The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations, Summer 1998, Vol. 1(3)   Originally Posted 6/30/98

Academic Research Report   The Role of Dominant Ethnicity in Racism: Reportage on Chinese Rule in Multi-Racial Singapore Linda K. Fuller, Ph.D. Associate Professor Communications Department Worcester State College

 

A version of this article was presented at the 14th Biannual Convention of the World Communication Association in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1997.
 

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Abstract

Beginning with a discussion on hegemonic racism, an analysis of how the Republic of Singapore tackled the problem of being a predominantly Chinese country in a Malay-dominated area when it became independent in 1965 is used as a case study of dominant ethnicity in terms of racism. The paper describes communications efforts on the parts of both Singaporean citizens and government to keep harmony--updated, and in many ways contradicted, with reportage on a survey of racism at their university in which 80 Singaporean students participated.
 

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Urbanization, technological development, industrialization, rising mass literacy, and increased mass media consumption are expected to have a leveling effect on ethnic differences, thereby leading to an eventual decline in ethnic diversity.
Chew Sock Foon, Ethnicity and Nationality in Singapore (1987), p.9

Hegemonic racism

In his mapping of dominant racisms, David Theo Goldberg (1990, p.xii) points out that racism has usually been considered "an ahistorical, unchanging social condition always presupposing claims about biological nature and inherent superiority or ability." Teun A. van Dijk (1993, p.122) sees racism as a form of group dominance in terms of power abuse, or "self-interested control over and as a limitation of access to socially valued resources (residence, citizenship, housing, jobs, wealth, education, respect, etc.)" It manifests itself in a number of ways, typically based on long-standing patterns of inequality and discriminatory prejudices whose origins may not even be remembered. Racism's societal "expression, enactment, and legitimation" may take place, as Smitherman-Donaldson and van Dijk (1988, p.17) point out, at a symbolic level.

Sociologist Joseph F. Healey (1995, pp.277-8) has posited these themes for analyzing dominant-minority relations:

1.The present condition of a minority group reflects its contact situation, especially the nature of its competition with the dominant group and the differential in power resources between groups at the time of contact.

2.Minority groups created by colonization experience economic and political inequalities that tend to last longer and to be more severe than those experienced by minority groups created by immigration.

3.For all minority groups, both colonized and immigrant, power and economic differentials and barriers to upward mobility are especially pronounced for groups identified by racial or physical characteristics, as
opposed to cultural or linguistic traits.

4.Relationships between dominant and minority groups reflect the economic and political characteristics of the larger society and change as those characteristics change.

5.The development of group relations, both in the past and for the future, can be analyzed in terms of assimilation and pluralism.

6.The "mood" of the dominant group over the last 25 years combines a rejection of blatant racism with the belief that modern American society is nondiscriminatory and that further reforms or special programs or treatment for minority groups are unjustified.

7.Since World War II, minority groups have gained significantly more control over the direction of group relationships.
 

"Racism is maintained from generation to generation not simply because of economic gain and the reservation of white material privilege, but also by the necessity to maintain a belief in white racial superiority," Bowser, Auletta, and Jones (1993, p.17) point out in their reference to white dominance on American campuses. They add, "Racism is maintained from generation to generation not simply because of economic gain and the preservation of white material privilege, but also by the necessity to maintain a belief in white racial superiority. The maintenance of physical racial purity grows out of a social identity built around our peculiar physical definition of race. The necessity to maintain racism also grows out of the way in which this identity must be insulated in order to remain unchanged." Lucius Outlaw (1990, p.59), drawing on the works of Gramsci (e.g., 1971), questions the idea of race as, "An obvious, biologically or metaphysically given, thereby self-evident reality--to challenge the presumptions sedimented in the 'reference schemata' that, when socially shared, become common sense, whether through a group's construction of its life world and/or through hegemonic imposition."

Often associated with Marxist cultural theory, hegemony most often refers to domination or rule by a nation or state, a socio-political mix of culture and ideology. According to Celeste Michelle Condit (1994, p.205), " The use of hegemony has become primarily a popular substitute for the older buzzword, dominant ideology." For purposes here, the main point is this: overwhelmingly in Singapore, the Chinese prevail.

Background to the Singaporean case study

History, geography, politics, and social principles. It has been called the "Singapore Success Story." A brief outline of its historical, political-economic, and socio-cultural complexion might help explain why. Origins of the Southeast Asian island city-state can be traced to the 7th century AD, when it was known as Temasek ("Sea Town"), a trading center of Sumatra's ancient Srivijaya Empire. Over the next few centuries there were struggles for the country by Java and Siam, the Dutch, Portuguese, and British; but history was made in 1819 when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles selected Singapore as a British maritime base, developing it as a free port. It remained under British colonial rule for 110 years, until defeat in 1942 by Japanese forces. In 1946 the country demanded self-determination, and as of 1959 it became a self-governing state, joining with the Malaysian Federation in 1963. On August 9, 1965, the Republic of Singapore became an independent republic.

Its strategic location, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) north of the Equator, have helped make Singapore an important crossroads route for East-West trading. Having just recently achieved the distinction of being the world's busiest port,⁽¹⁾ Singapore's ideal situation also puts the small island (616 sq. km, or 235 sq miles) in a time zone which allows global telecommunications transactions from London to Tokyo in a working day. The economy can best be typed as one of free enterprise, with some 4,000 multinational corporations having operations there, and its massive banking system numbers among the world's key financial centers.

Politically, the avowedly anti-Communist People's Action Party (PAP) has been in control of the government since 1959, mainly associated with now Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Writing of the Lee legacy, Milne and Mauzy (1990, p.176) write: "A high degree of state control has been possible because the government knows what it wants and takes steps to get it, in conjunction with an efficient civil service, a tightly organized party, extensive grass-roots organizations, periodic 'campaigns' on particular issues, and control of the mass media."

Probably nowhere is the effect of the PAP government's success more noticeable, or more likely to help gain loyalty, than in its public housing policies. In an effort to mix various ethnic and religious groups together, as a means of preventing antagonisms among groups, it established a quota system of sorts that has become a model for other societies. The maintenance of racial harmony in Singapore can best be explained by shifting the emphasis from ethnic to national identity. W.E. Willmott (1989, p.589) cites how, while the purpose of integrating different ethnic groups in the high-rises may have been for integration, a more important result of the national housing policy has been the provision "for citizens of all income levels the opportunity of owning a flat and therefore of 'having a stake in the country.'"