Performative Anti-Racism in Singapore

Joshua Chiang - A couple of weeks ago, a non-Chinese made a...

"A couple of weeks ago, a non-Chinese made a twitter post criticizing Chinese weddings while saying how weddings of other cultures are more fun. The post went moderately viral, and drew flak from some Chinese people seeing it as racist.

And some of arguments went like, eh how come Chinese people cannot criticize non-Chinese weddings but the reverse can? DOUBLE STANDARDS WOR!!!!

Cut to the weekend that just passed. This Rice Media article highlighted an issue that's been going on for quite some time, which is that of people speaking Singlish mis-spelling loan words from non-Chinese language. Of course got people say, but it's SInglish!

Then this Super Woke Asian (no relation to the person who posted on Twitter about Chinese weddings), did some sibeh tokong social experiment where he purposely mangled common Singlish words originating from Chinese dialects, and predictably people who don't get it tried correcting him.

The point of course is HAHAHA SEE DOUBLE STANDARDS.

(Which is kinda weird cos were the people who tried correcting him OUTRAGED?)

Which is applicable only when you see people only for their group identities. When you think that the actions of a person from one race is representative of everyone in that group.

Because, in the first example given, what makes you think that the Chinese people who criticize the weddings of other races are the same people who will get offended if people criticize Chinese weddings?

And do you think the people who defended the mispelling of non-Chinese words used in Singlish context would be the same people who get upset if Chinese words were (and had been btw) similarly mangled within Singlish?

You'd think that someone who is privileged enough to have an education at RI would be able to know that.

Public intellectual some more."