Das still remembers an offhand remark from a former colleague who, upon seeing his hairy legs, said that they resembled a monkey’s.
For the 30-year-old ethnic Indian Singaporean postgraduate student, who spoke to This Week in Asia under a pseudonym, the comment reflected a kind of casual insensitivity he said he had encountered as a racial minority in Singapore.
“I would ascribe the confidence of saying such things without having to endure a blowback or to blow it off as a joke to Chinese privilege,” he said, when asked about moments when he felt the majority Chinese population held an unspoken advantage.
His experience aligns with sentiments expressed by some respondents in a new study by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, which sheds light on how Singaporeans of different ages and ethnicities perceive racial inequality – and the very idea of “Chinese privilege” – in the multiracial city state.
Released on Friday, the study surveyed 4,000 residents and found that while only 44.7 per cent of respondents overall said they believed Chinese privilege exists, younger Singaporeans were far more likely to hold the view. Among those aged 18 to 35, seven in 10 said it existed, compared with less than three in 10 of older respondents above 65 years of age, according to the study conducted between April and August last year.
Furthermore, six in 10 Malays and Indians said they believed Chinese Singaporeans enjoy certain advantages, while just four in 10 Chinese respondents held the view.
