrated racial harmony. They are educating the young to have racial harmony. They are trying to avoid the racial riots in history. I feel that Singaporeans all have racial harmony. However, what they have left out is xenophobia, where one is prejudice against another person from a different country.
Singaporeans hae prejudice against Chinese immigrants that come to Singapore to work. Singaporeans have many different misconception on Chinese workers. Either they are here to be prostitutes or to 'steal' their job opportunities. The problem is, how is it that they are stealing your job opportunities. If that holds true, that means that they have to have prejudice with nearly everyone. If everyone is working, aren' t they stealing your job opportunities? The obvious misconception of the Chinese being prostitutes. Are you implying that nearly most Singaporeans are prostitutes? Most of them are Chinese. Xenophobia is prevalent in Singapore as many Singaporeans are prejudiced against many different people from different nations. They somewhat hate the citizens of other countries. That is Xenophobia.
In the youth of Singapore, it is utterly and ridiculously obviously that most are Xenophobic. I don't deny that I am Xenophobic too, but then it is a problem that I feel we should overcome. I am slightly Xenophobic against the Bangladeshi workers in Singapore. I feel that they have these sort of stench and everything, but I am trying to overcome the habit of shunning them. They are still part of the society of Singapore and an important figure. We should learn to stop being prejudicem which is the main purpose of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Yee Hark
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, has pointed out how the African
Americans were treated. They were segregated, separated and even blamed for every small deed committed by others. This can be depicted from how they blamed Boo 'Arthur' Radley for every small deed that took place in Maycomb County. So was Tom Robinson's trial. It was obvious that Tom Robinson was no guilty of raping Mayella Ewell. No evidence proved that Tom Robinson was guilty. Despite all this, he was voted guilty. What is this? This is injustice, this is prejudice. This is absolute racial prejudice. They had already decided it before.What I am going to talk about today, is neither the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird, or the important quotes. What I will be talking about is the hidden moral in the book. The value of having no prejudice.
Singapore has always told the young to have racial harmony. To further emphasise it, different schools celebrated racial harmony. They are educating the young to have racial harmony. They are trying to avoid the racial riots in history. I feel that Singaporeans all have racial harmony. However, what they have left out is xenophobia, where one is prejudice against another person from a different country.
Singaporeans hae prejudice against Chinese immigrants that come to Singapore to work. Singaporeans have many different misconception on Chinese workers. Either they are here to be prostitutes or to 'steal' their job opportunities. The problem is, how is it that they are stealing your job opportunities. If that holds true, that means that they have to have prejudice with nearly everyone. If everyone is working, aren' t they stealing your job opportunities? The obvious misconception of the Chinese being prostitutes. Are you implying that nearly most Singaporeans are prostitutes? Most of them are Chinese. Xenophobia is prevalent in Singapore as many Singaporeans are prejudiced against many different people from different nations. They somewhat hate the citizens of other countries. That is Xenophobia.
In the youth of Singapore, it is utterly and ridiculously obviously that most are Xenophobic. I don't deny that I am Xenophobic too, but then it is a problem that I feel we should overcome. I am slightly Xenophobic against the Bangladeshi workers in Singapore. I feel that they have these sort of stench and everything, but I am trying to overcome the habit of shunning them. They are still part of the society of Singapore and an important figure. We should learn to stop being prejudicem which is the main purpose of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Yee Hark
2 Comments:
Quite true.
I would like to point out though, just food for thought.
Is it really xenophobia that we express towards the Bangladeshi workers? Or more of racism?
Assume if they were American workers, and that they are 'white' (no racism intended), would we really poke fun at foreign workers? IMO, xenophobia isn't really present within Singaporeans (and youth); even though we do have a warped impression of HCIS students, terming them as rich jerks, what if the foreigners were in HCI themselves? Would we really treat them the same way?
ryan. (:
Ryan,
I think that we are somewhat both racist and xenophobic, towards the Bangladeshi workers. We are racist, calling them black and everything, but we somewhat hate them in the sense that they had some sort of odour on them (not meant to be racist). I feel that we show more dislike rather than hatred, for hate is far too strong a word.
For your second question, it depends on how you look at it. Some might still poke fun, or even insult the Americans.
For your last question, I feel that the warped impression is created by the HCIS students themselves. What comes around goes around. They obviously did not do anything to deserve our respect, for they just cut the queue as an when they like.
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