This is not going to be a well-written nor a well thought-out post, this is my appalled reaction to xenophobic harassment to the celebration of the Philippine Independence Day celebrations back at home. This is me being utterly ashamed.

I love my country, and I say that to everyone who has asked me about home while I've been here in the States: Singapore is a great place to live in, it is safe; the Marina skyline is stunning; it is an affluent, metropolitan city; it is an eclectic mix of cultures and peoples. And the food, oh the food. I am proud to be Singaporean, it is my country, my home - it has given me everything that I have, including this chance to study abroad in America - and I'm thankful. I make no pretence that Singapore is a perfect nation - it is not - and I always remark self-deprecatingly that chewing  gum is illegal in Singapore to the dismay and horror of the person unfortunate enough to have that conversation with me. But I am optimistic, I am hopeful that my generation will bring about change, that we will create a better, more egalitarian and just tomorrow.

But I just read about the deplorable comments made by my fellow Singaporeans in opposition to the celebration of the Philippine's Independence Day being held at the heart of Orchard Road - hateful vitriol hurled and wielded as misguided weapons of nationalistic pride and solidarity - and it grieves me.

I have read about race and ethnicity in my sociology texts, I am informed about the inequality in allocation of resources and life chances of the different racial groups in Singapore. But being part of the majority at home, I've never known race prior to coming to and studying in the States. All of a sudden, race becomes real and reified: one becomes more self-aware even as some start treating you differently. The way I look and the way I speak all serve to pigeonhole me as an individual into a certain category, a certain expected normative role in the minds of others the moment I meet them. All of a sudden, I was different.

Is this not what we are doing to the Filipinos? Pinoys we call them, almost derogatorily; foreigners we label and hasten to differentiate ourselves; competitors who depress our wages, we charge them to justify our acerbity. These "underlings", "scum", "filth" are fit to clean our houses, to raise our children, to cook our food but not to celebrate their Independence Day, to interact with us. We don't want to see them, nor to hear them; we don't want them on our trains and buses, nor our malls. They are beneath us.

So who are the people who would befit us superior Singaporeans? Perhaps the Caucasians. Did we not join in the St. Patrick's Day festival (wait what did we say about alcohol causing riots again?). Did we not close off an entire road for the entire weekend for an Irish celebration? Did the Caucasians not take our jobs and ride our trains and shop at our malls too? Yes, but these are people that behove our approval and interaction.

I believe that our xenophobia transcends our government's flaws immigration policy. We seem to venerate whiteness while demeaning Asian-ness, whatever that is. We approve of the white expatriate while condemning the darker-toned foreign labour. We credit a white man as the founding father of Singapore (as if Temasek needed finding) while eliding the part of being part of the Sri Vijaya Empire from our history books. In so doing, we have internalised our own racism, we lead a dual consciousness of our own Asian-ness, both deploring it and distinguishing ourselves as superior to other "inferior scums".

Singapore, my home, we are altogether better than this. We are proud of our remarkable achievements over the past 5 decades and we should be. We pride ourselves on our affluence, but our economic success is built upon an open, trade-oriented market economy, contingent on our friends and neighbours. We pride ourselves on our multi-culturalism, but we are being increasingly intolerant. We aspire to be a great and liveable city, but to be truly great, we will be judged based on how we treat the weakest and the most destitute in our society.