Is Singapore a racist country?
Surekha A. Yadaf
Often in the lift that deposits me on my flat’s floor, I am quizzed by curious neighbours and their ilk on my Singaporean-ness.
“Where are you from girl?”
“Singapore”
“Then your mother? India lah?”
“No. Singapore. You?”
“I’m Singaporean lah.”
The perpetrators of these questions are usually Chinese.
They are polite, often friendly exchanges but unfortunately they belie a persistent and pervasive Chinese chauvinism that, too often, underlies this nation.
The Chinese identity — the C in the oft-used CMIO (Chinese Malay Indian Other) construct the state is so enamored with, is the default identity. If you aren’t Chinese you need to justify your Singaporeaness, and even so you’ll never be quite as Singaporean as a Singaporean Chinese.
In a very astute commentary published last year, social activist Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib summed it as such: Despite our professed desire for a unified nation “regardless of race, language or religion”, what had transpired for the last four decades was the opposite. Race has become a single most important marker for our social existence. In other words, we have become a totally racialised society. There is hardly a moment in our social interactions that we are not reminded of our racial identity — from the imprint in our identity cards, to our schooling years to job applications.
We are constantly reduced to our race.
The other day, my brother exclaimed that he was stretched and needed to hire more people to join his creative agency. But, he shared, he had to make sure they weren’t all from his ethnic group lest his 23-man-strong set-up be pigeon-holed as an Indian organisation and be written off by the majority of Singaporeans.
Now, with a very healthy mix of races running about his two-storey shop-house office, I think he is far from having to field such an accusation. But his commitment to multi-ethnicity isn’t the issue.
A performer walks past a traditional Chinese opera stage built next to the construction site in a public housing neighbourhood during the Hungry Ghost festival in Singapore August 7, 2014. — Reuters pic
Here’s the issue: I am certain none of his Chinese Singaporean counterparts have had to entertain this question and fear the repercussions of being labelled as mono-ethnic. After all, most small businesses on the island are overwhelmingly Chinese.
And that is, we’re raised to believe, okay.
Only state-sponsored banners seem to feel obliged to dutifully represent the Singaporean in every shade.
This idea that minorities have to justify themselves is not a new one, but it is not always accepted; there are people who argue than Singapore is truly a meritocracy that disregards race.
My husband, who is from a very dominant majority in his country of birth, often accuses me of over-reacting. Singaporean Indians are too “jumped up” he says — most people don’t really care about the colour of your skin.
And if ever I felt like maybe he was right, I need only to look at the recent string of comments that trail the headlines surrounding our newest Miss Singapore Universe.
