Trump’s America has given racism a new lease of life by making a mockery of its diversity
Amy Wu finds she had been living in a bubble of a multicultural America, as she learns a few home truths on discrimination and the newly blurred divide between conservative and liberal states
I am a big city girl, having lived in New York, San Francisco, Washington and Hong Kong, all of them cosmopolitan, international, if not progressive cities when it comes to the arts, culture, gender and politics. Diversity, exposure and acceptance – whether racial, sexual, gender or socioeconomic – was, in retrospect, taken for granted.
Diversity was a given – my Caucasian, Indian and Latino friends celebrated the Lunar New Year and Autumn Moon festivals alongside me, while I celebrated Diwali, St Patrick’s Day and their children’s quinceañeras.
In Hong Kong, my colleagues included Britons, Australians, Filipinos, Indians, Singaporeans, South Africans, and people from many other countries. In coexisting, we learned about each others’ cultures and backgrounds. There were certainly cultural and linguistics barriers, but I was privileged enough to be exposed to such a diversity of cultures and thought.
Under this new administration, discrimination, and at times racism, seems to have reared its ugly head in everyday life