1/ Here's my quick translation of today's @zaobaosg editorial on racism in #Singapore.
tl;dr It attributes racist incidents to #Covid19 frustrations, social media, and Critical Race Theory, described as an imported idea encouraging racist hatred against white people.
I don't read @zaobaosg often, but from what I've seen, this is in character for Singapore's Chinese language daily broadsheet.
3/ According to @zaobaosg logic, racism is the fault of everything but racist systems/structures, and long-held prejudices. While it notes in its opening paragraph that recent incidents were perpetrated by Chinese people, it doesn't bother to examine what that indicates.
4/ It doesn't talk about the harm caused to minorities who have been subjected to racism, but borrows a US right-wing bogeyman to suggest that Chinese people are being unfairly demonised via imported ideas of Critical Race Theory.
5/ This is likely the newspaper that our Chinese-reading aunties, uncles, and grandparents are reading daily.
How are we going to honestly and meaningfully fight racism when the mainstream media is enthusiastically feeding this sort of horsepoop to people?
6/ Last year, @zaobaosg published a forum letter suggesting the outbreak of #Covid19 in dormitories was due to "cultural/lifestyle habits" of migrant workers from "backward" countries. In defence, the editor said that it didn't represent the paper's view: asiaone.com/digital/zaobao…
7/ Well, this piece I've translated today isn't a forum letter. It's the @zaobaosg editorial. It *does* represent the view of the publication.
1/ This @straits_times headline and graphic is so thoughtless and frames this issue in such a damaging way.
Throughout the article, it's made clear that these transnational families are more financially disadvantaged than families where both parents are citizens, which leads to particular stressors and challenges. This is a class issue, not a nationality issue.
It really isn't about "the mother's origins", but about income levels and marginalisation. The professor makes this point, but it's lower down in the article and, with that headline + graphic, too little too late.
On the individual level, it's "nice" to see people donating to help others in need. The local media loves to highlight this; the angle is usually how Singaporeans are generous and caring and empathetic, really.
What's less examined is *why* we're crowdfunding in the first place.
Donating is a nice thing as an individual, but as a society we should be asking if it's just that a delivery rider doesn't get work injury compensation/accident insurance 'cos we have a gig economy that leaves companies free of responsibilities for the workers who prop them up.
Local media focused on how encouraging it is to see Singaporeans chip in to raise money for Piang Ngaih Don's family after her case came up in the press. That might assuage our conscience, but I'm sure her family would have preferred her to *not* be murdered by her employer.
1/ Unlike this time last year, when Singapore's epidemic curve shot up and we were seeing new cases in the 100s/1000s (mostly within migrant worker dorms), the number of cases have come right down now, and tend to be mostly imported cases.
2/ Of course, this drop in cases + vaccination roll-out doesn't mean that we should get complacent and think that #Covid19 is over, because it isn't.
But what are we doing doubling down so hard on #Covid19 tech and surveillance?
3/ Early last year, the government introduced TraceTogether, a contact-tracing app that works via Bluetooth to ping close contacts.
While thinking further about @the_ayeminthant's piece, as well as looking at responses to my own piece on @splicenewsroom (thank you everyone!) I'm reminded of this experience that I had years ago... (here comes the 🧵)
1/ This was back in the day when I still thought that freelancing might only be a temporary arrangement for me. A well-established and respected Western, English language media company was hiring a Southeast Asia Correspondent, so I thought that I'd apply.
2/ The job ad (obviously) stated that fluency in English was necessary. But it also said that proficiency in a Southeast Asian language would be a strong advantage.
When the ruling party in your effectively one-party state country sees its succession plan go up in smoke, you don't wait until the regular Saturday slot to send out your newsletter weekly wrap. Here we go with this week's #wethecitizens: wethecitizens.ghost.io/not-according-…
One thing I didn't add about Lawrence Wong was that he was the minister who talked about "culture wars" when asked about MOE's policy re: transgender students. That's one black mark against his name, although I'm not sure how many (esp. older) Singaporeans would make a note.
With HSK out of the running for the premiership, people are now going to be reading tea leaves and placing (real/figurative) bets on who’s up.
I argued in #wethecitizens that this isn’t the most important question for Singapore.
Heng Swee Keat no longer in the running to be Singapore’s next prime minister. He says the result his team got in East Coast GRC in the last general election is not the reason why he chose to step aside.
What’s not mentioned here is that LHL *could* have stuck to the schedule of stepping down in 2022; some have argued that his pledge to remain (made in the middle of the GE2020 campaign) was a response to lacklustre public enthusiasm for Heng and the 4G.
After all, LHL had already allowed the 4G to oversee the #Covid19 situation, which is why we kept seeing Lawrence Wong at those briefings. If there was confidence in the 4G, LHL could have stepped down at 70 as promised. straitstimes.com/politics/4g-le…