THE ONE ABOUT PRIMADELI

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• Original Facebook Post: Post Link (29th April 2016)

It's important to recognise and voice out unfair treatments in Singapore. Especially if it concern matters of livelihood and employability, we need to voice it out.

As the conversations on race unfolds, I think it's good that this Primadeli controversy came to light in the mainstream. We need things like this to remind people that Singapore is not as racially harmonious as we would like it to be. And we need to do SOMETHING about it. It can be education, policies, enforcement and criminalisation, etc. As long as people are willing to participate and engage institutions in this dialogue, we would be able to keep the conversation alive and truly dream of a racially harmonious future.

We cannot airbrush this away by blindly subscribing to the rhetoric that Singapore is already a successful multi-racial country.

Taking a form class with an almost equal ratio of Chinese and Malay students, it becomes apparent to me that tensions do exist. Neither group will allow itself to be subsumed under another; there is no distinction between majority and minority. As I observe the way my students interact, I see matters of race come to light. Students start to grapple with uncomfortable stereotypes and untrue lingual labels of their own race. There was once several students in my class got offended by remarks that the Malays are indigenous people, while Chinese are immigrants who lack legality to their stay here. Quarrels happen often because of a lack of understanding towards history. We do need to ask ourselves what is the thing that is conditioning the young to devote to an unfair perception of society.

As issues of race unravel, I think there are several things that ought to be discussed in the mainstream. How are we treating the Indian community? Immigrants? Do we talk about gender inequality as passionate as we talk about racism? When would we finally be able to properly and politely allow discussions of homophobia and transphobia to enter the mainstream. This discussion will go on and on, I do hope that we would be able to come to a common understanding eventually.