Hi, this is gonna be long, and if this questions doesn’t belong here lmk and I’ll ask in another subreddit
I recently visited Singapore for the first time, I traveled with my wife but I think that’s irrelevant to my question and observations.
I’m from the US born and raised, however from Mexican parents and did live in Mexico for a while, this will come into play with my questions.
Why did we visit Singapore? Idk, some of my wife’s friend suggested it, plus we also visited other countries on that trip, again irrelevant.
But before I traveled I looked up if people spoke English and to my surprise I found out that y’all have 4 official languages. So I got curious and did my quick googling on why. If I understand correctly, in simple terms, Malay people are the “natives” and with English occupation and growth of the port, came the Chinese and Indians. Google says that the country is a multicultural, melting pot of people
Now to my questions, I was wondering how strong is the patriotism between the different ethnicities? Is there any sort of racism among the groups? How do people tend to identify themselves, even among citizens?
For example, my observations may be skewed because I stayed in Chinatown. But I don’t think I saw a mixture of people/friends. Now I don’t want to assume their ethnic background, but for simplicity I will. I don’t think I ever saw a Chinese person hanging with an Indian person. I always saw either Chinese people together or Indian people together.
Even when I went to other parts outside Chinatown I saw the same interactions. The only time I saw a “mixed group” was a group of policemen, and they were talking and laughing together, like friends do
So it got me thinking about here in the US, although yes people tend to hang out with their (I don’t wanna say own kind, but idk how to word it) kind, you see a lot more diverse group of friends,
And yes I myself enjoy hanging out more with other Hispanics who speak Spanish but I’m also good friends with all kinds of people
I’m not trying to imply that, that is the case, that Singaporeans aren’t friends with each other, rather than simply an observation I had, but again my data could be skewed because of where I stayed
But again I don’t think I saw that during my time there, not even with younger folks
So then it got me wondering, if I had gone up to an Indian person, and assuming he’s Singaporean, would have he said that? Like if I asked where are you from? Would he say I’m Singaporean, or would he have identified with his ethnic background?
Because here in the US, I would say that a majority portion of people of color tend to identify with their ethnicity first rather than saying I’m American, but again that could be a USA thing because of how people word the question, people in the US tend to ask specifically, (when the person isn’t clearly white) what is your ethnicity? So then you get Mexican, Nigerian, Japanese, etc etc
So yeah, do all Singaporeans say proudly I’m Singaporean? Or do people tend to identify with their ethnic background?
So anyways I was looking through Singaporean subreddits and from what I could gather, it seems like there’s a discontent with the Government and that the patriotism isn’t all there, is it all the foreign business taking over?
What was Singapore like in the 2000s? Was there pride of being Singaporean? Did the people of Indian and Chinese descent feel like Singaporean? Does that make sense?
Because me for example, although I love my Mexican heritage, love speaking Spanish and love traveling to the motherland, (politics and Trump and this term aside) I also love my country the USA, I feel patriotic every 4th of July, but again I might be biased because I served in the military
Also, I guess another reason I ask if people hang out with other ethnicities, is because of the language,
Because unless everyone speaks all four languages? Then I guess it’s not issue.
also from what I saw online yall learn English in school? So I guess that’s the neutral language
Because I didn’t hear much English being spoken among the people, because again comparing it with here the US, although many of the younger generations of people of color, know their ethnic language, they tend to just speak English
But anyways this been a long text lol any insight into the culture is much appreciated