On white people telling Singaporeans what to do

Singapore (and the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew) has been frequently criticised for its dismal state of human rights. Primarily, the criticisms come from the West. A lot of Singaporeans see it as an attempt to impose "Western morals" on an undoubtedly Asian culture like Singapore.

I think it's a commendable thing for Singaporeans to recognise the necessary sacrifices in our founding years to become the economic success we are today. Like it or not, past policies and previous iron-fisted ways have indeed brought us to where we are today. I don't think I'll be in the position to blog about feminism, LGBT rights of freedom of speech in the first place if I were uneducated, stuck in a squatter house and dying of cholera. :) Or worse, in a war-torn Singapore that faces the risk of getting annexed everyday because we don't have a capable military.

However, as heated as this discussion may be, and as much as many Singaporeans have disdain for Western intervention, I fear we may all be missing an important message behind this conversation.

We've been too busy trying to defend ourselves, what we were in Mr Lee's era, that we've forgotten to ask ourselves a few important questions.

1. Who is disadvantaged by the lack of civil rights in Singapore?

There remain many groups who are marginalised in Singapore society. The LGBT community, I dare say women, minority races, and especially migrant workers and domestic helpers still face discrimination in a spectrum of ways ranging from harassment to outright abuse.

But it doesn't matter. I can go on and on about how society needs feminism/activism/stricter labor laws but I suspect Singaporeans, especially Chinese Singaporeans, have no idea what marginalisation really is.

While we have laws against speech that degrades any race or religion and we've no less been educated on the racial riots in 1964, Singaporeans have barely explored the topic of discrimination outside of what they've been taught.

Don't be racist to prevent racial riots? How about don't be racist because other races are also people?

We look racially and religiously harmonious on the outside, but Chinese Singaporeans are anything BUT tolerant. You know how I know this? Because I listen to the stories of Malay/Indian Singaporeans everyday. Because I've seen foreign students in Singapore face racial discrimination. Because some place that I used to work outright practised racial discrimination in employment (it was a recruitment firm that only wanted to sell Singaporean Chinese candidates on the basis that "Malays and Indians were lazy"). Employment discrimination is HIGHLY ILLEGAL in Singapore.

The underlying problem is that Singaporeans were not educated on empathy. Try being a Singaporean on Singaporean social media pages for a day, all you see are people with different opinions yelling at each other. It's so rare to see anyone on these comment threads pause to think, "does that fella I'm yelling at actually have a point?" Throw in a couple of Banglas, Filipinos, PRC Chinese and Vietnamese people into the equation to fuck shit up a little, and watch racism/xenophobia explode in an array of ugly colours.

How can we expect to integrate with other nationalities if we cannot even handle CMIO?

My point is, we can never understand the experiences of marginalised groups until we're willing to hear their experiences. We simply need to acknowledge that the standard "rags to riches" narrative of the average Singaporean Chinese does not apply to everyone here. Insisting you don't need civil liberties doesn't change the fact that other groups aren't as fortunate and need to live with basic human dignity.

2. What is Singaporean/Chinese/Asian culture anyway?

Funny how people like to bring up the Western/Asian values dichotomy everytime issues like gay marriage or minimum wage are brought up. It is almost as if values are things that are set in stone rather than something fluid, prone to influence by so many factors: colonialism/civil rights movements/economic power etc.

Honestly, I am now very wary of people who describe themselves as "traditional" or "conservative". That word has been misused so often I've come to see the word "traditional" as a euphemism for "misogynistic", "right-wing", "narrow-minded" and "homophobic".

Guy: "I'm a traditional Chinese guy..."

Me: "Shit."

I had this interesting discussion with some commentators on LimpehFT's blog, Who gets the right to dictate what Singaporean or Asian values are anyway? Interestingly, somebody brought up the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty (618 -907 AD) was as Chinese as you could get culturally. Yet, it was so different to other Confucian-based eras because women were almost on equal footing with men. They were well-educated, had political standing, wore cleavage-revealing dresses and were sexually liberal across the Tang court. The only woman Emperor of China, along with her woman Prime-Minister Shangguan Wan-er, hailed from that dynasty.

If you think women exist to fill the role of a housewife and mother because it is "Chinese tradition", well the Chinese people of the Tang Dynasty certainly don't agree with you.

Empress Wu Zetian was a monarch in a traditionally patriarchial Chinese society. Btw, she was having sex with young 17 year old ministers at the age of 70. Talk about liberal.

You know, if you think about it, almost everything under the sun can be justified if you hide behind "tradition"- black slavery was American tradition, forced conversion of gay people is Christian tradition (in some parts of the world) and killing people who disagree with authority was the tradition of almost every kingdom that ever existed.

And I find it ironic that Chinese-valued Singaporeans are educated in English, speaking English on a daily basis, barely know anything about Chinese history yet want to cite "Asian traditions" when others urge them to move away from prejudices against race and sexual orientation.

Finally, I don't know who gets to dictate what Singaporean values are (I suspect they only come into existence when faced with the "threat" of Western liberalism) but Singaporeans are hardly a monolithic entity. Some people like TRS, some like The Straits Times, some like Hokkien Mee and others like Roti Prata. Hence I am quite perplexed everytime someone calls us a "conservative" society, "not ready for ...." whatever you name it appears we're not ready for it cos it's in our culture. Ok. It makes me wonder if I'm considered a true blue Singaporean on that account. I am a feminist (meaning I'm pro-gay rights and I disagree with gender-based conscription), I am liberal, I don't enjoy Jack Neo movies that much and there's just so much I'd like to change about Singapore. What does that make me?

We need to be careful when treating culture like an absolute, especially when the humanity of a marginalised group (i.e. LGBTs) is at stake.

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All that said, I love Singapore. Yet I'm disappointed by how we so badly fail to grasp complex concepts like culture and social evolution. Most specifically, we don't even realise we're dealing with complex concepts.

As much as I don't like being judged through the lens of Americanised societies- people who don't fully understand our history, maybe there is an important underlying message in what they're trying to tell us.

I see it as this: Western nations, with their long history and abundant resources and manpower, have managed to reach a level of economic success to be able to deal with higher order needs. And from the point of view of someone who has achieved that, they are trying to tell us civil liberties are important in any first world nation.

The question I think we ought to ask ourselves now is, "Can we afford to think about this now? If not now, when?"