Racism and stereotyping against Indians in Singapore, especially from Chinese Singaporeans is something that is still very much alive, although everything looks nice and well from appearance. I am not sure why SOME of the Chinese Singaporeans took such a negative view towards Indians.
From my experience, I see a lot of racism and stereotyping against Indians happened even in my company which is so called multinational company. The kind of racism is not the negative physical action against another race but the strong opinion about other races having certain characteristics or making sarcastic remarks. Majority of the staff in my company are Indians and they usually hang among themselves, seldom socialize with the Singaporean Chinese because they think the Chinese Singaporeans are arrogant, superficial and selfish (based on the feedback I got from few Indian friends and colleagues). For example, on Monday morning, there were lots of ppl waiting for the lift. While the lift is packed with some of the Indians, the Chinese, especially the females usually would not want to go in. They rather wait for the next one even though they are running late. Once, my colleagues even commented " Oh my, we are now in Little India". The way they treated the Indians as if they are dirty and smelly. They discriminated against their skin colour , laughed at their Indian accent and also make fun of their dressing sense.
Another example is, all the staff would usually share the biscuits and tidbits located at pantry that are provided by the company. Usually, new biscuits and tidbits will be renewed monthly. By then, my Singaporean Chinese colleagues would brought their own container and flocked into the panty to store some new biscuits that has yet to be opened by someone else. I was curious and asked one of them why they were in such a hurry to store these biscuits. One of them said " Oh, we have to be fast. Otherwise, those Indians might use their hand to open these biscuits. Their hand are dirty, probably they dont even wash their hand after going to the toilet. And we might get food poisoning and they laughed sarcastically." I find these attitude and mindset are ridiculous. I have many Indian friends and also work with most of the Indians in my company. I find that they are smart, friendly, very nice people and are like anyone of us.
I think the problem is because majority of the population in Singapore are Chinese. They have never gone through such experience and they do not understand how it feels to be the minority. Although most of them are well-educated, they seems to lack of moral value and they do not have the moral authority to be racist on others. Necessary steps need to be taken by all parties to tackle racism in order to maintain racial harmony in Singapore.
7 comments:
Quite true, although till now I still do not have any Malay or Indian colleagues, I have observed the same behaviour whenever i'm taking the lift to my office which happens to be on the highest floor. Indians usually dun mind squeezing in. However some Chinese do. Though this doesn't happens in the morning mrts...haha
Haha... Of course it won't happen in the MRT. Cause everyone cant wait for the chance to squeeze into the train to get to work ON TIME. Yesterday, I travelled with my Indian colleague by train to Simei. Then there was this Chinese girl sitting on one of the seat, I quickly went to 'CHOP' two seats and left the seat which is beside the Chinese girl to my Indian friend.To my surprise, my Indian friend chose to sit the other side rather than sitting next to that Chinese lady. I'm curious and asked her why she did that. She said she had seen a young Chinese girl actually made a sarcastic remark to an Indian guy, saying that out of so many seats, why he chose to sit beside her and even commented that he was smelly. That girl's attitude is so unreasonable.
Its sad but its true that most Singaporeans pass racist comments towards other ethinic groups. I am not saying that I am a saint here and had never done it before. I have had my fair share of experiences too. Its the people's mindsets and how they are brought up. I strongly believe that schools and parents should educate the children from young that all races and religions are equal. I am trying to change my behaviour and mindset too.
I guess this is quite true, i am not very sure how it is in the corporate but world but i am told it depends on the company you work for and the person you are. But i have seen this alot in schools were racism is ever present.
I pity the people who limit themselves by being racists. They are missing out so much in life. I have had friends from different countries and you learn so much. I guess if you are limited in your intelligence, you will shut your mind to unfamiliar things. And by this 'intelligence' I do not mean an IQ score, but 'wisdom!'
I agree with letchumi's idea about how to educate children to reduice racism.
It's true, local residents have racism against other ethnic groups, eg, Chinese from China, Indian from India. I have experience to be prejudced before in a shop, the reason was "you dun speak in English". That is the way how local people look down chinese people.
The fact, most the local middle aged, especially males, more likely have racism attitude against other ethnics, yet, young people are much much much better.
Just imagine people from other countries such as China or India came here from far away land just for the sake of earning money and send it back to their family for better life.They got to live far away from their family and what's make them going was just the phone calls which they made few times a week to call back home and to talk to their loved ones. And yet the locals in Singapore are making their life more difficult in foreign land by being racist or prejudice towards them. "They are snobbish, arrogant and selfish". This is what I heard from most of my foreign friends. And many of them have the same mindset that Singapore is not a friendly and warm country to stay, not to mention to settle down here.
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