When I first encountered the oh-so rosy term of cultural diversity, I thought it referred to people from different cultural backgrounds living together in harmony and mutual respect. I was wrong. Later in life, I came to realize that it means the worship of the cultures of the rich and the powerful.

The 2011 Population Census found (by way of self-identification) that there were about 451,000 non-Chinese people in Hong Kong, or about 6 percent of the population. Among these "ethnic minorities", Indonesians and Filipinos amounted to 30 percent and 29 percent, respectively. Triangulating these numbers with statistics on the number of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, we can safely arrive at the conclusion that virtually all of them are female domestic workers. The Thais, while being the third largest source of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, are dwarfed by the first two groups. They accounted for only 2 percent of the total non-Chinese population in the city.

While Indonesians and Filipinos are the non-Chinese that we meet most frequently (in comparison, only 12 percent of non-Chinese are Whites), they don't seem to belong in our "diversified culture". In fact, these "brown people" don't seem to be considered "foreigners" as the term is used in everyday Cantonese.

For one thing, they don't seem to have a language. Hongkongers' foreign languages of choice are English, Japanese, Korean and French. I am not sure if they are in these particular order, but very confident that these are the ones. Most of us learn Japanese, Korean and French for leisure, because we are fond of the cultures behind them. A lot of us even know a few words of Thai, such as sawatdee-krup (or sawatdee-kah) because of the strong historical tie between the two places, established in particular by the Chaozhou people. However, few of us know salamat (thank you in Tagalog) or selamat pagi (good morning in Bahasa Indonesia), words that people who live with us under the same roof speak.

Indonesians and Filipinos also don't seem to have a cuisine. A search for Indonesian and Filipino food in OpenRice, the most popular local restaurant search engine, returns 51 results. In contrast, there are 518 Thai restaurants in the same directory. Why is there an inverse relationship between the number of domestic workers employed and the number of ethnic restaurants? Perhaps Vietnamese, Thai and Indian food truly are tastier than Filipino, Indonesian and Bangladeshi food. Perhaps we do not want to be seen enjoying the food of our "servants".

The countries also don't seem to have a history. Few of us have ever learned about Srivijaya, a powerful ancient thalassocratic Malay empire based on the island of Sumatra, modern-day Indonesia, although it influenced much of Southeast Asia, and was an important center for the expansion of Buddhism. Despite all the hype about "collective memory", no-one here seems to remember that the Philippines were one of the most affluent countries in Asia in the 1960s, much richer than some European countries, South Korea and Hong Kong. In fact, our city's GDP only overtook the Philippines as recently as 1984. Back in the days, some of my older relatives went to the Philippines in search for a better life; they pitied us who stayed behind in misery and poverty.

These foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong don't even seem to have real lives. We know little about their desires and ambition, where they came from and where they are going. How long do they have to work here to repay the debts incurred for paying the outrageous agency fees? What do they do after they have returned to their home country for good? Are their children moving up the social ladder, or are they stuck in the same position as their parents?

In our version of capitalism, the poor do not have a culture. However, we must not confuse cause with effect: We discredit the cultures to make the people servants. In so doing, what might be seen as exploitation becomes the Hongkongers' burden:

"Take up the Hongkongers' burden, Send forth the best ye breed

Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-

Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child."

The author is a current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 02/18/2014 page9)