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By
Seah Chiang
Nee
The racial divide may be narrowing in
Singapore. (Yahoo!)
The current wave of migrant workers from China and India has had
an unintended side benefit for Singapore: blurring differences
between local Chinese and Malays.
The new competition they introduced into the workforce has
helped to get these once quarrelling races to put aside old
discords and jointly face the common challenge.
In the 60s and 70s, ethnic conflicts were a daily story in
Singapore generally over who should get a bigger piece of the
economic pie. Every issue seemed to revolve around race.
The impact of globalisation and the mass inflow of foreigners
are helping the Chinese and Malays achieve commonality faster than
anything else.
It has promoted a common bond — as well as a sense of
nationalism — which would have been a lot slower without the
2,000,000 foreigners.
In the latest example, Singapore's Chinese majority rallied to
condemn a Chinese migrant worker after he roughed up a Malay
citizen and boasted about it online.
Zhou Hou, a 24-year-old
delivery worker, bragged in Facebook how he knocked down a
Singaporean "because he saw me coming and did not give way" and
calling Singaporeans "retards".
It probably showed his cocky dislike for Singaporeans in
general, rather than any particular race.
Zhou has since deleted the post (with his photo) and made
several apologies to Singaporeans, claiming it was done on the spur
of his "frustrations".
Integration has come a long way
With a history of ethnic riots, racial harmony has always been
Singapore's priority objective, something that not many new
migrants from China and India are aware of.
"Those retards who want to act 'garang' (bravado) step forward.
I come here not to be bullied or insulted — from a true noble
Chinese with 5,000 years of cultural baptism," Zhou wrote, with a
tinge of ethnic superiority.
If he thought he would be supported by the Chinese here he was
wrong. Several Singaporeans immediately filed police reports
against his remarks. Police are now investigating the case.
Since independence a new generation of Singaporeans — especially
Chinese and Malays — has grown up and had gone to schools, lived
and served national service together.
The integration has stabilised things but race differences have
never completely disappeared.
In the early days, it was normal to see Chinese Singaporeans
cheering football teams from China when they played here against
Singapore which comprised mostly of Malay players.
Once as a teenager, I watched some 8,000 local Indians rooting
for a visiting Indian team against our state side. Singapore was
then far from being a nation despite military service and years of
National Day Parades.
To the Malays, Chinese and Indians were taking their jobs away —
and vice versa. Language, social norms and even food became
contentious issues.
But as foreigners flocked to our shores, Malays along with other
races gradually became more preoccupied with the "foreign threat"
to their jobs and earnings.
How local views the outsiders
Instead of viewing each other with suspicion as their parents
once did, the Chinese and Malays have become more concerned about
losing out to the foreigners.
The government had apparently opened the doors to so many
mainland Chinese and Indians because it believed that they would be
more culturally acceptable to the locals.
The major question was whether the minority Malays would object
to the inflow from India and China.
As history turned out, the racial dimension to the immigration
did not materialise because the policy was widely opposed by the
vast majority of Singaporeans.
When the Malays saw their fellow Singaporeans — particularly
Chinese — were staunch critics, they were somewhat reassured that
it was not a racial issue, said a polytechnic lecturer.
"A race conflict could have happened had the local Chinese
rooted for more immigrants from China and Singaporean Indians
wanted more mainland Indians," the academician said. But that never
occured.
On the contrary, the angriest condemnations of the influx of
Chinese and Indian workers came from the local Chinese and Indians
respectively.
It removed a potential racial sting when the minority Malays and
Indians found that they were not opposing the policy by
themselves.
Support shown for 'brother' Singaporeans
I had noticed over the years that Singaporean Chinese were more
vocal in condemning the policy than the Malays. The same applies to
the local Indians against the inflow of job-seeking professionals
from India.
The Zhou Hou incident, sensitive because it touched on race, has
shown how well Singaporeans have integrated.
An online discussion on whether the Chinese here would help a
Malay if he was assaulted by a Chinese mainlander produced a
largely "yes" answer and the following sample comments.
** "I feel closer to my Malay and Indian Singaporean
brothers whom I grew up with, whom I served national service (NS)
with, than some mainland Chinese."
** "I am a Singaporean Chinese. Any Chinese foreigner who
dares to assault my Malay Singaporean brother will have to answer
to my fist. We Singaporean Chinese and Malays did NS together.
Chinese or not Chinese, the fact is we are Singaporeans."
** "I am not a racist but I am most certainly a nationalist.
In the event of a dispute between a foreigner and a Singaporean,
whether he is Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian, I will take the
side of the Singaporean 99% of the time."
** "It is heartening to see so many brothers standing up for
our local 'Mats' (Malays) against bullying foreigners including
from China and India. Life with our local 'Mats' went a long way
from kampung days."
At one stage the minorities were fearful that immigration could
turn Singapore into a "province of China". Nevertheless,
Singaporeans seem to say: "No way — not now, not ever."
