Recently I locked myself out of my apartment, and had to go to the office of my real estate agent to borrow their spare set of keys. After asking for some identification and taking a look at my driver's licence, which lists my English name as my middle name, the white, middle-aged lady glanced at me and said, 'Oh, we'd better correct your name in our system, then.'
My heart stopped for a couple of seconds while I processed her words. I knew I had to reply quickly, and the only thing I could think to say was 'No, I've been called Yen-Rong my whole life'. I hoped I didn't sound like I was begging. But even so, she still shot me a look that seemed to say, 'I don't really believe you.' She handed me the keys with a glare. I wilted slightly, and scurried off to catch an Uber home.
I had spent the last few days reading tweets with the #whitenesstoldme hashtag, which had been sparked by Tori William Douglass' tweet, 'Whiteness told me that whiteness wasn't supremacy, it was just behaviour. Whiteness told me, "Anyone can be equal, you just have to act right".'
Whiteness is a cultural construct that centres itself as the norm, and by doing so, situates everyone else as 'other'. It assumes authority just by existing, and uses that authority to keep itself in place, and in charge.
People from all manner of backgrounds latched onto the hashtag, telling their experiences and speaking their truths. They spoke about assimilation and colonisation and structural racism, about absorbing whiteness as the default, without even knowing it was happening.
That afternoon, the lady at the real estate office made me feel less-than, like I wasn't truly 'Australian' unless I went by my English name. People have always had issues with my name — they don't pronounce it properly, or they want to give me a nickname (and call me unAustralian when I refuse), or they straight up make jokes out of it. I've lived a life of people telling me my name was too different, too hard.
That afternoon, whiteness wanted to erase my name. It wanted to erase my identity and my cultural background — and to what end? To make it (and by proxy, me) easier for white people to digest? The keys the real estate office had didn't even work, so while I waited for the locksmith to get to my apartment, I perched on my landing and kept reading those tweets.
"Hamilton demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be part of the Chinese diaspora in Australia."
I felt a solidarity with these people, some of whom were my friends, some of whom were strangers from the other side of the world. There was a sort of comfort in knowing that my experiences weren't singular, but at the same time, I was angry at whiteness' pervasiveness. I was angry at the violence it had perpetrated throughout the world, most significantly on black and brown bodies. I was angry at myself for the times where I had given into whiteness, where I had sat on the sidelines and stayed silent, instead of speaking up for myself or for a peer.
I am proudly Malaysian-Chinese, and for the past couple of months, I have been sitting silently on the sidelines while the burgeoning fear of China's influence in Australia has reached a tipping point. In Clive Hamilton's book, Silent Invasion, he claims that in Australia, '"patriotic" students brainwashed from birth' and 'professionals marshalled into pro-Beijing associations set up by the Chinese embassy', among others, are engaged in a bid to 'erode Australian sovereignty'.
There are legitimate concerns around the influence of the Chinese government in Australian politics and society, and the silencing of voices who speak out against human rights violations and the like that are taking place in China should not be taken lightly. Race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane agrees, calling for civil and serious debate — but not at the risk of exacerbating existing racial tensions.
He notes, 'there must be responsibility exercised in public debate. It is a dangerous thing to invite hysteria. It is doubly dangerous to invite anxiety about the Chinese party-state that may shift into animosity towards people with Chinese heritage.'
However, Hamilton seems content to barrel on. In a piece for The Conversation, he states, 'Chinese-Australians critical of the Communist Party have no representation in parliament. Who will speak up for them if their family is threatened, or if their business in Australia is sent broke by a boycott organised by the consulate?'
To me, Hamilton demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be part of the Chinese diaspora in Australia. This diaspora is multi-layered and multi-faceted, and consists of more than just those who come from the mainland. There are those of us who have never stepped foot in China, and yet strongly identify with our Chinese backgrounds. Whiteness, whether it be in the form of the lady at my real estate office, or Clive Hamilton, is constantly trying to erase my identity, and the identities of my fellow Chinese-Australians.
But guess what? We're all here to stay. I'm here to stay. The locksmith arrived and let me into my apartment. I was no longer locked out — and I will never let myself be locked out by whiteness, just because of my name or my heritage.
Yen-Rong Wong is a Brisbane-based writer, and the founding editor of Pencilled In, a literary magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of Asian Australian artists.