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UTOPIA (ft. Migrants Band Singapore) - SPOKEN WORD SECTION

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Sections 298 and 298A of the Penal Code refer to activity or expression which might potentially offend a group of people on account of their race and/or religion.

Section 298 was inherited by Singapore from the Indian Penal Code. On the other hand, the offence in Section 298A was created pursuant to amendments to the Penal Code in 2007.

Prior to 2007, prosecutions for those kinds of activities and expressions were undertaken pursuant to the Sedition Act, but the scope of that offence and the elements required to prove it were a little different.

This article will explain the offences of sections 298 and 298A of the Penal Code, how they've been applied in the past and the possible consequences of being charged with these offences.

Section 298 of the Penal Code: Uttering Words, etc. to Wound Religious or Racial Feelings

A charge under section 298 of the Penal Code is a charge for uttering words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious or racial feelings of any person.

To be found guilty of this offence:

You must have expressed a thought in some way, whether verbally, by making some noise, by making some gesture or by using some prop;

In expressing that thought, your intention must have been to hurt the "religious or racial feelings" of a person; and

That person must have actually seen or heard your expression of that thought.

The "person" in this context can be thought of as just people generally, rather than a specific person. No one actually needs to have felt offended or had their "religious or racial feelings" actually hurt for you to be found guilty. It is sufficient that you merely intended to hurt those feelings.

In proving that intention, the content of the expression of your thought is often sufficient evidence in itself, i.e. that the expression is so hurtful that you must surely have intended to hurt someone's "religious or racial feelings".

"Religious or racial feelings" tend to be interpreted broadly by courts as being impinged upon whenever any potentially offensive or insulting thought is publicly expressed, if the thought has something to do with race, racism, race relations or religion.

Section 298A of the Penal Code: Promoting Racial or Religious Enmity

Section 298A of the Penal Code, on the other hand, is a charge for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion or race or doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.

To be found guilty of an offence under section 298A:

You must have expressed a thought in some way, whether verbally, in writing, by making some gesture or by using signs;

That expression must promote, or try to promote, on grounds of religion or race, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious or racial groups; and

You must know that your expression or attempted expression of that thought is likely to promote those things.

OR

You must have committed an act which you know might disturb harmony between different religious or racial groups; and

That act must disturb, or be likely to disturb, the public tranquility.

The offence of section 298A is divided into two possible prohibited activities, the first being the expression of offending thoughts and the second being the commission of an offending act.

With regard to the first, namely expression of offending thoughts, your knowledge of the effect of your expression here is a lower bar than the intention required in section 298. For the purposes of finding someone guilty of expressing such offending thoughts.

It is usually sufficient for the prosecution to prove that the accused knew that any reasonable person would have known that such an expression would promote disharmony, enmity, hatred etc.

The societal interests being protected here (harmony, public tranquility, etc.) are not defined in the legislation.Vague concepts such as harmony do not lend themselves easily to legal definitions and do not appear often in legislation.

They are thought to be intentionally vague so as to allow courts a wide discretion in determining from all the relevant facts, what kind of activity is likely to cause disharmony, enmity, hatred, etc.

Where is the Line Between Legal and Illegal Acts and Speech?

Because of the use of such vague language, any expression or act that has anything to do with a racial or religious matter that might potentially offend anyone of a particular race and/or religion, or groups of races and/or religions, is at risk of resulting in a conviction under sections 298 or 298A.

However, public discussion of sometimes delicate issues relating to race and religion does occur in Singapore from time to time without charges being brought against the speakers. Hence, clearly not all expressions related to these issues might be off-limits.

The challenge is in determining what expression will be tolerated by law enforcement or the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC), what will be tolerated by the courts, and what to make of the grey area in between.

It is instructive in this regard to examine the facts of cases that resulted in conviction and sentencing and those that did not result in any charges being brought.

Cases Where No Charges Under Sections 298 or 298A were Brought

Amy Cheong

In 2013, an employee of a labour union, Ms Amy Cheong, published some hurtful remarks online regarding Malay people. In these remarks, she criticised Malay wedding traditions as allegedly being a source of nuisance.

She also claimed that the Malay custom of holding weddings under blocks of flats was inconsiderate to residents, and merely a product of their poverty as they could not afford to rent a hotel space. In addition, she sought to draw a link between this Malay custom and what she claimed were higher divorce rates amongst Malay couples.

Whilst this appears on its face to be a communication made with the intention of wounding the racial feelings of Malay people, no charges were brought against Ms Cheong. Instead, a stern warning was issued.

Clearly, Ms Cheong's remarks were troubling to the AGC but as no charges were brought, the courts' analysis of whether the elements of an offence under section 298 had been made out never took place. Ultimately, Ms Cheong still paid a price for her remarks as her employment was terminated, and she was repatriated to Australia.

Sangeetha Thanapal

In 2018, writer and doctoral student Ms Sangeetha Thanapal, who is credited with coining the term "Chinese privilege", published an article in Australia criticising the film, Crazy Rich Asians, which was set in Singapore, for its failure to feature racial minorities.

Ms Sangeetha went on to argue that this failure supported a narrative of Chinese racial and cultural dominance in Singapore that had become institutionalised. She also argued that such a narrative was supported by certain government policies that allegedly sought to shift Singapore's racial demographics to increase the Chinese population.

In addition, she claimed that casual racism by Chinese people in Singapore against brown people was common.

The following year, Ms Sangeetha was detained by police on a visit to Singapore but ultimately no charges were brought against her. Instead, she was issued with a stern warning. The issue of whether Ms Sangeetha's words were actually made with the intention of wounding the racial feelings of Chinese people was hotly debated at the time.

Ms Sangeetha claimed that her article was merely a response to the racial feelings of brown people being hurt, where she intended to drawattention to the racial discrimination suffered by brown people.

As no charges were brought, we will never know whether the courts would have found that Ms Sangeetha's publication met the elements of a charge under section 298 or 298A. As Ms Sangeetha published her article in Australia, the issue of whether sections 298 or 298A have extraterritorial effect, and therefore could apply overseas, also remains unresolved.

Mr Dennis Chew brownface advertisement, and response by Preeti & Subhas Nair

In 2019, a government-linked company released an advertisement featuring a Chinese actor, Mr Dennis Chew, who was depicted in the advertisement wearing brownface in order to play the roles of an Indian and Malay character, respectively.

After it aired, siblings Preeti Nair and Subhas Nair released a rap video in which they criticised the advertisement.The Nair siblings were offended by this advertisement and composed a rap about the advertisement being racist and hurting the racial feelings of brown people. The rap lyrics included expletives.

No law enforcement investigation was made, nor were charges brought, against Mr Chew or the government-linked company which produced the advertisement. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) "assessed" the advertisement and concluded that it did not breach its Internet Code of Practice.

However, IMDA nevertheless claimed it had issued a "stern reminder" to the makers of the advertisement that it was important to "pay attention to racial and religious sensitivities."

No charges were brought against the Nair siblings either, but they were forced to remove their video from the internet. They were also issued with a 24-month conditional warning, meaning that charges may yet be brought for this incident, should they be accused of committing any further offences in the subsequent 24 months.

As of the date of writing, this has not yet occurred so it is unclear whether a court would find that the Nair siblings had the intention of wounding the racial feelings of Chinese people, as AGC alleged, or whether all the elements of an offence under sections 298 or 298A could be made out.

Given how broadly the language of sections 298 and 298A is drafted, it is entirely possible that the courts might view this kind of expression as falling foul of that broad language. However, we will have to wait for charges to be brought in a case like this before that hypothesis can be tested.

Cases Resulting in Convictions Under Sections 298 and 298A

Prior to the inception of section 298A, prosecutions for cases of this nature were usually brought pursuant to the Sedition Act. As there are few convictions for offences pursuant to sections 298 and 298A, analogous cases prosecuted under the Sedition Act are included below.

The cases resulting in actual convictions tend to be more clearly, egregiously and intentionally offensive than the examples above.

Gan Huai Shi

In 2005, Mr Gan Huai Shi published a blog post entitled "The Second Holocaust", in which he advocated for a genocide of the Malay race. He was charged under the Sedition Act, convicted and sentenced to 24 months of supervised probation.

Clearly, inciting violence on the basis of race falls foul of both the Sedition Act and section 298A of the Penal Code, as well as several other provisions.

Benjamin Koh

In 2005, Mr Benjamin Koh published remarks and images online, including a parody of Singapore's halal logo next to a pig's head, and directed certain expletives at the Malay-Muslim community, mocked their customs and beliefs and compared Islam to Satanism. Mr Koh pleaded guilty to offences under the Sedition Act and was sentenced to 1 month's imprisonment.

Nicholas Lim

In 2005, Mr Nicholas Lim pleaded guilty to a charge under the Sedition Act of doing an act with a seditious tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of the Singapore population by posting anti-Muslim remarks online.

The court decision did not elaborate further on the nature or content of those remarks, but sentenced him to 1 day's imprisonment and the maximum $5,000 fine.

Ong Kian Cheong and Dorothy Chen Hien Leng

In 2009, evangelical Christians Mr Ong Kian Cheong and Ms Dorothy Chen Hien Leng were convicted of offences under the Sedition Act for sending offensive religious literature to people in Singapore.

The purpose of the literature was to persuade the reader to convert to Protestant Christianity. It did this by undermining the validity of other religions, specifically Islam and Catholicism.

The manner in which these publications undermined other religions offended members of those religions. Accordingly, Mr Ong and Ms Chen were found after a trial to have done an act with a seditious tendency to promote feelings of ill will and hostility between different classes of the Singapore population, namely between Protestants and Muslims, and between Protestants and Catholics.

They were both sentenced to 8 weeks' imprisonment.

Amos Yee

In 2015, video blogger and former child actor Mr Amos Yee was convicted under section 298 of wounding the religious feelings of Christians for a video he published of himself in which he compared the values of Christianity, Christians and Jesus Christ unfavourably to those of the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore.

In particular, he described Jesus Christ, a central figure in the Christian religion, as being "power hungry", "malicious" and "deceptive", and criticised Christians for lacking sufficient knowledge of the contents of the Bible.

He was sentenced to 3 weeks' imprisonment for that offence.

Nalla Mohamed Abdul Jameel Abdul Malik

In 2017, Muslim imam Mr Nalla Mohamed Abdul Jameel Abdul Malik, was convicted under section 298A for promoting enmity between different religious groups when he publicly prayed out loud in Arabic in his mosque for "victory over Jews and Christians".

The Ministry of Home Affairs stated that he had not been deliberately malicious. Nevertheless, he was convicted under section 298A, fined $4,000 and deported to India.

Sentences

You can be sentenced to anywhere up to 3 years in prison and/or an unlimited fine if you are convicted of an offence under either section 298 or 298A of the Penal Code.

However, as observed above, stern or conditional warnings are the most common outcome of most investigations into matters of this nature.

For cases that do result in charges being brought under sections 298 or 298A, as we have seen above, substantial fines ($4,000-5,000) and/or short imprisonment terms (3-8 weeks) are the most common outcome. For offenders who are young enough and eligible for probation, a lengthy term of supervised probation is also a possible outcome.

Those possible sentences represent a rather broad spectrum of possible outcomes for offenders so a variety of sentencing factors are relevant to the ultimate sentence in any given case. Examples of relevant sentencing factors include:

Mitigating factors (that may result in a lower sentence):

Youth

Retraction and apology, if any

Remorse

Undertaking to not reoffend

Willingness to undergo counselling

No previous convictions

Plea of guilt

Cooperation with investigation

Aggravating factors (that may result in a harsher sentence):

Existing criminal record

Whether there are other charges

Lack of remorse

Continuing offending behaviour

Extremely insulting nature of offending acts/expression

Extensive planning of offending acts/expression

Are Offences Under Section 298 and 298A Arrestable?

Neither of these offences are arrestable offences. This means that the police must obtain an arrest warrant from the court before they can arrest the alleged offender.

So for example, if you made a remark regarding race relations that hurt the racial feelings of a person of a particular race, the police do not have the authority to arrest you unless they have a warrant for your arrest.

Will Convictions Under Sections 298 and 298A Result in a Criminal Record?

If you are convicted of an offence under section 298, it will not result in a criminal record as it is not a registrable offence under the Registration of Criminals Act.

On the other hand, if you are convicted of an offence under section 298A, you may or may not have a criminal record. This depends on whether the Commissioner of Police chooses to exercise his discretion to not register your criminal record, among other factors.

Even if your criminal record under section 298A has been registered, you might still have the opportunity to have your criminal record treated as spent. This simply means that your record will be wiped clean. To qualify for having your record spent, you must first meet the following criteria:

If you were given a prison sentence, your imprisonment term must have been not more than 3 months;

If you were given a fine, the fine imposed on you must have been not more than $2,000;

You must not have any other conviction on your criminal record; and

You must not have any previous spent record on the register.

If you meet these criteria, you then have to remain crime-free for at least 5 consecutive years, starting from the date of your release from prison, or from the date that your sentence was passed if you were given a fine. Once you accomplish this, your record will be spent automatically, and you will be able to legally declare that you do not have a criminal record.

What to Do If You're Being Investigated For a Charge Under Sections 298 or 298A

If you are being investigated for a possible offence of this nature, it is highly advisable to seek legal advice. If charges are brought against you, it is essential that you engage legal counsel.

Whilst in theory, it is possible to represent yourself, you are highly advised to engage a criminal lawyer instead. A lawyer can assist to negotiate plea bargains that include charge reductions or agreement on the kind of sentences that will be requested.

If there is a basis to contest the charges, a lawyer is necessary in order to be able to effectively do so. If your lawyer advises against contesting your charges, but you feel that you have a valid defence, seek a second opinion from another lawyer before deciding whether or not to plead guilty.

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Racial Enmity: Sections 298 and 298A Penal Code Explained | SingaporeLegalAdvice.com

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Sections 298 and 298A of the Penal Code refer to activity or expression which might potentially offend a group of people on account of their race and/or religion. Section 298 was inherited by Singapore from the Indian Penal Code. On the other hand, the offence in Section 298A was created pursuant to amendments to the Penal Code in 2007.

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a recent dialogue session that could feed into this dialogue session!

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a recent dialogue session that could feed into this dialogue session!

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SINGAPORE - How seriously will a proposed law on fair hiring and employment practices tackle discrimination at the workplace?

Can there be clear guidelines on what job postings can say about language requirements?

These were among the questions participants at a dialogue for Malay/Muslim community and grassroots leaders had on Wednesday (Sept 8).

The session was one of several held following Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's National Day Rally (NDR) speech on Aug 29.

In his speech, PM Lee announced that existing guidelines by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep) will soon become law to give them more teeth and signal that discrimination at workplaces - whether on the basis of nationality, age, race, religion or disability - will not be tolerated.

About 200 participants attended the event, which was organised by The People's Association Malay Activity Executive Committees Council.

The panellists included Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Maliki Osman, and Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development Faishal Ibrahim.

Issues facing Singapore's ageing population were also brought up during the session.

One participant described his experience facing age-related discrimination while searching for a job. He said that although he had a wealth of experience, he was offered lower wages than his younger counterparts.

Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC MP Saktiandi Supaat provided more information to participants regarding how Tafep will address these employment issues.

Questions about the proposed Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act were also raised at the session.

PM Lee had announced that the Act would be introduced to encourage moderation and tolerance between different racial groups.

Participants asked whether the Act would cover bullying in schools.

Similar concerns had also been raised at a dialogue with Malay youth, held by the same organiser on Aug 31, during which some participants spoke about their experiences with casual racism among students. Racial incidents that have happened over the past few months were also brought up in both dialogues.

Discussing the topic of young Malay families living in rental flats, as mentioned by PM Lee, participants asked what could be done to help them.

Speaking to the media after Wednesday's event, Dr Maliki referred to plans to reach out to these families in rental flats through the DIAN@M3 project, pointing out that he had mentioned this earlier.

The project will support households in rented flats with the aim of guiding them towards owning their own homes.

Dr Maliki, who is also Second Minister for Education and Foreign Affairs, said: "What's heartening for all of us engaging the participants today is the realisation of the awareness that they have with regards to the issues that we are facing together as a community.

"Also, their willingness to work together with organisations, like M3 and other Malay Muslim organisations, and the government to reach out to community members who require support, and for us to be able to uplift the community members together as we move forward and bring the community to greater heights."

A participant of the dialogue, Mr Sudirman Othman from Henderson-Dawson Malay Activity Executive Committee, said: "The community has a lot of concerns, from our identity to our livelihoods. But it is heartening to have our leaders wanting to receive feedback and questions from us."

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Workplace discrimination, new Racial Harmony Act among topics of interest for Malay community

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SINGAPORE - How seriously will a proposed law on fair hiring and employment practices tackle discrimination at the workplace? Can there be clear guidelines on what job postings can say about language requirements? These were among the questions participants at a dialogue for Malay/Muslim community and grassroots leaders had on Wednesday (Sept 8).

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"Are you Singaporean?"

That's the question that I hear almost every time when I meet people. And this is what usually transpires:

They see the name.. They often get baffled. Then they see me in person, they get a bit confused. And if I speak to them in Mandarin, they usually go speechless.

With this whole process and encounter, I am often amused and entertained. I am usually not upset/offended. I am oftentimes appalled at ignorance or simply generalisation of things.

Though considered an Other. I am also privileged.

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A tender for security services at Hillview Heights has been deemed "potentially discriminatory" by the Security Association of Singapore.

Certain "clauses of concern"

In a statement, the association referred to the tender for security services submitted by the managing agent (Savills Property Management Pte Ltd) for Hillview Heights, highlighting "clauses of concern".

The document, for instance, laid out certain "penalty rates" that appear to penalise the security agency "unless they exercise discrimination in their hiring and deployment of security officers", the association said.

Clauses 19 and 20 were singled out:

"(19) Failure to provide Chinese speaking guard for more than six shifts per month (dialect acceptable) - Warning Letter and DEDUCTION (Deduction will be imposed for the 1st six shifts too if exceeded six shifts per month) - $100.00 per shift

(20) Deployment of guards outside the age limit of 21 years old to 60 years old without the prior approval of the management - DEDUCTION - S$100.00 per occurrence"

Questioning if the requirements are reasonable

The security association said that it is unclear why an agency will be penalised unless the officer deployed can speak Chinese or "any dialect".

"As we all know, Mandarin and the dialects are not mutually translatable - so what exactly is the job requirement here that Savills is looking for?"

The association then questioned if it is "reasonable" for a Chinese speaking officer to be deployed at all times, and said that it would be race discrimination.

Referring to clause (2), the association said that there seems to be an intention for older workers not to be deployed at the site, which appears to be age discrimination.

There is also nothing in the tender document clearly stating the conditions for the the management's approval.

Will "continue to monitor tenders"

While the association said they would be happy to hear Savill's clarifications on the clauses, they also said that they will be raising the matter with TAFEP as well as the manpower ministry.

"We will continue to monitor tenders and contracts put out by MAs and buyers for clauses that are discriminatory," they added.

Their statement:

Follow and listen to our podcast here

Follow and listen to our podcast here
Top photo via Google Streetview.

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Tender for Hillview Heights condo security services called out for alleged race & age discrimination

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A tender for security services at Hillview Heights has been deemed "potentially discriminatory" by the Security Association of Singapore. In a statement, the association referred to the tender for security services submitted by the managing agent (Savills Property Management Pte Ltd) for Hillview Heights, highlighting "clauses of concern".

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Another musical response to recent incidents. 

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Another musical response to recent incidents. 

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Helo from Malaysia where Chinese are the minority.   I must say that I have to 'ownself check ownself' all the time as ethnic polarization has permeated all aspects of life here and there is a tendency to make casual stereotypical racist remarks about the 'other'.  Educating the younger generation to appreciate the differences of other races is important for raising awareness.

I have 2 questions that I hope the panelists can answer:
1.  How do you think Chinese and English privileges have impacted on the performing arts and funding in Singapore? What are the responses of the Malays and Indians and other minority groups?
2. How can we educate the younger Singaporeans about racism? For those who are teaching music in the schools, do you think playing music of the 'other' will help? What else can be done?

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“...but sometimes identity politics can run the risk of playing what they call the oppression Olympics...”  

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“...but sometimes identity politics can run the risk of playing what they call the oppression Olympics...”  

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The Problem with Wokeness | Ayishat Akanbi

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NDR 2021: Chinese privilege claim ‘entirely baseless’, says PM Lee

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Stringmania Music Camp—Erhu Club (2018) | Warburton, Victoria (Australia)

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Hi everyone, thank you for the amazing gathering yesterday and congratulations to Shzr Ee, Jarrod and team.

This is Nicholas Ng, composer/performer and Research Fellow at the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (Western Sydney University).

I was born into a very large Chinese Singaporean family (Hokkien grandfather from Fujian and Teochew grandmother from Surabaya) but grew up in Sydney as my kampong relatives started immigrating to Australia in the 1970s. For reasons still unknown to me, I was raised in what is known as 'Filoland’. Formerly ‘redneck territory’, this is a densely populated Filippino area in the western suburbs of Sydney where not many people of Chinese background live—definitely no Singaporeans in sight!

Hence I am a minority, yet not a minority while existing somewhere 'inbetween'.

My experience of Chinese privilege is sadly devoid of any association with Singapore as I was very quickly subsumed into the rather broad 'Australian-Chinese' category under what has since the 1980s been quite a strong ‘multicultural' policy. This is in stark contrast to the anti-Chinese legislation that began in the late 1800s.

The Chinese community in Australia is now the largest non-English migrant group after the Italians and Germans; it is very diverse with Chinese families from all throughout SE Asia and of course mainland China.

My non-Chinese teachers strongly encouraged me to study the music of my 'culture' in school and at university, and I eventually found comfort in a kind of Chinese musical identity by specialising in the modern erhu. (My younger self considered this instrument very 'authentic' and ‘ancient’ at the time.)

In the arts sector, I have experienced nothing but Chinese privilege with many opportunities as a composer and performer since there is a lot of Australian (and European) interest in Asia. This interest at times borders on superficiality and tokenism, but at other times is quite genuine and research-oriented.

I was further privileged to co-establish and direct the very first Chinese ensemble (guoyue orchestra) at the Australian National University School of Music and also at Sydney Conservatorium (Sydney University). There is certainly a generation of young Chinese Australians who feel a kind of primordial urge to learn this music. There are also many non-Chinese here who are fascinated by our instruments, both within and outside the university system (see photo attached).

In hindsight, I am starting to see all of this as a kind of Chinese hegemony at play. After all, this music I specialise in is ‘Chinese’ in name but is in fact quite a hybridised and fabricated nationalistic genre.

So I now find myself at an intersection since earlier feelings of asserting my cultural identify through the sound of Chinese instruments have for the most part dissipated.

After yesterday’s dialogue, I am starting to wonder about my Singaporean heritage.  Could it ever be incorporated into my artistic practice? Am I too far removed? Your thoughts and opinions on this are most welcome!

Sorry this post is taking place after the event, but I've been tied up with an online symposium that begins tomorrow! Monday 13 to Tuesday 14 September, 9 am to 5.30 pm (GMT+10). It’s quite a full program with papers from a variety of disciplines touching on the connection between music and spirituality. There are of course many Sinosphere scholars involved including Chow Ow Wei (Universiti Putra Malaysia). Please feel free to Zoom in at anytime.

https://bit.ly/3B4uw2m

(Sorry-not sorry for the shameless plug!)

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Stringmania Music Camp—Erhu Club (2018).JPG

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Hello everyone,
Amin here, the only Malay facilitator in this session. Yes, I like to single myself out because it has become the modus operandi of what it means to be a minority in Singapore, make yourself so unique and different, stand out and state your opinion.

But that said, this kopitiam session is that is of course something conjured up by people who are friends and we wanted to start this conversation in tandem with other conversations that are happening within Singapore and elsewhere!

It is interesting to be Malay in 2021 and being the only scholar of Malay dance in the country. There is expectations to know everything and to be part of anything especially when an opinion on a matter is most necessary to give a sense of "diversity".

I am unabashedly Malay and I do find myself strategically changing identities as I travel in Southeast Asia. I am Malay one second, Minangkabau another, identifying with Malaysian identity because of my paternal heritage from Negeri Sembilan and maternal heritage from Melaka; and also being Indonesian because the birthplace of Minangkabau heritage hails from West Sumatra. I enjoy this very much!

But of course there were times when I had to prove myself that I belong to a particular category. When I was studying in Australia, I had to toggle being identified as a FOB (Fresh out of the boats) a semi-derogatory term to call people from the neighbouring pacific islands; or Indonesian. In Britain, they can't seem to place me as "Asian" because I was "brown". This is only so because "Asian" is tagged to the 'East Asian' populace. So I am conveniently Hispanic on some days, Caribbean on the day after, and just un-categorisable on others.

There is something about being Malay and living in maritime Southeast Asia that is also embedded with its problems. Travelling North from Singapore into Malaysia, I am subsumed (metaphorically) as being part of a majority "race" and the assumptions some of Malaysian friends have of Singaporeans, although quite undesirable at times, seems to position me as someone with access, privilege and limitless opportunities. I wonder, if this is because they see me as part of "them", as part of a majority race with perks or are they tagging me to Singapore's 1st World nation superiority complex?

Back in Singapore, there is no denying that my position as a minority (contested indigeneity) continues to be something "lived" rather than a mere analytical category. I have been a receiver of racist behaviour and also been in certain discussions where I saw evolved into an ethnic chauvinism that provided more discomfort than a rallying call for change.

Chinese privilege is present and as minorities we see this happening in real life. The preference to employ Mandarin-speaking people or house hunts seeking for non-Malay/Indian tenants. Days when calling me "Ahmad", or identifying me as "Mat" was enough to put into my place. Or times when I am assumed to be representing all Malays in the country without asking for my consent just because i am the only Malay around.

Living as minority in Singapore, with that possibility of being part of a majority regional identity could be something Malays in Singapore hold onto. They is power in withholding the "optics" of such an intimate 'knowledge' of sorts. I certainly have benefited in the strategic positioning of my identities being in maritime Southeast Asia.

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Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: ICTM Dialogues 16-Kopi One! How to Ownself-Check-Ownself: Chatting about Singaporean/Chinese Privilege in the Lion City and Beyond. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

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Organizer: Shzr Ee Tan (Royal Holloway University of London) Moderator: Shzr Ee Tan Language: Singlish/English Presenters: Muhammad Noramin bin Mohamed Farid (Royal Holloway University of London), Shzr Ee Tan, Jarrod Sim (Australian National University), Alicia Joyce De Silva (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts / National Institute of Education, Singapore), Gene Lai (Wesleyan University)

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This was making its rounds on youtube a while back, where racism and nationalism collide...

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This was making its rounds on youtube a while back, where racism and nationalism collide...

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1958 Foreign exchange: Thailand, Malaya, Philippines, Iceland, Turkey, Greece. Subject: Prejudice

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THE PROUDEST RACIST IN SINGAPORE (Dave Parkash Incident)

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Chinese privilege and the sexual minority.

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Don’t forget this brown-facing incident! 

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Don’t forget this brown-facing incident! 

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Sai Siew Min, Editors' note, 21 June 2021: The heading and first two paragraphs of the fourth section of this article have been edited, at the author's request, to remove the previous description of Chinese privilege as "earned assets" and emphasise the key point concerning the specificity of the ways in which Chinese privilege is visible/invisible. The author would like to acknowledge the critique of Laavanya Kathiravelu concerning this passage. a Singaporean historian now based in Taipei, discusses key features of the Singapore context which distinguish "Chinese privilege" from "White privilege", including the role of political authoritarianism, the landscape of linguistic inequalities, and the visibility of racialisation as "Chinese" in Singapore, which connects to our incomplete understanding of the history of the organic Malay world of this region, Chinese migration within it, and colonialism.
Summary

While scholars, commentators and politicians acknowledge the existence of racism and racialised privilege in Singapore, some suggest that the concept of Chinese privilege is too simplistic or inapplicable because it draws from a disanalogous context. The original 1988 paper by Peggy McIntosh offers a definition of "White privilege" based on the privilege system that exists in the United States: the "invisible and weightless knapsack" of "unearned assets that [a White person] can count on cashing in each day, but about which [they are] "meant" to remain oblivious". The author identifies key ways in which the privilege system that exists in Singapore differs, so that Chinese privilege-while it exists-must also be understood differently:

Singapore's political authoritarianism has benefited heteronormative Chinese men and their outlook disproportionately, in a way which extends into many domains. As this is moreover defended as a quality of "Asian-ness" while leaving many Singaporeans feeling helpless, there is a qualitative force to privilege in Singapore which differs from unconscious White privilege.

Linguistic inequalities in Singapore, arising from educational reforms beginning in the 1970s, must be considered. Some argue this produces English language hegemony and Chinese language marginality, undermining the concept of Chinese privilege. The author argues that this partial critique does not take into account the marginality and inequalities affecting the vernacular languages of non-Chinese minorities, the elevation of English-Mandarin bilingualism above other bilingualisms, and the uniquely bureaucratic definition of "mother tongue language" which renders Chinese Singaporeans beholden to standards of Chinese-ness which cannot be met. These factors mean that Chinese privilege contains an element of undesirable skewing of the psyche, also identified by McIntosh as part of White privilege, in the form of a sense of grievance which makes it difficult to see injustices suffered by others.

Third, "White privilege" is said to confer "unearned assets" on people deemed "non-coloured". In the Singapore context of policies based on the CMIO model since the 1970s, Chinese people are visibly racialised and face continual efforts to educate, reform, regulate, and police elements of Chinese-ness. Chinese privilege is therefore better understood as connected to ideas (including stereotypes) of Chinese-ness, in turn rooted in partial Sinocentric narratives about Chinese pioneering-colonisation-settlement-migration in the region. More understanding of the organic regional Malay world and the long history of Chinese migration here, not merely a binary understanding of "Chinese" colonialism versus that of "the West", is needed to inform analysis of racism and anti-racist practice.

One of the most useful commentaries I have read about "White privilege" (and I must confess I have not read many) is a book review by Jacqui Shine, in the LA Review of Books, of The Perils of Privilege by Phoebe Maltz Bovy. Bovy apparently raised objections to the concept of "privilege" in America that resonated with several commentators and academics in Singapore. The Straits Times journalist Yuen Sin echoed Bovy's critique that privilege is often used too loosely to call out individuals. Rightly or wrongly, such "privilege call-outs" jump-start cycles of toxic narcissism, consisting of scripted performances of self-righteous accusations followed by either penitent admission or outraged denial of guilt, which do not lead to meaningful interrogation of systemic inequalities and racism. Similarly, sociologists Daniel Goh and Terence Chong worry that the use of "Chinese privilege" has become "a pleasurable act of Foucauldian confession by some well-intentioned Singaporeans to reinforce their feelings of goodness and purity while avoiding genuine anti-racism actions."[1]

Jacqui Shine cuts to what I think is the nub of this debate about Chinese privilege. Shine argues that while the privilege concept is not without its flaws, its simplistic use on social media, in some instances by anti-racism activists themselves, is not unique to the privilege concept or activism aimed at consciousness-raising. One will be hard-put to find an influential concept or idea that has not been similarly "abused". Confucianism comes to my mind readily. Shine, a historian, suggests that we read Peggy McIntosh's original 1988 paper carefully instead of the more widely circulated abridged version. McIntosh's original paper on white and male privilege was written from her vantage point as an academic-practitioner of Women's Studies in America who is White. In it, McIntosh shares the critics' concerns about the "perils" of the privilege concept used in naïve ways. In addition, Shine informs her readers of the long and productive intellectual genealogy of the concept in the Anglophone world. She looks at the term's imbrication with colonialism, which I appreciate, since the currency of the Chinese privilege label belies a deeply historical dimension of how the privilege concept chimes with the way we think about language, race-ethnicity, and inter-ethnic relationships in Singapore today.

I believe the academic debate over whether Chinese privilege is a helpful concept does not point to the actual absence of racialised privilege in Singapore, but to inadequate intellectual work on how we can comprehend racialised privilege in this country. Singapore's political leadership has acknowledged that racism exists in Singapore.[2] While Goh and Chong find the privilege concept unproductive, they too agree there is systemic racism in the country. Given the reality of racism, it is valid to ask together with Mcintosh whether racism here only disadvantages particular communities without over-empowering a dominant group(s) even in relative terms. We can only do rigorous intellectual work by drawing on empirical evidence. The myriad cumulative writings, observations, and testimonies of experiences of racialised privilege in Singapore provide more than sufficient data for social scientists to delve into the phenomenon and not dismiss the privilege concept as shallow, distracting, and reflective of "something" or "somewhere" else. It seems evident to me that critical intellectual work on privilege in Singapore has barely begun, and efforts in this direction should not be foreclosed prematurely. To be honest, I did find the debate over Chinese privilege frustrating and confusing initially, but learning about the privilege concept from multiple sources has surfaced what I think is a pressing issue, especially for Chinese Singaporeans. There is a profound lack of reflexivity on our own history of Chinese-ness in Singapore, one not tied intuitively to larger and, if I may add, equally simplistic notions of "Chinese language," "culture" or "diaspora", the authenticity of which can always only be located elsewhere. This vacated sense of Chinese-ness for most Chinese Singaporeans has fed a unique understanding of racialised privilege here which needs to be addressed head-on.

Chinese privilege, White privilege

But first, McIntosh's 1988 paper.[3] All of the writing advocating the utility of the Chinese privilege concept leans on her definition of White privilege. She writes that White privilege is like an "invisible and weightless knapsack" of "unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious".[4] It is this particular definition of privilege that is transferred directly onto Chinese privilege. Academic or not, Singaporeans are stuck with this definition, and we have been arguing incessantly over whether Chinese privilege exists and what "unearned assets" Chinese Singaporeans enjoy. Yet McIntosh's paper makes clear this is an incomplete definition of the privilege concept. The most valuable point of McIntosh's essay has not surfaced in our discussion of Chinese privilege at all, and this is her idea of a "privilege system".

The second half of McIntosh's paper points to the drawbacks of seeing the invisible and weightless advantages making up white privilege as wholly desirable. In contrast, some benefits confer dominance through the license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and oppressive, which should not be conceived as "desirable" in any way. Thinking of a "privilege system" holistically, McIntosh argues for an approach that documents a "more finely differentiated taxonomy of privileges" as well as their uneven and damaging effects, including on "skewed white psyches". She writes:

...the word "privilege" now seems to be misleading. Its connotations are too positive to fit the conditions and behaviors which "privilege systems" produce. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. School graduates are reminded they are privileged and urged to use their (enviable) assets well. The word "privilege" carries the connotation of being something everyone must want. Yet, some of the conditions I have described here work to systemically over-empower certain groups. Such privilege confers dominance, gives permission to control because of one's race or sex. The kind of privilege that gives license to some people to be, at best, thoughtless and, at worst, murderous should not continue to be referred to as a desirable attribute. Such "privilege" may be widely desired without being in any way beneficial to the whole society.[5]

Reading McIntosh 1988, it seems to me that the privilege concept applies to Singapore but only if we undo assumptions that Chinese privilege is analogous to White privilege, despite apparent resonances between the two. For example, the overlap between male and racialised privilege has given rise to the dominance of white men in one context and Chinese men in the other, with both groups functioning on assumptions of heteronormativity. Such resonances make the privilege concept compelling as a framework for examining interlocking inequalities supporting systemic racism, and point to productive possibilities of border-crossing knowledge production that has never been constrained in the first place by the invisible disciplinary and ideational boundaries we are so prone to.

The privilege concept is not just relevant; it is necessary given growing class and income inequalities, so we should be reflecting critically on Singapore's "privilege system" and its built-in biases. To approach privilege in Singapore holistically, it behooves us to ask questions that begin with the fundamentals, such as what characterises Singapore's privilege system; what "taxonomies of privilege" and its effects can we observe and document; how does Singapore's privilege system recruit, interpellate, educate, reward and punish individuals whether Chinese or non-Chinese, male or female, elite and non-elite; what historical processes, events, and contingencies underpinned the development of privilege in Singapore; what is the dominant worldview of Singapore's privilege system; what ideologies and narratives are in play to construct, perpetuate and enforce it. This list is by no means exhaustive, but the point is that Chinese privilege does not make sense in relation to White privilege; Chinese privilege makes sense in relation to Singapore's privilege system.

One key difference between White and Chinese privilege is Singapore's political authoritarianism and the extent to which educational and social hierarchies are interwoven in ways that concentrate power overwhelmingly in a dominant state. Consciously or otherwise, Singapore's political authoritarianism has benefited heteronormative Chinese men and their outlook disproportionately. The dominance of their outlook also appears to extend from the political arena to other significant areas of life including the civil service, business, and academia. That Singapore's authoritarianism is defended loudly as a quality of our "Asian-ness," (versus "the West")-as "what works" and is assented to by Singaporeans who are overcome mainly by feelings of helplessness at the brazen workings of autocratic power-gives privilege a qualitative force quite unlike the diffused power of unconscious White privilege.

Chinese privilege and our language-inflected contradictions

Many Chinese and non-Chinese Singaporeans agree that there are indeed "unearned assets" that accrue to the majority race-ethnicity by virtue of Chinese numerical superiority. Alfian Sa'at has tried to provide further clarity by explaining Chinese privilege is a type of majoritarian advantage. In thoughtful pieces, the Straits Times and Zaobao journalists, Yuen Sin and Ng Wai Mun, agree that as individuals from the majority race-ethnicity, it is all too easy to neglect and ignore the presence and perspectives of people from minority groups on an everyday basis. But this seems to be as far as most Singaporeans will concede. Even then, "unearned majoritarian advantages" become stretchy when it is shown, as the two journalists and Goh and Chong did, that Singapore's post-independence language and education policies have disempowered large sections of dialect-speaking and/or Chinese-educated persons. Chan Heng Chee also repeated this and did not find Chinese privilege applicable in Singapore. She refers to two historical instances of "disadvantages" suffered by the Chinese community: one, when Singapore became independent, they did not push for Chinese as the national language even though they were the overwhelming majority population; and two, the closure of Nantah left entire generations of students educated in Chinese-medium schools without recourse to higher education opportunities. Many struggled with English language hegemony on a quotidian level. Understood as "unearned assets", Chinese privilege does not seem to apply to this group of disadvantaged and often non-elite Chinese Singaporeans.

Other commentators in Zaobao have also written that Chinese privilege is at risk of becoming a convenient and all-encompassing label. They are aggrieved at this misplaced criticism from the Anglophone world, which they see as yet another sign of English language hegemony in Singapore. Shen Zewei points to instances of English language hegemony and Chinese language marginality, arguing that Chinese Singaporeans fall into different types. There are people who identify with Chinese culture and those who do not; there are bilingual elites, monolingual English-speaking elites, and monolingual Chinese-speaking non-elites. Shen writes that if so-called Chinese privilege exists, it is definitely not applicable to the last group. Shen argues further that so-called "privilege" exists because it is habitual and unconscious, so whereas some see "Chinese privilege", others see "English language privilege". Shen finds it especially jarring that "negative privilege" is portrayed as "privilege" when the usage of one's MTL is looked down upon and seen as reflective of low societal station.[6] And so, we end up with this contradictory situation that appears to disprove Chinese privilege: while the Chinese community constitutes the majority race-ethnicity, the hegemony of English has reduced all non-English languages-including languages used by large sections within the Chinese community -to "minority" languages.

Linguistic inequalities are especially crucial because they mark our second significant divergence from the American context and require deeper reflexivity on the specific character of these discourses. The problem of language begins with translating "Chinese privilege" as "huaren tequan/华人特权" in Mandarin, which re-translates literally into English as "Chinese special rights." In light of Singapore's fractious merger and separation from Malaysia in our recent past, this term-more so than its English original-invokes its direct parallel, "Malay special rights". The notion of racialised "special rights" draws on an entirely different genealogy and meaning from the privilege concept understood as unconscious enjoyment of advantages originating from "White privilege". A more faithful translation of "Chinese privilege" should convey the meaning of "privilege" as a favourable state or quality, but also create room for a holistic discussion problematising privilege systems and the positive connotation of the word as argued by McIntosh. In place of huaren tequan/华人特权, I suggest translating "Chinese privilege" as "huaren youshi/华人优势"; youshi/优势 is a direct and neutral rendition of the word "advantage."

The cross-fire over Chinese language users' lesser status does not point to the inapplicability of the privilege concept in Singapore. Instead, it is absolutely necessary to consider a holistic definition of privilege in view of multiple kinds of linguistic inequalities in Singapore. Linguistic inequalities are at the crux of several contradictions experienced by Singaporeans, but these experiences are not those of the Chinese-speaking community alone. Here is another contradiction: we bemoan the marginality of the Chinese language and dialects in the face of English language hegemony, and yet English language hegemony has created common ground empowering non-Chinese Singaporeans to articulate themselves and they are heard effectively. At the same time, we do not hear as much about the marginality of non-Chinese MTL speakers, whose experiences are locked away in vernacular publics or literature that is not usually translated. Within the Anglophone and Sinophone communities in Singapore, there is little traction for regarding Malay as the national language and not just the MTL of the Malay community, so we end up with an overwhelming majority of Singaporeans not knowing how to speak the nation's language.

Yet another contradiction: even in the face of English language hegemony, the different valence of Singapore's bilingualisms centres the English-Chinese combination over and above other kinds. Far more resources and greater attention are channeled to promote and nurture English-Chinese bilingualism. The Speak Mandarin Campaign and SAP schools are fine examples of resources and efforts extended not to promote Mandarin Chinese per se but English-Chinese bilingualism. Currently, Mandarin Chinese is a privileged MTL compared to other MTLs. These, then, are some of the multiple language-inflected contradictions experienced by Singaporeans. A holistic look at Singapore's linguistic inequalities requires a layered and not reductionistic interpretation of absolute Chinese language marginality juxtaposed against English language hegemony.

It is easy for Chinese language speakers to fall into a reductionistic critique of English language hegemony because of a trenchant language ideology that surfaces periodically in public exercises lamenting or shaming Chinese Singaporeans for our declining proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. This is supposed to be the MTL of all ethnic Chinese but while scholars understand MTLs as "living languages" a child is introduced to organically at home, Singapore's definition of MTL is a uniquely bureaucratic one. MTLs in Singapore are artificially prescribed to us and artificially simplified, re-engineered, and enforced. Not only were Sinophone regional languages from South China the "living languages" for most Chinese Singaporeans before they were edited out of their lives, they had historically mediated communication between Chinese and non-Chinese in their hybrid and romanised forms. Sino-Malay and Baba Malay, for instance, feature predominantly linguistic influences from Fujian province, but the very concept of "a mother tongue" leaves little room for the region's multilingualism and translingualism. Beholden to standards of authentic Chinese-ness located "elsewhere", Singapore's understanding of the Chinese MTL will always judge Chinese Singaporeans as "deficient" because we are "inauthentic Chinese" by definition. An effective decolonial critique of English language hegemony here should not berate Chinese Singaporeans for our deficient Chinese-ness by toeing the dogmatic line of a bureaucratic definition of the Chinese MTL; it should acknowledge the hybridised and inter-ethnic pasts of languages and cultures in Singapore and the region.

The concept of Chinese privilege must take into account the uneven outcomes of a radical re-engineering of our linguistic landscape and education system. This transformation can be dated to the late 1970s, with the overhaul of our education system privileging English dominant bilingualism, with life-changing consequences for individuals and unequal effects for entire communities. However, criticisms of the privilege concept and English language hegemony argued using the dominant language ideology and advocating for only Chinese language speakers is a partial critique that fails to consider multiple language-inflected contradictions in Singapore. Singapore's language-inflected contradictions do not point to the absence of Chinese privilege but to different "taxonomies of privilege". When our intellectuals and leaders deploy a partial account of Chinese language users' marginality to negate rather than connect with the commonality of marginalised experiences of non-Chinese minorities, to dismiss rather than validate these other language-inflected contradictory experiences, Chinese privilege may not mean "unearned assets", but it does mean something else. As argued by McIntosh, Chinese privilege means properties far less desirable-the license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and oppressive in ways that demand unchecked dominance. This particular category of socially undesirable privileges, McIntosh notes wisely, damage not only our collective good but also those who "suffer" these privileges, producing skewed worldviews and psyches, in this instance, myopia nursing a sense of grievance so great they cannot or refuse to see injustices suffered by others.

The hyper-visibility of Chinese-ness and the invisibility of Chinese privilege; or how to decolonise our history effectively

My final point concerns a third significant difference between Chinese privilege and White privilege. McIntosh writes that the invisibility of White privilege in America comes from how White-ness is experienced as a "non-colour," which makes it easy to lull White people into believing they are not racialised in ways that "coloured" people are. Chinese-ness, or any identity in Singapore for the matter, is a "colour" because all Singaporeans live our identities in racially marked ways. As the majoritarian race-ethnicity, discourses and narratives on Chinese-ness are hyper-visible and hyper-audible in English and Chinese. Because Chinese-ness driven by the CMIO model involves constant efforts from different quarters (top-down and bottom-up) in educating, reforming, regulating, and policing elements of our Chinese-nese, with anxiety over Mandarin Chinese standards exemplifying these efforts.

Chinese-ness in Singapore is never taken for granted and Chinese Singaporeans feel that we are at constant risk of language and cultural "loss" which requires us to put in conscious work to either "adapt," "preserve" or "defend Chinese language and culture" against all odds. Chinese-ness in Singapore is, therefore, conscious "work-in-progress". The unconscious enjoyment or "suffering" of Chinese privilege in Singapore does not occur because Chinese-ness is lived like White-ness, as a "non-colour". Rather, the invisibility of Chinese privilege occurs as an aspect of Singapore's dramatic re-making of language and education policies using the CMIO model from the late 1970s onwards. The un-even effects of this transformation surface in the multiple language-inflected contradictions we experience today. When these contradictory experiences are filtered through the perspective of the Chinese majority, the partiality and invisibility of privilege is buttressed by hegemonic language ideologies, narratives, and discourses on Chinese-ness specific to the Singaporean and regional context.

As "hyper-visible coloured identity", narratives and discourses on Chinese-ness in Singapore and the region are not innocent. Long-standing and complex narratives and discourses on Chinese-ness in English and Chinese, dating to the colonial period, have shifted and morphed to reproduce sustained racialisation of Chinese-ness in positive and negative ways into contemporary times. Chinese migrant grit, for example, is a popular positive stereotype Singapore has embraced. Invoking a direct connection between racism and colonialism, theorists inspired by the example of White settler colonialism have described Chinese privilege as a function or effect of "Chinese settler colonialism".

Our latest attempt to theorise a "Chinese" version of settler colonialism draws from caricatures and systematic knowledge production about "Chinese settler colonialism" already popular in the Anglophone literature as European expansion in the region intensified from the nineteenth century onwards. In British colonial records, for example, "Chinese shipping" was consistently described as "colonial shipping", and Chinese migrants and settlers in the region as "colonists". Eurocentric accounts of Chinese migration and settlement understood the Chinese presence here through the familiar model of White settler pioneering. Adopting analytical frameworks that shift our focus to region-specific mobility patterns and settlement in the Malay world demonstrates otherwise.

Historian Sunil Amrith's work on intra-Asian migration and the Bay of Bengal puts the history of Chinese migration into regional perspective. He writes that one key difference between intra-Asian migrants and their trans-Atlantic counterpart lies in "the numbers of those settled rather than returned".[7] By 1930, about 85 million people of British origin lived outside the British Isles, whereas about 6 to 7 million people of Indian origin, as well as a similar number of Chinese, had settled overseas by the end of 1930.[8]

Moreover, in contrast to permanent settlement characterising White settler colonialism, semi-permanence and "circular migration"-also known as "sojourning"-was the norm for intra-Asian patterns of mobility.[9] Scholars of Chinese migration explain that the Chinese word qiao/僑 refers precisely to this pattern of circular migration and temporary settlement, but as Amrith reminds us, "sojourning" was not unique to Chinese migratory patterns, but was a notable feature of Indian and intra-Asian migration in this region.

Historical studies on patterns and typologies of mobility of migratory Chinese in the region before the colonial period show that indigenous polities have traditionally accommodated and absorbed migratory Chinese individuals and communities. This phenomenon of integrating sojourning Sinitic groups did not just happen to mercantile communities, but was true of a later typology of migratory laboring Chinese communities that only emerged in the Malay world during the 18 th century. Their chief interest was commercial agriculture and mining. It is tempting to understand these non-indigenous Sinitic-speaking labouring communities occupying and developing land in the region as "settler colonisers" in the mould of White settler-colonists. And this was precisely how the Anglophone literature wrote about them. Knowledge produced by these Eurocentric perspectives consolidated the movement and settlement of different Sinitic-speaking migratory groups as a single phenomenon of migration and settlement by a uniform and homogeneous "Chinese" collectivity, but Sinitic-speaking migratory communities did not operate as a homogeneous and independent unit; rather, they blended into the Malay port polity's existing socio-political-economic interests and structure.

Indigenous rulers directly engaged and imported Chinese labourers to plant and mine the land which remained under their jurisdiction and control. This model of multi-ethnic interdependent relationships between indigenous political power, Chinese, and non-Chinese migratory groups was a striking feature of the early modern Malay world. Like other non-Chinese migratory communities, migratory Chinese in this world were accommodated with full recognition that they were "foreign" to the Malay world. Yet the boundary between "foreign-ness" and what we now understand today as "indigeneity" was kept fluid and porous. Identity formation in the context of fluidity and porosity of boundaries and the intensity of multi-layered inter-ethnic interactions gave rise to diverse Peranakan communities in the Malay world, including the Peranakan Chinese.

Both positive and negative racialised stereotyping of the Chinese was widely practised during the colonial period. Bothwere ideological products of Eurocentric interests and structures of knowledge production, and both were implicated in imperatives of European imperial expansion and ideological domination of the Malay world. Recruiting non-indigenous groups such as the migratory Chinese as "intermediaries" and "collaborators" was one key strategy of European imperial expansion in the region, and their collective incorporation into racial hierarchies designating "the Chinese" as a middling category superior to "the natives" is well-known. From the late nineteenth century onwards, negative racialised stereotyping of the Chinese became increasingly shrill in the region. The Chinese were condemned collectively as "exploiters of natives" and, in general, were portrayed as a threatening and unsavoury presence.

Some of the most vehement expressions of anti-Chinese sentiment came from White people. Narratives overwrought with "white guilt" about colonial exploitation of "native" populations were disseminated with Sinophobic narratives highlighting "native" victimhood at the hands of "alien" Chinese, as well as fears of "Chinese imperialism over-running the region".[10] Arguments that counter positive portraits of Chinese-ness by drawing on an equally troubling history of negative racialisation of Chinese-ness do a half-job in decolonising the structures of colonialism Singapore inherited, leaving us further ensnared in mutual recriminations of racisms that continue to pay homage to Eurocentrism. Colonialist genealogies of Chinese-ness, therefore, complicates this recent attempt to transpose the model of White settler colonialism to explain the historicity of Chinese privilege in Singapore today.

Nor is the Sinophone reaction-interrogating and denying Eurocentric interpretations of Chinese settler colonialism-novel. At the turn of the twentieth century, when ideas about the Chinese "race" and ethno-nation were keenly debated by Chinese intellectuals of different political persuasions, the influential iconoclastic scholar Liang Qichao, seduced by the idea of White settler colonialism, re-imagined the so-called "Nanyang Chinese" (Southeast Asian Chinese) through a framework of "comparative nationalisms" and "comparative imperialisms" using White settler colonialism as his reference. However, Liang Qichao emphasised how the Nanyang Chinese were "different" from White settler colonisers because they were "failed" settler colonisers who could not match their far more "modern" White counterparts. Later iterations of Liang Qichao's ideas, disseminated widely in Chinese school textbooks in the region, turned "failure" into "strength", by describing Nanyang Chinese settler colonialism as essentially a "peaceful" force compared with the violence of European colonisation. As "faux White settler colonisers", Chinese school textbooks portrayed the Nanyang Chinese in stereotypically positive terms: Nanyang Chinese were mainly interested in earning a livelihood, and their labour had helped to open up lands for cultivation and economic development in the region. This portrait was the other side of "the myth of the lazy native" that served the purposes of the colonial economy.

As a result of Liang Qichao's nationalistic interpretation of Nanyang Chinese history and for much of the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese language terms for Nanyang Chinese "colonisation" (zhimin/殖民), "migration" (yimin/移民) and "pioneering" (tuozhi/拓殖) were used interchangeably. During the post-World War Two period, in tandem with the anti-colonial tenor of nationalisms in the region and most parts of the world, these Chinese terms suggestive of settler colonialism or any reference to the Chinese as a "colonial" presence in the region were deemed chauvinistic, politically insensitive, inappropriate and dropped from popular as well as academic usage.

This dialectical interplay between Eurocentric and Sinocentric interpretations of Chinese migration in the region has displaced Chinese privilege from our purview in Singapore. The density and longevity of genealogies of settler colonialism in the Anglophone and Sinophone literature must be untangled and not reproduced uncritically in our discussion about Chinese-ness and taxonomies of racialised privilege in Singapore. Our current discussion of Chinese privilege-including denials of its existence-draws much of its language, tropes and reasoning from this repetitive dialectic that encourages thinking of "the West" and "Chinese-ness" in binary oppositional terms. Lest we think Sinophone writings are the loci of an authentic "Chinese" version of settler colonialism, historians who have studied Liang Qichao and the scholarship on the Nanyang Chinese have mapped multilingual sources of inspiration and circuits of knowledge production, enabling the emergence of this ethno-nationalistic narrative as continental China's reaction to global Western imperialism.
Sai Siew Min researches Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia with a focus on imperial formation in Southeast Asia, the cultural politics of colonialism, nationalism, language, race and Chinese-ness. She grew up with a mixture of living Chinese languages including Mandarin, as well as English, and learned Bahasa Indonesia as part of her training as a Southeast Asian Studies scholar.
European imperial formation in the Malay world has provoked translingual genealogies of Chinese-ness that defy convenient racial stereotyping and binary East-West thinking in the region. In my essay in Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History, I argue that just as selective and gendered scripting of "Chinese migration" traceable to a singular point of origin in continental China makes patrilineal lineage visible while matrilineal, matrifocal, and region-specific elements fade away into the fringes of national history, what is eclipsed by a partial Sinocentric interpretation of Singapore's national history and identity-performed as if it was countering "the West"-and how that eclipsing takes place, are questions that merit deeper reflexivity.[11] Singapore's national history has embraced a muscular narrative of continuous Chinese pioneering-colonisation-settlement-migration in the region, traced anachronistically to "an ancestral nation", which masks fragmented and truncated formations of race and identity for all Singaporeans, as a result of radical reconstitution of indigenous polities, borders, and spaces caused by European imperial formation and subsequent nation-building in the Malay world. Partial Sinocentric interpretations of Singapore's past displace dense webs of trans-ethnic interactions as well as overlapping and connected histories that once made up an organic regional Malay world. Surfacing this Malay world and its discrepant histories of Chinese-ness, I suggest, is a necessary step towards grounded critiques of racism and privilege as part of our anti-racist practice in this part of the world.

Notes

[1] Daniel P. S. Goh & Terence Chong (2020): 'Chinese privilege' as shortcut in Singapore: a rejoinder in Asian Ethnicity. Goh and Chong were writing in response to Humairah Zainal & Walid Jumblatt Abdullah (2019): Chinese privilege in politics: a case study of Singapore's ruling elites, Asian Ethnicity.

[2] See for example, 'Racism still exists in Singapore but identity politics must not take root, says Lawrence Wong' in ST, 21 January 2021.

[3] Peggy McIntosh, "White privilege and male privilege: a personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies" Working Paper 189, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley, MA.

[4] Ibid., p. 2.

[5] Ibid., p.9

[6] 沈泽玮(Shen Zewei), "华人特权"与弱势华语"(Chinese privilege and the marginality of Mandarin Chinese) in 早报(Zaobao) 31 January 2021.

[7] Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: the furies of nature and the fortunes of migrants (Cam., Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 104.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Sunil S. Amrith, Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2011) pp.2-4.

[10] Oiyan Liu notes that the shrill rhetoric of Sinophobia in the British and Dutch colonies during the 1920s expresses anxiety over the large presence of Chinese migrants, which was described as an "imperialistic" force. Liu Oiyan, "Countering 'Chinese Imperialism': Sinophobia and border protection in the Dutch East Indies" in Indonesia, Number 97, April 2014, pp. 87-110.'Many' instead of most?
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[11] Sai Siew Min, "Why Raffles is Still Standing: colonialism, migration and Singapore's scripting of the present" in Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History (Singapore: Ethos, 2021)

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Why there is Chinese privilege in Singapore, but it's not analogous to White privilege - Academia | SG

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Sai Siew Min, a Singaporean historian now based in Taipei, discusses key features of the Singapore context which distinguish "Chinese privilege" from "White privilege", including the role of political authoritarianism, the landscape of linguistic inequalities, and the visibility of racialisation as "Chinese" in Singapore, which connects to our incomplete understanding of the history of the [...]

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Race, privilege and Chinese-ness in multiracial Singapore

Author:

Selvaraj Velayutham (Macquarie University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the notion of Chineseness as a site of privilege that provides the norms and categories against which other cultures are 'measured'; and the 'unearned advantage' the Chinese have over ethnic minorities like the Malays, Indians and Eurasians in Singapore.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnic Chinese constitute a majority of the population and are well represented at all levels of Singaporean society, politically and economically. Nonetheless, the ideologies of meritocracy and racial harmony have long been held up by the Singapore state as constitutive principles that bind its multi-ethnic population. Singaporean citizens are told that regardless of their race, language or religion they can succeed in life based on their ability and talent. This non-discriminatory approach guarantees social mobility and equal opportunity for all. Similarly, race relations in Singapore have been filtered through the lens of tolerance, living harmoniously and celebration of diversity rather than any deep engagement with cultural difference. Racial tensions and experiences of racism are often unacknowledged. In practice, meritocracy and racial harmony disavows recognition of discrimination and disadvantage faced by ethnic minorities. This paper investigates the notion of Chineseness as a site of privilege that provides the norms and categories against which other cultures are 'measured'; and the 'unearned advantage' the Chinese have over ethnic minorities like the Malays, Indians and Eurasians in Singapore.

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Race, privilege and Chinese-ness in multiracial Singapore

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This paper investigates the notion of Chineseness as a site of privilege that provides the norms and categories against which other cultures are 'measured'; and the 'unearned advantage' the Chinese have over ethnic minorities like the Malays, Indians and Eurasians in Singapore.

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Singaporean Tamil drummers' response to the viral video. 

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Singaporean Tamil drummers' response to the viral video. 

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Musical duo in S'pore produce remix of viral woman-with-gong video with traditional Indian instr...

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Hello! Zachary(he/him) here! A small intro: I was born and raised in Philippines up until 2008. My whole family moved to SG later that year. I remember feeling very other-ed in primary school because my cohort had only 2 other Filipinos. To counter this, I  became to determined to learn and incorporate Singlish in my everyday speech.

I just wanted to share that I think even within the "Other" communities (Filipino here) there is a sense of denial of the existence of Chinese privilege. This makes me think whether this is a generational thing since we all seem to share accounts of racist happenings amongst the older generation.

This is not to say that my generation is completely absolved of any blame because I still do see it (racial profiling when choosing partners, genuinely thinking that Chinese people do not have any form of privilege, etc.) However, this generation is so much more quick to call out things that do not align with equality and such. So much so that thy have a term for that now called SJWs (Social Justice Warriors). I think this is actually a good thing because some of these offenders really do need to be held accountable.

In terms of Music, I find myself promoting more Filipino and local music in my repertoire in order to promote and provide representation. I just hope I don't get pigeon-holed into this category. I was talking to a Malay artist of mine who explained to me how he is facing a double-edged sword predicament wherein he is grateful for being the Malay representation but feels tokenised.

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AcademiaSG Panel Discussion: Regarding Racism

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Casual Racism in Singapore | What Schools Don't Teach

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Harloh! Shzr Ee here, one of - eek! - *those* people starting this coffeeshop talk session. I hold a Singaporean passport, identify as Chinese (diasporic? transnational), and have a full-time job in the UK where I teach and research music/ ethnomusicology. I find myself on a steep learning curve here reflecting on how I'm dealing with the intersections of it all: with structural racism within the UK, but also with how I have both Chinese privilege as well as academic privilege in Singapore/ Southeast Asia/ Europe. And now I also have Chinese Middle Class (post-woke) Guilt!! Everyone and their Mum seems to be talking about Chinese privilege in Singapore now (see academia sg post and panel), turned into hot topic - but for how long before anything really changes?

I wonder aloud:

- whether Chinese privilege means something different outside Singapore - particularly Southeast Asia, and also in the so-called ‘West’ (where ‘China’ is often seen as some looming New Yellow (rich) Peril)

- whether there is a distinct ‘performing arts’ manifestation of Chinese privilege

- whether there are inter-generational tensions (what do do with the Nanyang school ah; also is this focus on social engagement and political interventions an overwoke ‘Chinese’ Gen XYZ thing)

Curious to hear your accounts/ stories! In true kopitiam session - the messier, the more rambling, the more disassembled, the better!

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See all the wonderful things kopi1ownselfcheckownself has made

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Hello, Jarrod here, one of the facilitators of this session. I hold a Singaporean passport and an IC that says I’m Chinese. My maternal grandmother is Eurasian while my paternal grandmother was adopted and raised in a Dayak family. Both my grandfathers are Han Chinese and therefore my parents were also registered as Chinese in the sYsTeM. As to how I identify myself? I don't know really, but I do stand to benefit from being labelled Chinese on my IC. I am currently doing a PhD in Australia exploring the soundscapes of an indigenous Taiwanese village. Thought I’ll share some thoughts.

As a child, I struggled memorising mandarin words and how to write them. Oddly enough, I picked up Bahasa Indonesia in school (I had and still have many Indonesian friends) and spoke it much more than mandarin. I was often teased by my Chinese peers, not about having bad mandarin, but because I could speak ‘Malay’ (they couldn’t tell the difference I guess). Over the years, I kept encountering similar situations, albeit more explicit: ‘why do you have so many Malay friends’ or ‘please don’t bring back Indian girlfriend hor’. As much as I found it problematic, I would usually just laugh it off and maybe throw in a quick ‘fuck off lah’. I never seriously called them out and I never suffered any consequence from it. This was me, safe within the Chinese privilege bubble without even realising it, I was complicit and as much a problem as they were. I feel that many people don't realise that doing nothing is acknowledging that this is the status quo. Staying silent allows these sentiments to fester and continue spreading. So here I am, admitting to my privilege, for years of inaction, hoping to break this cycle, and to learn how to ownself check ownself!

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Racial prejudice rears its head in Singapore

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The city state is less racially harmonious than its government likes to think