Black & Yellow

"Friendly match". I believe that this is a name given by soccer pioneers to an unregistered soccer fixture in an attempt to dispute the cruel fact that a game of soccer could easily turn into a mass brawl. At least within my circle of soccer mates, the Mayflowereans and the NYJCians, it appeared so to me.

Most of my teammates would most probably stir some shit on the pitch if arguments ever broke out. Past experiences, for instance, was the infamous match at Queensway. The fight got so heated to an extent that one opponent managed to bring on to the pitch one club in each of his hands. In this fight, Guoan was trampled to the ground by a group after some jerking of shirts. We almost had no reaction time to extricate him from the stampede when, fortunately, Jialong was in time to grapple to the ground a guy who was about to give Guoan a boot on his spine. That might have landed him paralysed.

Another atrocious incident was the match I arranged with my NYJC Soccer Team pals. A couple of injustice slides soon triggers the brawl. A real bad situation it was: MY Secondary pals VS MY College pals. Vulgars exchanged between Kenneth and Kelvin, fists was thrown by Jialong and retuned with Ah Pang's flying kick. Stranded in between, I could only try to break it up, however much in vain.

A small incident happened over the second soccer match at Woodbridge Hospital soccer pitch on the last Sunday afternoon. The singh I was playing against on my right flank was a very friendly and apologetic guy. A slightest brush with him when fighting for the ball and he would ask if I'm alright. At least he was in the same calibre as I am, in terms of friendliness.

After a couple claims of rough playing on us, a "gathering" soon took place in the centre of the field after a nerd claimed that Jialong slapped (again...) his face, when Jialong was actually shielding the ball. Inside the fuming mess an opposition named Mani kept on clamoring, "eh gangster ah? fight ah! fight ah!", when the only obvious gangster is him. The nerd (also the victim) wanted to get involved in the heated assemblage, but was wailed off by Guizhong, and walked away as though the clash never involved him when he actually sparkled the argument.

Now here is the gist of the clash. Guoan called out to Mani, "eh Indian boy..." The peaceful singh I was playing against earlier flared up all of a sudden. "Eh what's wrong with Indians? I'm also an Indian wad! You racist is it?" Subsequently, the bunch of indians turned hysterical. After much pushing, ragging and tugging, the match was abandoned 7 minutes to full time with us leading 6-3.

Back at the resting area, we are separated by a block of building, connected by a alleyway. Amusingly, they started branding us as yellow people. They tried to aggravate the situation by echoing in jeers whenever we talked loud enough to reach them. They were still a couple of years from reaching 20. We naturally regard them as childish. In the end we had a good laugh recollecting over the racist incident. It was just a casual remark by Guoan to tag them as indian boys. In fact, they are indians, and they are boys. It was not as if he was calling a black man a nigger. So why the big hoo-har?

Indeed, Singapore, as a a multi-racial nation, the new generation has grew up in this munipulated cosmopolitan community. It was deemed a ingenerated course to have a different coloured family as our neighbours in a flat, a classmate beside our desks, or our army buddy. I must acclaim the government for making this kind of community possible, which seemed almost impossible in the olden days. It is heartening to witness an increasing statistic of cross racial relationships and even marriages. Harmony from within different skin colours has became a feature of the proud city.

However, racism remained a sensitive issue even in Singapore. The existence of racist jokes are often publicly shared (well, most of the time by Chinese). I had a handful of friends who admitted that they could not stand Malays or Indians hanging around them. Personally (no racial offence at all) I dislike the smell of the jasmine bath from Indians. Therefore I tend to avoid sitting with them on the trains. Sadly, the promotion of racial harmony does not totally spare the fact that colour does make a difference. At the bottom line, there are diversities in ways of lives, languages and religions.

The seed of self-interest naturally sets in everyone, some to be nurtured, some to be tamed. While conflicts are common among individuals, it is more prone to happen when mob mentality takes over. Thus racism will always remain an issue of mankind. The best one community can achieve is to educate and suppress it like Singapore did. Afterall, in the end, Guoan went up to the singh to elucidate the ambiguous misunderstanding.