Segregated, stared at and even spat on are just the tip of the iceberg in ways women of colour are treated on a day-to-day basis in Hong Kong. 

 

Almost half of 135 ethnic minority respondents in a survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Social Work Department felt that they were seen as second-class citizens. 

 

“It's just constant and every single day, if not every two, three days, you're going to come across at least one racist incident,” said Kamaria Ahmad, a 23-year-old of Pakistani ethnicity who was born and raised in Hong Kong.

 

There are 127,213 ethnic minority women in Hong Kong, excluding foreign domestic helpers, according to research by The Zubin Foundation. The term ethnic minority includes women of Indian, Nepalese, Pakistani, Thai, Filipino and Indonesian ethnicity.

​

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahmad wears a head covering, or hijab, which she never saw as something that made her stand out since she attended Islamic Primary school, where a lot of the Muslim girls would also wear hijabs.

 

But as she left that bubble, attended a local secondary school and grew older, she noticed the blatant hostility towards her appearance. 

 

One day, as Ahmad exited the lift of her building, a man spat on her while she was walking towards her own flat. At that moment, she froze. She didn’t retaliate or say a word, Ahmad just kept walking. 

 

“When you become so used to it [discrimination], standing up for yourself isn't an option,” she said. “Because in these moments, it just never even comes up in your head.”

 

Ahmad now resides in the UK where she studies at the University of Leeds. She said the racism and microaggression she faced in Hong Kong growing up was far more blunt and obvious, whereas in the UK she knows she was protected by outright, public discrimination because of labour laws.

 

“Religious discrimination gets racialized in very problematic ways,” said Dr Elizabeth LaCouture, Director of the Gender Studies Programme at The University of Hong Kong, who specialises in research on race and gender intersectionality. 

 

Discrimination based on religion is unprotected by the Equal Opportunities Commission, yet there is still freedom of religion in Hong Kong, which enables “a secular society” dominated by a “Christian white colonial system”, said LaCouture.

 

“You can't deny that women face challenges of a different kind,” said Niru Vishwanath, Officer at the Equal Opportunities Commission. 

 

For example, Vishwanath said Pakistani women in the community are sometimes from lower-income families and have trouble accessing services, facing microaggression from traditional dressing and hijabs.

 

“A lot of the women who really have a problem, they are not empowered enough to come forward and complain,” Vishwanath said.

 

But discrimination plays out differently for Black and Brown women in Hong Kong, depending on how people in different places view them and if other factors are taken into consideration, such as their socio-economic status.

 

“I felt less othered in Hong Kong than I have felt in the UK,” said Marie-Louisa Awolaja, who came to the city for a stint with Linklaters, the company she worked for. “Because in the UK, you're clearly black and there are all these assumptions.” 

 

Awolaja remembers landing on Establishment Day in July 2019. She took a taxi straight from the airport to her flat on Hennessy Road, where the driver dropped her off at the roadblocks as she dragged her luggage through the streets of Wan Chai.

 

“I remember walking around and looking up and thinking, oh my god, I'm in Hong Kong,” she said. “But the immediate feeling was that I feel at home here in some way.” 

 

She said the city reminded her of a crossroads between Lagos and London, the former where her roots are from and the latter where she was raised most of her life. 

 

But often, on a packed MTR train, the seat next to her remains empty. In shops, she is sometimes followed by staff whom Awolaja thinks are worried about her stealing. And because of the colour of her skin — her landlord was initially hesitant in renting the flat to her.

 

Over 90% of respondents in an ethnic minority and asylum seeker private housing survey done by NGOs in Hong Kong reported that they experienced difficulties while looking for accommodation.

 

Her agent had to stress to her landlord that she had a job at a big law firm that earned her good money which could pay for the flat.

 

That was one of the perks of living in the city as an expat, Awolaja said. A constant battle between her socio-economic status and career weighing her up but her complexion and the stereotypes attached to them dragging her down. Even then, she felt a gravitational pull towards the city.

 

“I felt seen, I felt heard, I felt a sense of belonging,” she said.

 

Awolaja cofounded and hosts the HomeGrown Podcast, where she sits with fellow members of the Black expatriate community in Hong Kong to discuss the community and share anecdotes. 

 

The podcast discusses Black culture in Hong Kong and the work that needs to be done for communities — not only Hong Kong but Asia as a whole — to be more accepting of Blackness. 

 

“As a black woman, people always assume your tone is just aggressive,” said Jana, a Nigerian-Hong Konger who was born and bred in the city and works in the legal field.

 

Jana, who asked to only be identified by her nickname over workplace confidentiality purposes, also felt stereotypes attached to the colour of her skin and gender in offices. A human resources manager told her she should be more polite when communicating via email to her bosses. When she had compared her email to those of her colleagues, they noticed no differences. 

 

Black female characters were found to be portrayed more violent and used more crude, profanity-filled language in American depictions of Black women in film media, according to a study done by Loyola University Chicago. This is how a lot of harmful stereotypes of minorities are formed. 

 

“So it's this perception that you always have to ramp up how kind you're being just because if you dare use a normal tone, you're automatically perceived as rude or having attitude.”

 

“These stereotypes die hard and, more importantly, it just gets reinforced through the media,” said Professor Lisa Leung Yuk-ming, Associate Head of Department of Cultural Studies at the Lingnan University of Hong Kong.

 

Leung also said how any minorities who do have the courage to speak out are further scrutinised instead of met with solutions. “They are then considered very petty or oversensitive, or even making a big fuss and causing trouble, especially in a workplace,” she said.

 

Jana studied in international schools all her life, interacting with locals when she went on to do her bachelor’s at the City University of Hong Kong proved difficult. 

 

In and out of class interactions were hard for Jana, she didn’t know how to approach them and vice versa.

 

“Looking back, they were new from a system where they'd only spoken Cantonese, they'd only been with other Chinese people and then there was me, so it was easier for them to gravitate towards each other,” she said. “While it was easy for me to just be like, okay, I'm fine being alone.”

 

But when Jana did eventually make friends, she found herself having uncomfortable conversations with some, burdened with the need to educate them about Black culture and what people can or can’t say.

 

She came across an old Facebook post from one of her friend’s profiles. The post was about tennis player Serena Williams, the friend called Williams an ape and said she should “go back to the Amazon” because of her poor sportsmanship during a tournament.

 

This happened around the same time news spread that a former West Virginia official called Former First Lady Michelle Obama “an ape in heels.” Jana felt triggered and uncomfortable. 

 

After a confrontation with her friend, instead of receiving an apology or attempting to understand the situation, they stood by what they said and refused to take down the post.

 

Jana still maintains a friendship with this person, having learnt to pick and choose her battles. Though a lot of her friends may hold stereotypes or microaggressions, she’s had to learn to compromise in order to maintain friendships, growing to realise not everyone has ill intentions with their comments, no matter how discriminatory they may sound.

 

“So I think those to me are definitely the worst instances of racism whereas the others I'm like, it's just casual ignorance.”