The planet of the apes

News of my acceptance to Princeton University delivered me from a middling life of insipidity. I came from a distinctly undistinguished background in an authoritarian country in Southeast Asia, and had fought tooth and nail to emerge at the top of an elitist education system that, like most others, inherently privileged the rich and powerful (though, unfortunately and by definition, not the most fashionable). Most people with the resources I had would have had to sign away six years of their life to obtain a meager tertiary education funded by the government, but the University's financial aid package offered me an opportunity to be in control. I would be the first person in my family to have a university degree, let alone such a gilded one.

The Princeton Alumni of Singapore organizes a tea at the American Club in August. Naturally, they invited me to attend. The inexperienced me was impressed. "A tea? Such kind people," I thought to myself as I made my way there. "They are doubtlessly stewards of goodwill, welcoming me to their esteemed community."

The guard at the American Club would not let me in at first. I was Asian, and of course I was not American, for Americans were all white, weren't they? In any case, he was not at all polite to me, for though he obsequiously addressed every white person as "sir" or "madam," I must have appeared to be more of a "hey you." But he was just a proletariat man anyway, a native like myself, and had no reason to treat me like the lord and master of all. The Princeton Alumni would be different.

They were. The Americans among them did not even deign to speak to me or the other natives very much. They conversed charmingly with the UWC students, who did not bear the mark of being Singaporean and therefore escaped its degrading social signification. I pretended to have a top hat and monocle, but this brilliant plan failed. Instead, one woman asked me why I had a British accent when I was clearly Singaporean. She, and her velvet Gucci stilettos from the heyday of Tom Ford, did not believe me when I truthfully replied that I learned English as a child by watching the BBC. I hung out with the other natives in a corner of the room, where we furtively mixed our blood together in a pact never to attend another Princeton Alumni of Singapore event again. We don't.

I have analyzed this event countless times. As an ex-British colony, reverse racism is extremely a la mode these days in countries such as Singapore, for the memory of white masters cannot simply be erased with a flourish. White people are worshiped for everything — from their education to their always-superior bone structure — and upon their naturally wavy hair are placed golden laurels. Even the most liberal white expatriates invariably become elitist and racist here. Nobody ever refused to be a king, and though some nobody might have been the sketchy man in the New York Metro fingering his, er, Blackberry through his pants pocket, the oiliest white elephant can certainly live a life of wine, women (or ladyboys) and song in Asia.

There is something very disturbing about this brand of Asian servility and its reciprocal colonialist mentality. In pursuit of some Freudian female ideal, German sex tourists in Bangkok, French sweatshops in China and obnoxious American expatriates masquerading as the white knights of Singapore function as a wave of so-called benevolent globalization that puts the colon in neocolonialism. Elitism, already so easy in Princeton, is even easier here. At best, I was a lowly native who made good and might improve his lot in life. At worst, well.

That was my Dickensian introduction to Princeton, and it was unsurprising that I deployed all my defenses when I first arrived. I have since learned that things are different on campus. But I still remain suspicious of neocolonialism. I discovered that many of the kind people I met were part of the Princeton-in-Asia program, whose alumni have done many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. Johann Loh is a philosophy major from Singapore. Loh is studying abroad at Oxford this fall. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.