Who Is “Diverse”?: (In)Tolerance, Education, and Race in Hong Kong

Abstract

This chapter will take a critical perspective on discourses of “diversity” in Hong Kong as expressed in the education system and the media, in order to argue that despite their apparently positive intentions, many efforts at raising awareness of “diversity” contribute to homogenizing racial groups, reinforcing racial and linguistic boundaries and rationalizing social stratification. Through ethnographic research with South Asian students at a multiethnic Hong Kong secondary school as well as analysis of Hong Kong media and policy, this chapter will demonstrate that such discourses of diversity depend on an understanding of society as composed of distinct and homogeneous blocks and thus help cast South Asians as a unified and exoticized group who are permanently “diverse.” This chapter joins with other work which takes a critical perspective on what it means to talk about diversity, in order to consider how awareness of Hong Kong’s linguistic and racial diversity could be supported in ways that might truly contribute to minority equality and empowerment.