This is Singaporean Chinese Privilege

Chinese privilege can be difficult for most in Singapore to comprehend, but it does exist. This website documents minority experiences relating to Chinese privilege and racism in Singapore. It is meant to be a safe space for ethnic minorities to talk about their marginalization openly. Submit your examples through email or through the submit button below. Email us about Chinese privilege: [email protected] (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-71533998-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

I have been told by my friends in school that Malays are lazy. In which, they explained to me, still under one breath that I am different and I am not a real Malay. Which did not matter either way, as I still felt offended. My sister was told, during an interview by the owner/interviewer, that she did not trust a Malay as an accountant. I have no idea why she interviewed my sister and offered her the job later on. The government should be working on themselves first to develop a greater sense of accountability, integrity and duty of care. Just by saying aloud the pledge and then doing the opposite is the biggest hypocrisy. I don’t trust them to work on issues of their own deliberate making. They have known this for a long time. They have practised some form of discrimination themselves. The top politician blatantly mentioned that races are not equal. They have created the model for the society to emulate. The only way this government can improve the situation is for them to step aside. Its very telling that their policy will never work long term. Democracy and transparency in Singapore are only lip service."

http://www.transitioning.org/2011/05/03/malay-engineer-works-in-australia-due-to-race-bias-discrimination-in-singapore/

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

In my uni class my Chinese prof asked about pharmaceutical institutions in India and she asked me about it. I said I didn't know and then she asked me how come I didn't know what my own country's institution was. I told her I am Singaporean. I was pissed. I just can't imagine her going up to to a Chinese and assuming they are from China. I feel like us Indians are not really viewed as 'true' Singaporeans. She laughed it off as a joke but I'll definitely complain and give a negative review.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hellooo i'm a Singaporean Indian female and I recently had a incident where a (ex)friend told me something along the lines of how Indian females will never be hired over Chinese males(he's chinese) and honestly speaking this really hurt badly because it feels as if they were saying that Chinese males will always be better than a Indian female and it felt awfully degrading. Needless to say, thank you for maintaining this page and acknowledging that Chinese privilege exists as a problem

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

...the kind of policing practice used by officers from the Secret Societies Suppression Branch (SSB) of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to subject members of a minority street corner gang comprising South Indian Tamils to surveillance and control. The objective of such a policing method is to prevent these street corner gangs from gaining a foothold in the criminal underworld so that the police are able to preserve and protect the symbiotic relationship that they have historically established with the more institutionalized Chinese secret societies.

Ganapathy, N., and Lian Kwen Fee. "Policing Minority Street Corner Gangs in Singapore: A View from the Street." Policing & Soc. Policing and Society GPAS 12.2 (2002): pp. 141

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Please subscribe

Hello all.

If you are wondering why the submissions are published in spates, it is because I am busy having to work for a living.

Despite all the labour and time and energy I expound on this site and the other writing I do to help people, there are only TWO subscribers to this blog.

Just TWO. Out of over a THOUSAND. If only 10% of the followers of this blog subscribed, that would go a long way to helping me keep it running.

This tells me people want to learn from me and see what I say and all that, but they are not willing to help me pay for my bills while I help and educate them.

I am no longer in a position to frequently update this blog. To tell the truth, if there isn’t a dramatic increase in the subscriptions to this blog, I am going to either stop taking submissions or shut it down altogether.

So if you want to continue to submit, and to have a safe space for minorities to talk about what is happening to you, please do subscribe and support me for my work.

Thank you.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Chinese privilege is when you assume that only chinese people are capable of achieving success

Hi i am an educated malay living in singapore and is of mixed parentage. My mom is chinese and i do have to say that for some of my siblings they could pass off as chinese looking. I have to say this for sure. Our experiences vary greatly. My sibling who passes off as chinese do not experience the same treatment as i do living here in singapore.

I have a lot of things to say for sure and one of it is the mindset adopted by most chinese singaporeans. They really do believe that they are genetically superior. They would cite examples such as the percentage of the chinese population that is much better off than the minorities in singapore. Anything that is not chinese is deemed inferior. There was one incident where my friend would say that the reason why i am doing well in school is because i have chinese blood. And kid you not many of my malay friends would also say the same thing. Such is the level of internalized racism here.

Chinese privilege is also when they could just shrug off minority experiences as one-off incidents. Generally i notice that chinese singaporens would either treat minorities who voice their unhappiness as ‘troublemakers" , “sensitive” or just simply put “dramatic”.

Lastly i also would like to share my experience with chinese malaysians. Why is it that the mistreatment of minorities in malaysia has got anything to do with us? For example i once had a conversation with a malaysian chinese friend and she said that shes not comfortable with having a malay singaporean boss or supervisor because of her bad experience in malaysia. I mean i don’t see PRC and their bad habits being associated in any way with the singaporean chinese.

I really think there should be an awareness of these at the national level and i think Sangeetha has done a great job but i really wished sometimes that people would just shut up and listen rather than rant or act defensive about it. All our grievances are being swept under the carpet. We all pretend that it doesnt exist and the most sickening part is that singapore is being protrayed at the national level as one that is big on multiculturalism.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

TRY this simple experiment.

Chinese privilege is when you blatantly know that your race entitles you to greater job prospects. 

Dear admin,

I posted a job advertisement recently on behalf of my dad. What bothers me is the way some of the replies are being written. I often see these,

“28 Male, Chinese’

’‘24 Female, chinese’

THIS despite the fact that we never asked for the job applicant’s race. So i infer that the chinese in singapore know that simply being chinese confers them an advantage in landing a job. SO why then deny that their privilege exist?

DISGUSTING really. We minorities in singapore are being treated like kids. it is like having a sibling who is given special treatment by the parents and denying it all along.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hawker stalls selling nasi lemak with pork

Chinese privilege is when hawker stalls selling nasi lemak with pork outnumber those selling authentic nasi lemak.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hello! I just wanted to say thank you for making this blog. I'm a Chinese-Australian adoptee & have absolutely no connection to my Chinese ancestry/identity, & have recently decided that I'm ready to start understanding it. Due to living in Aus, which is an incredibly racist country, I assumed that my Chinese race may have some hegemonic advantage SOMEWHERE, & within learning the pros of my Chinese heritage, learning it's social/political privileges elsewhere is equally as important. Thank you.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

So thankful for this site-as a Singaporean Chinese, it's a topic a lot of us get defensive over. Frankly speaking, I've been guilty of it&it was only talking about it with friends/reading experiences that I realise that we've an issue. It isn't wrong to know that there's a problem, it's wrong when you deny its existence/don't help to fix it. I'm still learning, trying to be better. So keep doing what you're doing, it's only by putting these issues front&centre that hopefully change can come.

“It isn’t wrong to know that there’s a problem, it’s wrong when you deny its existence/don’t help to fix it.“

That’s exactly it. You can’t be blamed for having privilege. It was given to you. No one’s asking you to feel guilty about it.

Having privilege does not make you a bad person. Denying it does.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Im a jc student and during my recent gp lesson, my teacher was insistent that the Malays are not the indigenous people of Singapore. Do you have an article or an eloquently presented explanation? I want to clarify this with him, being a Malay myself.

Your teacher is racist, and should not be a teacher since he does not understand basic history or geography.

Firstly, the constitution of Singapore has already declared that Malays are indigenous to Singapore

‘Minorities and special position of Malays

152. —(1) It shall be the responsibility of the Government constantly to care for the interests of the racial and religious minorities in Singapore.

—-

(2) The Government shall exercise its functions in such manner as to recognise the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the Government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language.’

You can further read Alfian’s thoughts on this here.

So not only is your teacher completely wrong, he apparently can’t read or Google.

Secondly, you should ask him if when Americans move from NY to Alabama do they stop being Americans? Cos that’s the level of idiocy we are working with her. Chinese people genuinely believe that people moving around from Indonesia to Malaysia and Singapore means they are not indigenous. Singapore is a social construct, it is new. Before the idea of Singapore even existed, the Nusantara, or the Malay land existed. Which means all of these lands belong to them.

Lastly, who the fuck does he think lived here before the British came? Does he think it was terra nullis? Don’t accept this shit from teachers. Call them out and report them to MOE. They are teaching things that are dangerously and factually wrong.

I wrote about the questions surrounding Malay indeigeneity here.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hey there I'm a Singaporean Chinese and I just wanted to thank you for educating me more on this subject.I fully support this blog and I hope you have a great day ahead !<3

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hi, I'm still learning to put words to the experience of CP and thanks to your blog and work, I feel more empowered to describe my experiences instead of sweeping it under the rug because it's a difficult topic to talk about. My question is: is the lack of representation of minorities in SG media related to structural or systemic racism? I've read a few thru Google, but the case studies r mostly in US. Can it be similar in SG context?

It’s both. To me it’s really embedded into the system that Chinese is better and the default. So they are both given the opportunities and they are already seen as deserving of it.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hello, I'm a JC1 student who's just so happens to be Chinese (yes, I'm Chinese), but that's not the point. I'm doing a PW (project work, the thing you have to do in J1) project and I want to address the issue on Chinese privilege (though it's only the PI stage so far and hopefully my group would agree to continue working on this topic) I know how Chinese privilege is unfair, very unfair to the minorities. I want to speak out for the minorities. (-continued)

Chinese privilege is an insanely hard topic to choose for PW but I'm quite passionate about this and I really want to decrease chinese privilege in singapore. Firstly, thank you for starting this blog and compiling submissions where I could add on to the evidence/examples to prove the point that chinese privilege exists, and is very real here. Maybe it is just because most of my friends are from minority races but I have asked around,“How prominent do you think Chinese privilege is in Singapore?” It was quite shocking (and expected) how most of my friends from minority races felt that Chinese privilege was very prominent here (to different extents), whereas those benefiting from the privilege did not feel so. Chinese privilege is a very prevalent problem in our society, yet it is often silenced – the majority of chinese are unaware and the voices of the minority are not heard. Although I belong to the majority because I’m Chinese, this privilege just shows how unequal our society is, even though our SS textbooks paint a rosy picture void of any imperfections. But in reality, these flaws are all exposed. Can I ask, do you happen to have any solutions (small-scale) that I can hopefully implement? Thank you, and I thank you for this blog again. Signing off, a Chinese girl who very well acknowledges that chinese privilege exists, and wants to make a change

Your insistence on being Chinese is odd to me. Do you think you are a rare flower of tolerance? There are lots of non racist Chinese people. I personally know alot of them, and many do submit to this blog. Your using your minority friends as proof of what an awesome non racist you are is also a bit dodgy. A lo of the ask reads as if you just want to be patted on the back for meeting the minimum standards of a decent human being.

Good on you for wanting to make a change. Remember though that you are not our saviour. Your job is to work along side minorities and use your privilege to make sure they are heard; not to speak over them or for them.

I don’t know what you mean by decrease Chinese privilege. Privilege exists because of racism. You want to be combating racism.

Now as for solutions:

A) Goverment policies mandating minority hiring

B) Affirmative action in education and employment

C) Statements from prominent figured admitting that there is racism in Singapore and that is in structural

D) Awareness programmes in schools and workplaces on micro aggressions and unintended bias

There’s a lot of similar things to this. The reason I do not advocate for education is because Singaporeans are already highly educated and there’s a lot of racism.

Secondly, what happens when the education does not work? We should definitely continue educating people, but we need to remove the power they have over other people’s lives and futures in case this education fails. Mandating diversity representation in schools, corporate boards, media representation etc goes a long way to mitigating these problems.

Good luck with the project. I am quite sure the school would never allow you to go through with this cos it will threaten racial harmony and blah blah. But still, good luck.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Chinese Privilege at PrimaDeli

Main story:

http://mothership.sg/2016/04/dear-well-known-halal-bakery-youve-just-lost-a-talented-cake-decorator-due-to-your-discrimination/

The Head Of Baking department at PrimaDeli was a Chinese person who, in a managerial position, he/she has the ability to refuse employment to anyone solely based on the colour of the applicant’s skin. Who knows how many capable, qualified people have been refused employment due to the actions of the head of baking’s ignorance? Who knows where else this is happening in silence? If not for speaking Sarah Carmariah speaking up, nothing would have been done. The manager may have been fired but many other people didn’t get the job that day they went for their interview. It is even more perplexing when you consider that PrimaDeli is a halal bakery that actually needs to have Malay/Muslim bakers in their workforce.

Sarah Carmariah

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Hey thank you for the link in response to my comment on your post about the photo project in SG. I agree that regardless, I still benefit simply because of my race. My comment //is// a convenient excuse for the system to remain the way it is (not that I meant for that but that's besides the point). So I just wanted to thank you for calling me out on that and giving a reminder of what my comment truly meant. Look forward to learning more from what you're doing.

For the other Chinese people who get upset with me, this is how you should react. This person has shown goodwill towards me and I am now much more amenable to answering their questions.

I can tell from you tone and words whether you are an ally or not. I am perfectly cordial, even friendly towards Chinese people who want to learn and treat me with respect.

The problem comes about when you don’t.

[thisissgchineseprivilege]

Seeing Chinese people who shame and ridicule Singaporean or Malay minors makes me so mad. Being Chinese doesn't make you better than everyone else. They make me ashamed of sharing the same ethnicity as them