The Devil Inside and Outside the Details – a Kenyan professor talks about minorities in Hong Kong

Ming Pao newspaper, Monday 15 January 2007

Interview by Debby Cheng

Last month, the Home Affairs Bureau introduced the <<Race Discrimination Bill>> to the Legislative Council. But since it was gazetted, the Bill has caused a lot of controversy. Based on the vision of social improvement and harmony promotion, this legislation still attracts criticisms from various. While some parties point out that the Bill exempts too much and protects too few, others say that the definition of race is too narrow. Some critics even think that the Bill would “overreach itself”.

What does the Bill lack? What is discrimination actually?

Ken Kamoche, an Associate Professor in the Department of Management in the City University of Hong Kong, who was born in Kenya, Africa, has soon resided in Hong Kong about 10 years. He loves reading poems and writing fiction. On one hand, Ken is part of the academic elite in the social mainstream, on the other hand, he is at the edge of a racial spectrum. While nurturing talents for the commercial sector, Ken at the same time shows great care to the cultures of the minorities. From his perspective, he sees the unique racial phenomenon in Hong Kong. 

Ignorance matters more than Discrimination

Ken was born in a Kenyan village. He lived in a house in a high school where his father taught. Only later did he move to the city. Ken completed MPhil and PhD degrees at Oxford University after earning a Rhodes Scholarship following his Bachelor’s degree. Before coming to Hong Kong, Ken lived in the U.K., Japan, Australia and Thailand and has experienced serious racial discrimination in some European societies. “Walking in the streets, the Blacks may get punched for no reason. Going into a department store, the security guard will always look at you, murmuring in the walkie-talkie, ‘He may steal’. In fact, the security guard himself may also be Black.” In Japan, there are also shops that only serve the Japanese. Even in some rural areas in mainland China, people will stare at outsiders with a different appearance – compared with all these, racial discrimination in Hong Kong indeed is already not so serious.” 

In fact, the situation may be that in Hong Kong, the reason why different skin colors are not seen as unusual is not that Hong Kong people possess wider eyesight. According to Ken’s observation, Hong Kong people instead have no one in their eyes, “They don’t recognize what is happening around them. People won’t make eye contact with each other on the pavements. People will only discover someone is in front of them when they nearly bump into them. I think their minds have flown far away. They want to discard all disturbances and think only of their own lives”. Perhaps, from another perspective, Hong Kong people don’t care who the others are. They only see the money in your pocket. They would respect the financial status but not the person. Especially the sales people, Ken said, “Sales people only think of making a sale, never care about who you are.” Many years ago, he tried several pairs of shoes in a shop but finally did not purchase any, seriously annoying the sales people. 

This rude and direct purposive thinking is the logic of Hong Kong culture. It is even being reflected in how the government treats the legislation on racial discrimination. 

“The government says ‘it is necessary to seek advice from the business sector’. What does this mean? Like the legislation on the sex discrimination, the government is afraid of harming business interests. If investors are being accused of discrimination, they’re afraid this will affect their businesses.” However, the government seems to care about this even before the business sector has expressed a view. Ken thinks that this simple and direct relationship is not right. Even though the businessmen have to do their business, they also need to observe the laws, instead of merely accommodating the laws to business operations. “This only shows that the government lacks imagination in adopting legislation”, Ken says. 

Sometimes, the hidden ignorant attitude is perhaps more insidious than open discrimination. An example of this loophole is the exemption of new immigrants from the mainland from the protection of the bill. Because of the Bill’s narrow definition of the word Race, arguing that new immigrants from the mainland possess the same cultural characteristics as the Hong Kong Chinese, the discrimination against them is a social type, rather than racial. This ignores the race-related social structure, as Ken says “This kind of law is not enough to protect the minority and vulnerable groups, such as the foreign domestic helpers.” A bill that must be acceptable to the business sector is unlikely to have the interests of the disadvantaged at heart.  

Seeing Hong Kong as Home

In 1997, Ken came to Hong Kong as a visiting scholar at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He liked the city. In 1998, he settled down in Hong Kong when he received an academic post from the City University of Hong Kong. Having resided for more than 8 years, Ken has married a local girl and is now raising a son. He mentioned casually that the process was not very troublesome as his in-laws are fairly liberal-minded. Ken sees Hong Kong as his home for the foreseeable future and hopes to continue learning more about this society.  

The basis of home is the attachment you have to where you live. Take the issue of the Star Ferry Terminal. Ken has been following the issue closely. “The first time I came to Hong Kong, in the summer of 1989 heading to Japan for research, I stopped in Hong Kong and stayed for 2-3 days. I knew of the Star Ferry before coming here. I asked a friend who was living on Hong Kong Island to meet at the Terminal.” The subject of debate of the Star Ferry Terminal is not related to race issues. But this building is a widely recognized symbolic icon of Hong Kong. The destruction of the terminal which attracted the wrath of so many people represents a struggle to protect an aspect of Hong Kong identity. It is needless to mention the citywide experience of life and health crises such as SARS, bird flu, air pollution, etc. Ken is deeply concerned about these issues. “As the father of a young child, of course I’m very concerned about the air quality,” Ken said. The stress found in the competitive commercial world has now been diffused to the education domain. Coming from the less stressful learning experience of homeland Kenya, Ken now has become a member of the Hong Kong education system. Ken notes with dismay the heavy schooling burden children in Hong Kong bear right from kindergarten till university – the silence and beauty of the CityU garden, it’s a pity that no one was enjoying it when we took photos there. We only saw students memorizing notes on the corridors. Ken worries that this atmosphere of working without a passion for living living will ruin this city which he sees as home. 

Race or Prejudice?

Almost every time he returns home from abroad, Ken’s identity is always questioned by the Hong Kong Customs officers. “Whenever I am carrying a light luggage walking through the Nothing to Declare Green Channel, the Custom Officers will call me aside and ask me to have my bag x-rayed. Chinese people with huge suitcases are never stopped. When you ask them why they always stop the black man, the answer is always “just a random check!” This same treatment is meted out on other darker people like Indians, Malaysians, the Philippinos, etc. 

“But if you ask them if they know the meaning of ‘random’, they can’t answer.” This inspired Ken to write the story of the life of a Black businessman with a local girlfriend in Hong Kong, who encounters this treatment. The story, named Random Check will appear together with another ten stories, will appear in Ken’s collection of short stories, A Fragile Hope which will be published in May. 

“Perhaps, they’ve caught some black people trafficking drugs, so from then on they target black people as a matter of routine.” This kind of prejudice is not explained merely in terms of skin color. In fact, there is more to the associations people make, such as, “Dark-coloured people are poor”, “Minorities possess low status”. “I know of situations where Indians secured a job on the phone to teach English. But when they show up at the door, they’re denied the job.” It isn’t just about skin colour per se. It is also about associating skin colour with perceived social class, leading people to view minorities as inferior. 

Being a respected university professor, Ken certainly does not need to worry about his own social status. But it hurts him to see or experience bigotry in the actions of the people around him – a black man sits on a train and those beside him move away for example. Whether this is because of the supposed strong curry smell or whatever, or because darker-skinned people are thought of as dirty or even rude, these are actions that always break Ken’s heart. 

Ken has many pictures of his two year-old son. Starting from his first photo as a baby, his son knows how to sit still and to pose in front of a piano. From the photos taken when his son was newly born, the skin of his son was very light. You wouldn’t have guessed he was of African-Asian heritage. According to Ken, the skin assumed more colour over time.  

Presumably, perhaps the coloured glasses we wear are also gradually affected by our cultural prejudice.