What are the Problems Posed by Sociocultural Diversity in Singapore?

In a sociocultural diverse society, there are many opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact. With more interaction between different cultural groups, misunderstandings can sometimes surface due to people’s lack of understanding and erroneous assumptions. As a result, sociocultural diversity can lead to negative impacts such as racism and xenophobia, resulting in possible disharmony and cause serious social problems such as the erosion of trust and weakening of social cohesion between people.

Sociocultural diversity can lead to racism, which is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed at someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”. Racism can cause increased tensions and conflict among people as it breeds feelings of resentment as people may feel ostracised due to unjust discrimination. It has profound effects on the people who are on the receiving end of racism as it hurts their freedom and dignity

For example, Sunil, a Sri Lankan who spent eight years living in the UK, faced discrimination when finding an apartment as he was rejected by at least four landlords because they felt that Indians “always cook smelly curries” and “are not people who are house proud” despite Sunil’s assurances that Sri Lanka was not India and he would be outside all day. Such discriminations and stereotypes reflect badly on Singapore’s reputation of a society free of racial discrimination (“regardless of race, language or religion”) and are not representative of the entire community. Sociocultural diversity can also lead to xenophobia, which means fear and hatred of strangers or of anything that is strange or foreign and is usually built on the existing prejudices prevalent in a society.

One of the major social impacts of xenophobia is that it breeds a hostile and distrusting society and Singapore, being a sociocultural diverse country that is dependent on foreign talent to sustain its economy, xenophobia negatively affects Singapore’s efforts to continue attracting foreign talent to Singapore as well as companies to set up subsidiaries here, and in turn, has a negative impact on the economy.

One example of xenophobia occurred when many Singaporeans posted anti-immigration or xenophobic comments as they felt that the mediation outcome “Indian family was allowed to cook curry only when the Chinese family was not home since the Chinese family could not stand the smell of curry” was unjust and extremely restrictive as the Indian family’s rights to lead the law-abiding lifestyle of their choice was infringed. This quickly escalated into a xenophobic attack on foreigners in general as many comments in the “Cook a Pot of Curry” page on Facebook, are negative and flame the Chinese nationals with some extremist comments for the Chinese nationals to go back to their country even though most Chinese nationals are not like the PRC family in the incident.

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