Singapore and racism: me, me, me
1) I'm not Singaporean. I was born in Malaysia to a Malaysian Chinese mother and an Indonesian Chinese father. I have, however, lived in Singapore since I was six; when I lived in Hong Kong, I attended a Singaporean primary school. Until I was twelve, I was schooled in the local system, in one of the better public schools. (This was due at last in part, I suspect, to family influence, because my parents a made a big deal of my being able to enter at the start of primary 2. In addition, I recall that of my Primary 6 class of forty students, about three were Indian and there were no Malay girls.) I entered the international school circuit until I finished grade twelve.
2) Recently, I looked over my Permanent Residency stamp in my passport and found that it expires in 2014, not 2011, as I had originally thought. This was a weight off my mind, as I will be 21 next year and I think/thought I was expected to apply as a Malaysian citizen in my own right, no longer a dependent under my father. This had worried me. However, it still nagged at me, and as I went to get my PR stamp into my new passport (which didn't happen; they issue annoying paper sheets that we have to bring everywhere now in an attempt to make everything electronic),y father, to reassure me, told me a few things. I might still be studying and could in that case renew my PR-ship under him; I had time to seek and get a job by then; "they don't say it officially, but it helps if you're Chinese," he said at last.
'Aha,' I thought, with a rush of cynicism. 'There it is.'
My father is a great fan of the Singapore government (and by 'great' I mean 'massive'). He is extremely vocal about the many wonders of the government when we have visitors. When taxi drivers complain to him about the government, he firmly offers rebuttal. So for him to offer criticism like that (I don't know if it registered as criticism to him, actually), it is a fairly significant thing.
3) In light of this discussion, here are My Thoughts on Yaoi Race and Singapore.
The majority population is Chinese, followed by Malay, then Indian, then other races. I read somewhere that the population count has reached 4.8 million people.
To swing right around back to my darling alma mater again, holy crap there were a lot of Chinese kids. Mine was an all girls' school, incidentally. On my bus, come to think of it, everyone was Chinese. The odd thing is that my school was meant to be the cream of the cream [sic], yet only a few kids in each class were minority races. Mother Tongue was the name of second language classes, and we worked in a one classroom set-up. Whenever the girls in Malay or Tamil went for MT, they always left for different classrooms; there were never enough minority girls in any one class to justify making the Chinese girls leave. I refuse to believe that only a few minority girls could make the cut, marks-wise to get into the school at all.
I am prepared to bet that the other reason I got in was due to my race.
Singapore is not really a very tolerant nation. One of my friends when I was in high school pointed out that all the street signs are in English and/or Chinese, never Malay or Tamil. (It irked me at the time, though I didn't say so to him, but it irked me most, I think, that he was right.) This has changed for some places, but not all that many. Sometimes one can go into town and find retail people who only speak Chinese, which I imagine is somewhat of an impediment for English/Malay or English/Tamil speakers. My mother was disgusted by it, because she feels that a country that is attempting to elevate itself to an international stage needs to be able to converse at least passably in English. This isn't just a matter of international presence, however; this is about the fact that a sizeable amount of the population does not speak Chinese. It is just not sizeable enough, apparently.
Racial Harmony Day, meant to celebrate the harmonious lifestyle of Singapore's diverse races, runs mostly skin-deep. They were born out of the race riots that disrupted the country sometime in the sixties. During the AWARE crisis (in brief, a women's group was distributing sex-ed literature that, horror of horrors, promoted the gay agenda! Or at least said homosexuality existed. The Christian Right rose up in dismay and ousted the leaders. They leaders took back their positions, though the government unfortunately did withdraw the literature), I remember reading that it was heartening that the government was allowing people to resolve the issue without stepping in. 'In the old days', the first PM would have called all parties to his office and told them to knock it off. That is how Singapore used to preserve a sort of harmony. I say 'sort of' because the underlying prejudices still exist, and I'd imagine they still rankle. I cannot say for certain, because I, personally, do not know.
4) I have a very unusual surname, for a person of Chinese descent. It is not a surname you will find has survived for centuries on end; it is a modified take on the very common 'Tan', and it was either my grandfather or my great-grandfather who modified it. It was extremely dangerous to bear a Chinese surname in Indonesia at one time.
Recently, I was teasing my dad about his paranoia about legal documents. He always has to have everything in order, and he triple checks everything. He grew serious then. My father told me that he used to live near people who would give him dirty looks when he was a child in Indonesia, because he was Chinese. They would challenge him if he did not drop his eyes, why was he looking at them, huh? One day, he brought some friends home, and they witnessed said dirty looks. Dad spilled the beans. His friends hied off and beat up the unfriendly neighbours for him.
That night, people surrounded his house in an unfriendly manner. My father's friends were no longer around. They were not Chinese. My dad was there, and my dad was Chinese. In the end, he and his parents went to see the parents of the unfriendly neighbours, whose father happened to be a general and a fairly important person. They were actually friendly, but it could have been very different.
That's why, he explained, he always made sure he was legally proper, so that he could not give Them anything with which they might persecute him.
In Malaysia, when my cousins go to pay for their driver's licences, they pay the usual fee and a little extra on top, because they're Chinese. It's barely a cause to bat an eye, even.
Singapore, at least, pretends to be civilised about it. I am not excusing the problems within the system; I believe they are wrong and I dislike them pretty strongly. But it could be worse.
2) Recently, I looked over my Permanent Residency stamp in my passport and found that it expires in 2014, not 2011, as I had originally thought. This was a weight off my mind, as I will be 21 next year and I think/thought I was expected to apply as a Malaysian citizen in my own right, no longer a dependent under my father. This had worried me. However, it still nagged at me, and as I went to get my PR stamp into my new passport (which didn't happen; they issue annoying paper sheets that we have to bring everywhere now in an attempt to make everything electronic),y father, to reassure me, told me a few things. I might still be studying and could in that case renew my PR-ship under him; I had time to seek and get a job by then; "they don't say it officially, but it helps if you're Chinese," he said at last.
'Aha,' I thought, with a rush of cynicism. 'There it is.'
My father is a great fan of the Singapore government (and by 'great' I mean 'massive'). He is extremely vocal about the many wonders of the government when we have visitors. When taxi drivers complain to him about the government, he firmly offers rebuttal. So for him to offer criticism like that (I don't know if it registered as criticism to him, actually), it is a fairly significant thing.
3) In light of this discussion, here are My Thoughts on Yaoi Race and Singapore.
The majority population is Chinese, followed by Malay, then Indian, then other races. I read somewhere that the population count has reached 4.8 million people.
To swing right around back to my darling alma mater again, holy crap there were a lot of Chinese kids. Mine was an all girls' school, incidentally. On my bus, come to think of it, everyone was Chinese. The odd thing is that my school was meant to be the cream of the cream [sic], yet only a few kids in each class were minority races. Mother Tongue was the name of second language classes, and we worked in a one classroom set-up. Whenever the girls in Malay or Tamil went for MT, they always left for different classrooms; there were never enough minority girls in any one class to justify making the Chinese girls leave. I refuse to believe that only a few minority girls could make the cut, marks-wise to get into the school at all.
I am prepared to bet that the other reason I got in was due to my race.
Singapore is not really a very tolerant nation. One of my friends when I was in high school pointed out that all the street signs are in English and/or Chinese, never Malay or Tamil. (It irked me at the time, though I didn't say so to him, but it irked me most, I think, that he was right.) This has changed for some places, but not all that many. Sometimes one can go into town and find retail people who only speak Chinese, which I imagine is somewhat of an impediment for English/Malay or English/Tamil speakers. My mother was disgusted by it, because she feels that a country that is attempting to elevate itself to an international stage needs to be able to converse at least passably in English. This isn't just a matter of international presence, however; this is about the fact that a sizeable amount of the population does not speak Chinese. It is just not sizeable enough, apparently.
Racial Harmony Day, meant to celebrate the harmonious lifestyle of Singapore's diverse races, runs mostly skin-deep. They were born out of the race riots that disrupted the country sometime in the sixties. During the AWARE crisis (in brief, a women's group was distributing sex-ed literature that, horror of horrors, promoted the gay agenda! Or at least said homosexuality existed. The Christian Right rose up in dismay and ousted the leaders. They leaders took back their positions, though the government unfortunately did withdraw the literature), I remember reading that it was heartening that the government was allowing people to resolve the issue without stepping in. 'In the old days', the first PM would have called all parties to his office and told them to knock it off. That is how Singapore used to preserve a sort of harmony. I say 'sort of' because the underlying prejudices still exist, and I'd imagine they still rankle. I cannot say for certain, because I, personally, do not know.
4) I have a very unusual surname, for a person of Chinese descent. It is not a surname you will find has survived for centuries on end; it is a modified take on the very common 'Tan', and it was either my grandfather or my great-grandfather who modified it. It was extremely dangerous to bear a Chinese surname in Indonesia at one time.
Recently, I was teasing my dad about his paranoia about legal documents. He always has to have everything in order, and he triple checks everything. He grew serious then. My father told me that he used to live near people who would give him dirty looks when he was a child in Indonesia, because he was Chinese. They would challenge him if he did not drop his eyes, why was he looking at them, huh? One day, he brought some friends home, and they witnessed said dirty looks. Dad spilled the beans. His friends hied off and beat up the unfriendly neighbours for him.
That night, people surrounded his house in an unfriendly manner. My father's friends were no longer around. They were not Chinese. My dad was there, and my dad was Chinese. In the end, he and his parents went to see the parents of the unfriendly neighbours, whose father happened to be a general and a fairly important person. They were actually friendly, but it could have been very different.
That's why, he explained, he always made sure he was legally proper, so that he could not give Them anything with which they might persecute him.
In Malaysia, when my cousins go to pay for their driver's licences, they pay the usual fee and a little extra on top, because they're Chinese. It's barely a cause to bat an eye, even.
Singapore, at least, pretends to be civilised about it. I am not excusing the problems within the system; I believe they are wrong and I dislike them pretty strongly. But it could be worse.