REGARDLESS OF RACE: INTERCULTURAL DYNAMICS OF RACE AND CLASS WITHIN THE SINGAPORE INDIAN COMMUNITY

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand how Singaporean Indians negotiate the both class and race modalities to create positive spaces for themselves within a context of Chinese privilege in Singapore. This has given rise to race mobility, which refers to how one can transgress the pre-existing socio-cultural understanding of racial categories via class mobility. Though racial categories are fixed in Singapore, their meanings, understandings and perceptions are influenced by one’s class positions. There are more negative than positive stereotypes regarding minorities in Singapore, the latter which were only associated with those who had attained class mobility. Such individuals attain race mobility by virtue of class mobility, rendering race modality a neutral or positive entity. Negative racial stereotypes were disproportionately used to label, identity and objectify minorities from a lower socio-economic position. Informants re-interpreted meritocracy as a way to attain class and race mobility as they perceived that their social disadvantages can be mitigated with effort. Financially secure Malay-Muslims were perceived to be treated better than Indians because of the unity of former’s community. Disunity between sub-ethnic groups, hyper-competitive middle-class ethos has limited the latter’s ability to attain socio-economic mobility as a collective, and thereby race mobility. Informants possessed a sense of alienation towards SINDA because of the fear of displacement as a collective racial group. This, in conjunction with the Malays growing affluence with the perceived help from Mendaki, has made them worried about the position and identity of the Indian community – one that is contingent upon meritocracy.