Chinese Privilege in Singapore: Understanding the Invisible Knapsack

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide an understanding of the term, ‘Chinese privilege’; a term only fairly recently coined in 2014 but have already stimulated active debates in the public domain on its existence and what it entails. The reason the term Chinese privilege had triggered active discussions on it is because Singapore is known to be a multiracial and meritocratic society, where one is rewarded based on their own efforts, regardless of race, language or religion. As such, the term challenges this belief in meritocracy in Singapore, that the Chinese, have an advantage over other racial groups on the basis of race. However, despite the active discussion on the term, there are still varied understandings of what it actually meant, partly because there is not much weight given to seriously unpack the term in academia as of yet. Furthermore, when the minority racial groups articulate it in concrete terms from the day-to-day experiences, to the Chinese, these “privileges” remain mostly invisible. Thus, this paper presents findings from existing academic literature revolving racial relations in Singapore, from interviewing individuals from different racial groups and from the existing discussions on Chinese privilege in Singapore, and hopes that by combining these “voices”, the reader will get a sense of it meant. This paper presents that despite the varied understandings of the term, an understanding of what it means is starting to take shape, giving it a sense of coherence and visibility to what was once, invisible.