Is there racial discrimination in Singapore? A personal opinion
Reading the doctoral thesis of Lily Zubaidah Rahim, The Singapore Dilemma, has made me think about the issue of racial discrimination.. The conspicuous absence of this book from the shelves of Singapore bookstores is yet another sad example of the practice of self-censorship among people running bookstores in Singapore. Our NUS Central Library is even cuter, the book is available only in the Singapore-Malaysia Collection and the 'Closed Stacks'! Imagine, a book that was published in 1998 ending up in the Closed Stacks; what was that common NUS joke again about girls in their first year being like RBR books, girls in their second year being in the Main Shelves, and finally in the Closed Stacks when they are in their third year J? But again, we are talking about NUS, where its bookstore played a mini hide and seek with James Gomez's book on self-censorship, best described here.
There were many important points raised in this book, that perhaps made the distributors uneasy. For example, the public housing scheme that the PAP is so proud of, has the effect of splintering the Malay community into housing estates throughout Singapore. Ethnic residential quotas in HDB blocks were also introduced in 1989, in the pretext of preventing the emergence of ethnic enclaves that might harm racial harmony.
All these measures undertaken ensure that the Malays in Singapore, no matter how dissatisfied, can never gather enough electoral support to push for their agenda. This is the classic 'divide and conquer' strategy. With such a strategy, Malay interests would now be primarily articulated and represented within parameters determined by the PAP government and its Malay MPs (pp. 72-76). It also ensures that the government can afford to continue its minimalist approach to the Malay community without suffering any electoral backlash.
In choosing that title for her thesis, I suspected that Lily is trying to relate her study to the book by the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir, The Malay Dilemma. I believe the important conclusion from the latter book is that the Malays are constrained by their culture, to be less inclined towards competition and more inclined towards a sedate lifestyle. Thus, Mahathir believes he has to practice favourable treatment towards them to protect the native Malays, which he call the 'bumiputras' from being driven out by the other races. Lily regarded this analysis as the 'cultural deficit' model, and she clearly feels that it needed to be reappraised for Singapore (p. 248).
The discussions on racism in Singapore
Discussing the issue of racism in Singapore is particularly sensitive, with signals coming for the PAP that it is one of those 'out of bound' markers of Singapore discourse, a fact that Lily herself acknowledged (p. 8). If you ask a Chinese about the subject, he or she will probably reply that there is no racism in Singapore. It was particularly enlightening for me to hear from Dr Lee Tsao Yuan, sharing in Parliament during her time as an NMP, on the issue of the Singapore Heartbeat. Dr Lee said that she could have stayed in Canada permanently but she chooses to come back to Singapore since it is only in Singapore that she feels treated as an equal.
In all these rhetoric, it is ironic when I have yet to see any Malay proclaiming the same. I was thinking, "what does a Chinese knows about racial discrimination in Singapore?" When Fandi Ahmad announced that he may be emigrating to South Africa with his wife, because he is worried that his son may not be able to cope in Singapore, many Singaporeans, all Chinese I remember, were quick to criticize his decision for being an ingrate. A discussion in the newsgroup, soc.culture.singapore, in 1998, had an Indian sharing about how his Chinese wife and him has decided to emigrate to Australia because his wife, for the first time, realized the racial discrimination in Singapore.
It is insightful that, before they got married, he had warned the wife that there will be such discrimination but his wife did not believed it to be true. After she was the victim of it, facing snide remarks from her fellow Chinese ladies, about having 'contaminated herself', when she fetch her mixed son from school, she decided to leave Singapore. When other netters responded that Australia is also well known for discrimination, the Indian replied quite sternly that, although there are, it is nothing compared to Singapore.
Thus, I have learned to read Singaporeans' proclamations of Singapore, either being a country free of racism unlike other countries, or being a country where you have 'the freedom to walk tall with head held high regardless of the colour of my skin' with a pinch of salt. Whenever I hear or read of such proclamations, I would first check the person's identity. Up till this present moment, my results shows that every such person would be a Chinese Singaporean. It just shows how ignorant we Chinese are about racial discrimination in Singapore.
I would state my own observation that, while it may be true that there are racial discrimination in the US, at least they are aware of it and are still trying to decide the best way to resolve it. Here in Singapore, we are discouraged from even mentioning this issue under the constant threat of having racial riots breaking out the moment we attempt to.
Interestingly, the PAP government, in the period between 1959 to 1964, fought hard to be part of the Malaysian federation with the well-known slogan 'Malaysian Malaysia'. This slogan, I believe, is trying to defuse racial tensions by stating that only Malaysians matter; whether they are Chinese or Malays should not be an issue of contentment. After we were expelled from the Malaysian Federation despite all these efforts, there was never an equivalent promotion of a 'Singaporean Singapore' after that, which to me, is a significant difference that might shed light into the marginality of the Malays in Singapore. In contrast, Singapore has all these social institutions like the SAP schools, the setting up of self-help groups among races such as CDAC and the Medakai, and the focus on Confucianism that seems to reinforce the differences between the races.
My conclusion
Yes, I agree unequivocally that there is racism in Singapore. I first realized this explicitly in 1998 when I participated in my church walkathon. I remember the week before that event, my pastor announced to us that he has warned the MRT staff that there will be a huge crowd of people arriving at Marina Bay MRT station in the morning of the event. I was among the crowd of people who had to move at a snail's pace from the train exit to the booths in order to leave the station. As I was edging towards the ticket booths, I notice many MRT staff, a few with loud-hailers, giving directions on which way we should proceed.
It then suddenly hit me, what a contrast their attitude was towards us, compared to the Indian workers at Bugis MRT station on Sundays! The MRT staff were smiling at us, making conversations and so on and so forth. If you visit Bugis station on Sundays, you will see that many Indians spend their day off in the popular haunt, Serangoon Road. There would be some mobile railings segregating them from the rest of us, and the way the MRT staff shout at them or the expression in their faces, I was surprised to see that they were smiling at us now.
Actually, it is quite obvious why there is a different treatment towards us. The MRT staff identify with us, almost all of us being Chinese. Even among some of my university friends, I heard many racists complains about the smell coming out of the Indians. I guess that walkathon was to me what Damascus was to Paul, my scales were finally removed from my eyes. I begin to take note on other puzzles, such as the numerous Malay staff manning the counter in the NUS Central Library. Lily's thesis is thus an important contribution in my understanding to this subject, and I hope to also make a contribution in this area.