The term “social distancing” is really a misnomer: When most of us participate in social distancing, we are far from being socially distant. We have easy access to technologies and platforms that allow us to be “close” to the ones we love and care about. Our homes are well-equipped with creature comforts like internet, smartphones, computers, air-con, that makes our confinement a mere inconvenience.
Physical proximity and touch is but one way to express closeness or to communicate — it is sensual, enjoyable, and sometimes even necessary — but perhaps for most Singaporeans, we tend to be a little more guarded about personal space. Physical closeness might not be our go-to way of expressing our sense of kinship.
And so “social distancing” hurts us less because we are comfortably integrated into our society: We are in a familiar place, we are comfortable in our relatively well-equipped apartments and houses. We are well-adjusted to the norms of our society, and in turn, society provides us with tangible resources and emotional support.
But when we “STOMP” the elderly for gathering in public spaces, it’s very easy to forget that there are people in our society that connect with each other differently. People who live in relative isolation with no companions nor caregivers in their cramped homes, let alone air-conditioning and internet. For such groups, social distancing is indeed extremely painful.
When we make certain seemingly “factual” remarks about migrant workers being dirty, we’ve forgotten that their living conditions make it pretty difficult to achieve our standards of hygiene or space. We forget that our society is clean not because we are spotless but because we have people cleaning up after us.
We are blind to the ways that communities vastly different from ours express their sense of kinship and closeness, instead reeling with disgust or anger when we see the same migrant workers congregating together. “Eeyer!”
When we make extremely disparaging remarks about certain groups and their inability to engage on social distancing or having poor hygiene, there’s really no real excuse here. We are relying on lazy racialized stereotypes. We are being racist because we fail to see that there are actual material conditions that lead to the issues we face today with migrant workers.
Heck, social distancing practices are already painful and difficult for most of us, but we deviantize these groups of people anyway.
And sadly, it reflects more on our society as a whole than on a specific group of “problematic individuals”. While we think we are united, our social fabric is frayed at the edges. We seem tightly-knit, but only among those we identify with. We are close to one another, but the faultlines that have emerged hint at a different kind of social distance: between the haves and the have-nots.
