Meritocracy in Singapura: The Continued Suppression of The Malays

Transcript:

We know that the PAP banned Malays from enlisting in National Service even though they claimed all male youths would be enlisted.

Now, some people think this is an old issue.

That we should move on.

But the effects are still ongoing.

The damage continues across generations.

When Malays were excluded from NS from 1967 till the early 1980s, they were stuck.

They waited…some for almost 10 years , not able to get permanent work or further their studies…thinking they would be enlisted soon.

While Chinese and Indian youths were called for service, served, left, and got on with their jobs or university, thousands of Malay youths were denied a future.

This exclusion depressed their socio-economic status.

And that shaped everything after.

Because they could not get work or study from 17 to about 25 or 26 years old, Malay youths ultimately had lower income than the Chinese and Indians.

With lower income, they had less ability to provide for their families.

As the study “Unequal Returns to Social Capital” shows, this suppression carries on.

And this in turn led to less resources for their children’s education.

As Chua and Ng noted:

“One inequality leads to another in the sense that unequal access to institutions (such as good schools and well-resourced families) produces unequal access to social capital.

Institutional access determines network access, and Malays have less of both.”

Even today, Malay graduates know fewer university-trained professionals.

They have fewer connections to business, professionals or power.

Less access to elite networks.

So no… it’s not just in the past.

This is what systemic inequality looks like.

It compounds. It passes on.

Because when a community is suppressed for decades, you do not overcome it by pretending it did not happen.

We need to confront the suppression of the Malays.

That is the only way we can move forward, Insha Allah.

#meritocracy #malay #singapore

Follow us on: