It was a woman's voice speaking in bazaar Malay. Something about the place being all wet when she had just cleaned the place a short while before.

On entering the toilet, I saw 2 Malay boys -– one about 13, the other maybe 15 -– standing at the washbasins while she harangued them. They looked strangely immobilised, as if stunned by the cleaner's outburst.

"Why must you splash water everywhere when you wash your hands?" she yelled. "Look, the floor's all wet, even in the cubicles. I just cleaned it, now I have to clean it all over again."

The older boy protested, in Malay: "Not me. I didn't splash water."

The younger boy said, "I've only just walked in here."

She wouldn't believe them. She rewound her tape and played the same accusations once more.

I ignored them while I used the urinal. But when I needed to wash my hands, I had no choice but to step into the conflict zone.

I do not know if the boys were guilty as charged. Perhaps they were. Boys can be very competitive, and if one had started splashing a bit of water on the other, you can be sure that not only would the other retaliate, it would escalate. Perhaps the cleaner had caught them in the act.

Then again, she might merely be taking it out on them just because they happened to be there when she walked in. Or, they might have been flicking a bit of water at each other, but the floor might have been made wet by previous users.

However, what struck me as I washed my hands, pretending to be deaf to the decibels around me, was the fact that the boys were still standing there. They didn't walk away, and other than the occasional denial, they were not talking back to the cleaner either. I said to myself: These boys are quite well brought up; they do not turn their backs on someone who is speaking to them, even someone speaking harshly to them.

At just about that moment, the cleaner switched to Chinese. Now she was obviously addressing me, repeating the same complaint, but this time in a mix of Hokkien and Mandarin. I didn't appreciate being drawn into the issue.

Yet, I have sympathy for cleaners. It's by no means an enviable job to pick up after others, especially Singaporeans, who tend to have very little sense of civic responsibility. I can understand her frustration even if the boys were not guilty.

Do I have to be a peacemaker? I considered telling the boys, "Just say sorry and go," and gently ushering them out.

I found it offensive, but I also didn't want to get involved. So, as soon as I dried my hands, I waved them at the 2 boys, in a gesture that said, "Go. Get out of here."

They did, more or less sheltered by me, following them out.

* * * * *

 
The scene I described is hardly unusual. Racism lurks just under the surface. All sorts of grievances, genuine though they may be, are often turned into colour-based accusations. Just as frequently, people attempt to use race to seek allies when faced with conflict. On a micro scale, the cleaner did it. On a bigger scale, Malaysia's UMNO party leaders do so regularly.

Common though such attitudes and behaviour may be, they seldom make the news in Singapore. Typically, they only hit the headlines when they break out into spats on the internet.

The question of how to deal with them is unresolved. From the last few examples, our government has preferred to take the big stick approach. Perpetrators have been hauled to the courts, in one case, given a month's jail time.

The inflammatory postings are quickly purged, so fast and completely that many people never get a chance to see exactly what had been said. One result of acting with such speed and thoroughness is that suspicion then lingers as to whether the government over-reacted. Was it really that bad? People continue to ask. Was it really necessary to use the law?

The government would say, in such matters, better safe than sorry. Better to act fast and nip possible conflict in the bud than let things get out of hand. Some of us still think this solves nothing in the long run.

Yet, avoidance of conflict is an instinctive consideration. I did the same thing in the Alexandra Hospital men's room. The moment the cleaner switched to racial epithets, I was quick to extricate myself and the boys from the situation. In the process, I might have failed to educate the woman that I considered her accusations unfair and uncalled for, but that was hardly something I would care to do then and there.

And so racism persists like a weed spreading just beneath the soil surface, sprouting whenever given half an opportunity. Expression of it is only the occasional manifestation. Relative silence does not mean it does not exist.

* * * * *

 
Next week, a momentous election will take place in the United States. Cocoa-skinned Barack Hussein Obama, who is half Caucasion and half Kenyan, is likely to prevail against John McCain. Unless the opinion polls are all wrong, Obama will become the first president of the US who is not lily-white.

Yet, even at this stage, people wonder whether to trust the opinion surveys. There is frequent reference to the possibility of a Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, a mayor of Los Angeles who contested the California gubernatorial election in 1982. Going into the voting, he led opinion polls, but the final result gave victory to his Republican opponent, George Deukmejian, 49 to 48 percent.

Why were the opinion polls off the mark? One theory is that a lot of people might have told pollsters that they were in favour of Bradley when they privately could not bring themselves to vote for an African-American. They might not have felt it politically correct to admit to racially-motivated voting behaviour when canvassed.

Indeed, judging by the way McCain has been shown up through the campaign as having all the wrong instincts in an economic crisis, and the way his choice of utterly unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate showed up an impetuousness that borders on the reckless, Obama's numbers should be much better than they currently are. Why is his lead just in single-digits nationally? Why else, you might reply.

It's anybody's guess what percentage of US voters just will not vote for a non-white, but it may well be considerable. 10 percent? 20 percent? I'm pretty sure it is significant.

Yet, there is hope. If Obama wins, and if he turns in an above-average performance during his four-year term, more people will learn to overlook race. More importantly, he will be a model for others to follow.

Already, he has broken worldwide records. In no country with open elections has any politician who is clearly of minority race come as close to power. Even countries that have had female presidents and prime ministers, mould-breaking as these leaders have been, have never come close to electing minority-race leaders.

That, for all the pain and suffering that America has gone through on account of race -– slavery, the 1860-1865 Civil War, the 1960s civil rights movement, a history of laws banning mixed-race marriage, and so on -– it is the same country that is on the cusp of making history, cannot but underscore once again, the magnetism of the American ideal: liberty and equality, the opportunity for the individual to break free from the millstones of class and colour.

© Yawning Bread