Singaporean multiculturalism vs US multiculturalism

# Singaporean multiculturalism vs US multiculturalism In a sentence, US multiculturalism is a melting pot and Singaporean multiculturalism is pluralism. The US the assumption is that all cultures will eventually be subsumed into some larger American culture and works to accelerate that process, while Singapore assumes that all cultures will remain separate and works to maintain harmony between them. Singapore and the US are both societies with many cultures. In the US, culture tends to be roughly captured by the color of your skin and which continent your ancestors were from - European/White, Asian, Black/African, Native American, Indian, Middle Eastern. These divisions roughly line up with appearance more than anything else. In Singapore, official cultural distinctions line up much more directly with people’s actual culture - the primary are Chinese (who could be from anywhere), Malay (who frankly I visually can’t distinguish from other ethnicities), Indian, with your ‘Europeans’ thrown in who are assumed to be expats. The Singaporean government plays a significant role in their approach to multiculturalism. In Singapore, there are racial quotas on each public housing building to make sure that their composition reflects the national composition. The (largely symbolic) office of the president must be occupied by someone of a different race than the previous office holder. On certain streets, the government makes sure religious buildings from all the major religions are represented. Most public holidays are religious/cultural holidays for one culture or another - Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Chinese. The government’s involvement in multiculturalism is at least a result of history and demography. Singapore is a majority-Chinese nation in a primarily Malay/Indonesian Muslim area populated by peoples from across the British empire. Murderous race riots littered the years leading up to Singaporean independence so the issue was front and center in Lee Kuan Yew’s mind. Let’s not beat around the bush - Singaporean race relations are in part kept peaceful at gunpoint. Singapore’s multiculturalism reminds me very much of Dungeon and Dragons. If you imagine a D&D city, you often have the elf quarter, the gnome quarter, etc. Each of these races have their own distinct culture and specialities - gnomes are excellent engineers and tinkerers, elves are attuned to nature, etc. Singapore is similar in both the good ways and the bad ways. There’s a Chinese area, the Indian area, the Malay area, etc. People are not required there, they’re not ghettos. American cities have cultural clusters too but often they are informal and tend to die out as the population melts into the melting pot. Writing this, I realize that there’s a much fuzzier line in Singapore between religion, race, and culture. Americans have an implicit attitude that religion and culture can be decoupled but I think that may be a fantasy. None of this is to say that there is no racism or discrimination in Singapore. It is harder for someone who is not of Chinese or European descent to find an apartment. People sometimes assume that (especially darker skinned) Indians are laborers. #### THIS IS THE PART I COULDN’T WRITE WITHOUT INJECTING POLITICAL OPINION Frankly, the American system feels like an idealistic fiction. The system has two paradoxes created by human nature (which are so taboo to the system that it’s even uncomfortable to write these): different peoples are different and people will always have bias. ‘Wait, the American system embraces differences!’ Yes, as long as they are ‘approved differences’ but then what that means is different depending on who you ask. In the US, whenever a group doesn’t seem to be integrating into ‘American Society’ it’s seen as a dissident problem. But it’s not a problem if there’s no expectation to integrate into a baseline as long as you follow the law. And that leads back to how the Singapore government nakedly enforces multiculturalism and has it built into their constitution. Shit’s complicated. #### END OPINION Head to head pros and cons of the American system v the Singaporean system. The American system lends itself to much more cross-cultural exchange. Fusion restaurants are very popular in the US, while in Singapore they’re given a bit of a stink-eye. The Singaporean system lends itself to much more comfortable conversations about race. If you aren’t trying to maintain a fiction that everybody is the same, you can make jokes and generalizations that people realize don’t apply to the individual. My hunch is that the American system lends itself to more social mobility. The Singaporean system leads to much more cultural vibrancy. You see beautiful temples and mosques and clearly culturally influenced buildings everywhere that the homogenization drive in the US tamps down on. There are also just cultural artifacts all around that would feel gauche in the US system of everybody trying to fit in - from restaurants, to music, to stores. ### Vignettes of Singaporean Multiculturalism * The woman who worked the front desk of my gym always wore a head scarf. During the Christmas season (yes, they actually called it Christmas season instead of holiday season) she wore a[playful reindeer antler head band](https://www.google.com/search?q=reindeer+antler+headband&sxsrf=ALeKk01VSLucSNc5piCnBPnsBOkaMdsW6A:1592145510712&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=qhvrJyI5vPbe8M%253A%252CU4oNGWkDIxoViM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kRJdKvkeiMIQTBWC-zeroQ5IxrXHA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqzeKcxIHqAhWtTTABHSCTDkAQ9QEwAXoECAMQKg&biw=720&bih=766#imgrc=qhvrJyI5vPbe8M:) *on top of her head scarf.* It was a delightful contrast to [the American tendency to remove all religion-specific things in the name of multiculturalism.](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1209828886713917441?s=20) The Singaporean response feels like it embodies the sense of not having your religious/cultural identity threatened by other people’s religions/cultures. * Most buildings put up [*both* clearly Christmas themed decorations *and* clearly Chinese New Year decorations](https://photos.app.goo.gl/MXP98wWjEymKtdYQ9) - in contrast to denatured ‘Holiday Decorations’ in the US. Some buildings in the US do put up Christmas decorations, but it feels like an aggressive move and I don’t think they would ever put up multiple kinds of decorations at once. * A friend who grew up in Singapore showed me a picture of her elementary school class where they each wore the traditional clothes of a ‘buddy’ in the class who was of a different culture. So you have Chinese kids wearing saris, Indian kids wearing Malay hats, etc. Doing this feels like it would a big no-no in the US because of a combination of ‘cultural appropriation’ and the insistence that we’re all the same. ## Questions ## Related [[Singapore could become the Florence of the 21st Century]] [[Where is the intersection of GPTs, Singapore’s unique abilities and appetites from VCs?]] ## References  [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Singaporean+multiculturalism+vs+US+multiculturalism) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Singaporean+multiculturalism+vs+US+multiculturalism)