The Fallacy of Sinhala Privilege

The Sinhala are privileged, I’ve been told.

 So one must respond; how do you know? Did television and papers say so?

Spending time in Sri Lanka, I have found that the current Sinhala supremacist state broadcasted via media is much different than the experience of being Sinhala on the ground. 

Neo-colonial appropriation is as strong as ever, as is the lack of interest in indigenous heritage. It takes more than being Sinhalese to receive social value and worth.  There are more people in this country appropriating western forms of dress and professionalism to gain social worth, than there are people trying to appropriate authentic Sinhala customs.

Traveling beyond Colombo out into the south, where Sinhala families predominate. Native Sinhala tongue is common and Buddhist temples fill the streets like corner stores.  

                                Photo by Natale Danko 2013

“Let’s not forget, we live on a globe where economics and a neo-colonial underpinning impacts the world; where wealth, prestige and a corporate glow gets you love, value and worth.”

But, it doesn’t look like it matters how good your Sinhala sounds or how authentic the Sinhala garb; bare feet with a sarong.

Political economy runs things out in the rural parts as well. Wealth, prestige and a corporate glow promise  more value and worth than touting your Sinhalese lineage.

So these days I take this claim that the Sinhala are privileged and frown, especially when it's related to social worth. Sure, there are a few that identify as Sinhala who are extremely privileged in Sri Lanka. But, there are also the many that are underprivileged; under-paid and devalued.  How does one account for this?

It is essential to have an over-lapping dialogue about privilege. There are places where the concern about inequity in the nation overlap and goes beyond the dialogue of ethnic difference.Exclusively engaging with one’s ethnic group, will only give you a limited understanding of the ways members of the Sinhala community, especially those who retain indigenous practices, are de-valued as well. You will miss out in hearing the stories of the Sinhala migrant worker, farmer, fisher-man, garbage cleaner, the man who sells pineapples for a living, house-wife or under-paid employee. Inequitable access to “Privilege” is a common burden and struggle that members of all ethnic groups experience.   

As one observe human beings in Sri Lanka, the way they create value structures in their minds, the way they define some with more value and worth than others... yes, ethnicity is at times a cue. But social roles, behaviors, the color of your skin, the sex you were born with are factors that too deem you inferior or superior. 

And, I have found that the social cues that promise privilege in Sri Lanka often supersede one's ethnic affiliation. Something I see everyday as I observe the continued struggles of individuals who identify as Sinhala. 

Photo Natale Danko 2013

This piece specifically refers to the following statement:

“The social, political, and economic arrangements of a society can place some people in a privileged position relative to others, particularly with respect to important goods, like institutional representation, economic resources, and even less tangible goods like “respect” and “welfare”

My piece explores whether tangible goods like economic resources or less tangible goods like "respect" and "welfare" are promised to those who identify as Sinhala in Sri Lanka.

We are more than this body and these silly ideas. We are absolute, endless possibility.

Sometimes all we ever want to hear are the happy endings. We live lies; lives. Filled with glamour and facades, covering the confusion that may lie beneath it all.

We cover up.  Dare we let others see … feel … those moments of deep suffering.
We all fear judgment; the burning eyes of others piercing through us. Fearing they may see our inadequacies. How we aren't always perfect.

So, we invest our lives in putting on layers and layers of ideas and concepts. And, we hide ourselves behind it all; letting others only see the things which are acceptable or likable.
And we suffer when we do not meet the standards we set for ourselves or that society has made us set for ourselves.

Why do we fear to reveal our insecurities, our weakness, our imperfections? Is it because of our pride? Or is it just a child like wanting of love combined with our fear of being loved less at the expense of being found unworthy?

I have watched countless people I love suffer silently. Their souls consumed by a dark madness, most of it driven by the inability to achieve ego driven charades. I watched as they spent their lives trying to prove to some absent person their worth.

Helplessly in love with them, my soul would cry out that I loved them for immaterial intangible reasons.  In my eyes they were whole.

Watching such suffer. I grew disillusioned by this materialistic world. Spending lives to maintain a standard. 

So I began to reject it all. And found solace in things in which status did not matter. I embraced my being beyond academic credentials, employment and nice clothes. And, in this bare state, I found myself and beautiful heart-filled companions.  We sat on plots of grass closed our eyes and emptied our minds of all these stupid thoughts.  I re-learned to be.

To find those that love your true authentic self, you have to sacrifice all the layers we hide behind. Stand bare before the audience and see who accepts you. We need to embrace the things that make us suffer, it's what leads you to the things that matter. We need to speak it without fear.  Those who deserve your company will stand by you.  Hold you and push you and ultimately help you find yourself again. 

We need to stare shame- or our fear of it - in the eyes. Sometimes if you stare for long enough your warrior will awake. Nothing can hold us back. No status, no judgmental stare. We can transcend it all. We are more than this body and these silly ideas. We are absolute, endless possibility. 

Tropical-practical-dress replaced by impractical acts to impress.

In the land of my forefathers, to dress as my forefathers may (before customs were remade) has become something of shame.

A heritage I was denied for so long, I searched to belong. But I returned to find an Island getting it wrong.

I paced my uncle’s tropical home in a female’s version of a sarong, a simple act of conscious freedom. Or so I thought.

My act led only to whispers that reached my mother’s ears at home in the west.

And so she called and reprimanded and persisted I wore the pants she packed.

And so I was told, while standing in our ancestral tropical home, to keep playing the shame game.

But there I was, searching for my natal influences and tired of being ashamed.

“Why can’t the customary (before customs were remade) be contemporary?” I thought. I fought.  

But I could not be heard. In a sarong my words held no worth.

Invaded minds can be blind to the subtle ways we despise our ancestral guise. 

And instead we praise our imperial prize.  

And I don't seek to blame, rather I seek to simply reveal this endless game.

These subtle ways we control and patrol one another. 

Tropical-practical-dress replaced by impractical acts to impress.

And I can’t help but see ( though I mostly act to please) the remaining Illusions as a product of a colonial invasion of our imagination.

A continuation of our desire to keep proving our superiority through thoughts we were taught.

And so slowly in dress I embraced this silent inferiority, in hopes of re-birthing creativity - an expression that should not be lost universally. 

( A reflection on my travels to Sri Lanka in the Fall of 2012) 

To be normal. Are you really sure we're tolerant of diversity?

The part of MY personality which has constantly tried to "fit in" or "be normal". It tried to conform to mainstream culture, denying my Brown Androgynous Childish Soul. 

As of late, I've been trying to find ways for this part of myself to exist in equanimity with my westernized identity. To be truer to my whole being. And what it has revealed is something very quirky and eccentric within me. 

Anyone that denies that many of us (if not all) have been subjected to socialize ourselves in public (denying deep rooted parts of ourselves) to "fit in" to a Eurocentric industrial drone (and the social norms and mainstream culture it encompasses) in our schools and offices are a little naive. 

You may think we as Canadians are tolerant of Diversity. But have you ever really inhabited a diverse way of being in public and experienced how people react? Have you ever been in a situation where you actually accommodated another person's diverse way of being? 

Or rather, are you a person who easily defines people and things which are different as 'weird' and 'crazy' because it made you uncomfortable not because they caused harm? Are you someone who believes there is a normal way of being we should all be subjected to inhabit? 

Are you really sure we're tolerant of diversity?  

Love Yourself.

See The Joy I have, No One can take away from me...
No one loaned it to me or hired me to do it. 
Rather, I was born with it and choose when I use it. 
It emanates through me like a piercing divine light.
And it emanates through me for the price of nothing.

Play, Dance and Draw. Love yourself. Release Your Inner Child!

God's given me a lot of Joy for free. Given me a voice to sing, hands to create, a body to move. And I've been putting it to use. 

See cause I know, every thought and action Fun and Awesome resides within me waiting for that perfect moment to reveal itself. 

Back in Toronto. Back on Stage. Hoping for a Canadian Cultural Renaissance.

As 2012 drew to an end and 2013 was just to begin, I knew I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to be on stage donning a sarong around my waste, singing a melody appropriate for the Island of my forefathers while speaking words I learned in the land of my Birth - Oh, Canada.

So I sang, I sang of how we as Canadians need a sense of brotherhood, kinship. That we shouldn't be divided along racial, ethnic or class lines. We should find something that unites us. Something that breaks down the imagined barriers.

And so I pray that Toronto as a whole experiences a cultural renaissance which takes the best of the East and West and makes it relevant to our contemporary lives.

A Free Ride

It was late at night and I paced from one end to the other of my bedroom carrying my large travelling bag on my back. Everything was packed - my sleeping bag, an extra sweater, food and a few books.

My mother walked in abruptly. She had a bad habit of not knocking. She caught me at mid-pace. ‘So, you really want to go?’  Her curious eyes looked me up and down. I stared back at her.  ‘If Jesus and Buddha could do it why can’t I?’

Then my dad walked in abruptly. He also had a bad habit of not knocking as well. “If you leave, I’ll throw out all of your stuff.”  He announced furiously. “You can’t come back here.” He gave me a menacing look,  exited my room and went to bed. My mother and I went back to pondering whether I could be as fearless as Jesus and Buddha.

By the end, my mother was scared and thoroughly confused by my argumentation.  But, she recognized this was important to me and agreed that I should go and that’s all that mattered.

The next morning, donning 7 layers of pants, my highlighter red parka and my overwhelmingly large backpack, I was ready to leave. My parents put me in their unnecessarily large SUV and drove me to pick up the others at a local subway station.

Upon arriving at the subway station, the others greeted my parents and packed the SUV with their large backpacks as well. We asked to be dropped off at the mall in Vaughan where I kissed my parents goodbye and promised I wouldn’t die.

Thirty Minutes later we’d divided into groups of two and walked to the nearest highway ramp. 

My travel companion (Beacon) and I stood by the large green HWY 400 street sign holding a piece of card-board that indicated we were going north.

Five minutes passed and not a car stopped. I was already starting to feel like an idiot. It was unnerving standing on a busy street with so many cars just passing by without even a glance. In this day and age, had I really thought this could work?

But then another five minutes passed and when I was about to call it a day; a mini-van stopped in front of us. I was baffled with Joy. Had someone just really stopped after only ten minutes of waiting? 

“Thank you, and thank you.” I greeted the driver. 

And like that I was offered my first free ride from a complete stranger.

He was a ginger with a wide smile. His name was Christian. He offered to drive us till Barrie. And when I found two Canadian flags on the floor of his minivan, he offered them to me without a hesitation. I waved the flag back and forth and smiled and ranted about being thankful and feeling blessed. He told us how he used to hitch-hike all the time and he was just returning the favour.

He dropped us off at a ramp in Barrie that was heading for the Trans-Canada Highway. We thanked him once more and pulled our large bags out of his trunk. 

As I struggled to put the bag on my back another Minivan drove up. Two girls in their early twenties popped out, ‘Need a ride?’

I couldn’t believe it. Had we just been offered our second ride? It hadn’t been more than a minute since our last ride? Was this really that easy?

Soon our stuff was in their Van. Shauna (the Driver) starred at me through her rear view mirror as she drove and curiously got to know me. She was clearly Jewish.Her wild dark-brown curly hair was tied in a messy bun to the top of her head. And really, that was enough to give it away.

She was so beautifully down to earth and I loved her almost instantly. She wore mismatched ski gear from the 80’s and she spoke in a soothing empathetic voice.

She was on her way to a ski resort (Horseshoe Valley). She suggested we join and that after she was done skiing she’d drive us further along. We took her up on her generous offer.

As they skied, we spent the afternoon talking up the manager in the cafeteria. We told her how we were heading north and then west and trying to get as far as we could without spending a dime. She found our story endearing. She gave us free pizza.

While eating our free pizza, the girls finally returned from the Mountains. It was dark and time for them to drive further down the highway and drop us off wherever. We’d come prepared to camp out in the forests along the highway. But the girls were feeling more generous. After whispering privately between themselves they offered for us to stay with them for the night.

“My parents own a cottage in Perry Sound. We’re staying there tonight. You should join.”

The girls took us to a beautiful newly built cottage by the lake in Perry Sound. Shauna’s Bubby had paid for it to be made.

That night I settled into my sleeping bag, on the sofa in the middle of her cottage's spacious living room. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I couldn't believe my luck.

When I’d decided to go on this journey, I had been quite scared. Many had discouraged it. “It will be dangerous.” I was told, “You’ll get robbed.” But, I refused to give precedence to fear. I wanted to prove the absolute was possible.

I had left home with literally nothing but the bag on my back, a tent for shelter and a bit of cash. And, on my first night on the road, I hadn’t needed any of the stuff I’d brought. I received all my essential needs for Free. Free rides, free food and free shelter. 

I thought to myself. This must be what Gautama Buddha experienced, when he left home and wealth to pursue the life of a wandering Monk. There are stories of the immense charity he experienced. How people consistently took him into their homes and fed him.

That day I ended up seeing that the power of Compassion still reigned on Earth. It was uplifting to be reminded that the world isn’t as shady as we’re often led to believe. But rather, there are still many people out there ready to provide a helping hand and be compassionate to complete strangers.

As the New Year nears, I hope to hold this experience dear to my heart. All I’ve ever wanted was to be happy. And if I’ve learned anything this year, to give and receive Compassion or Unconditional Love is the greatest Joy one can experience.