Singapore wonders: is brownface racist?

I've had a crazy-busy-unstoppable week that involved the fantastic Sewanee Writers Conference, a little downtime in Nashville, then coming back to Boston to move apartments---in the midst of which, every morning I woke up to find that my phone had exploded with the latest (and increasingly ridiculous) developments in what I'm going to call the brownface saga in Singapore.

As the title of this blog post states, Singapore wonders: is brownface racist?

The longer version: In 2019, in the midst of its (neocolonial) bicentennial year and in the lead-up to its 54th (postcolonial) National Day, Singapore---ostensibly a democratic, modern, urban and multiracial society---is still trying to figure if brownface is racist.

More agile minds than mine have provided excellent commentaries on the brownface saga as it unfolded, so I'm just going to summarise the links (last updated 13 October 2019).

First, some handy primers on the meaning and implications of brownface in the Singapore context (it's tragic that these are still needed in 2019!):

• Rachel Pang, "What is brownface and how is it racist?" (29 July 2019)
• AWARE provides "a handy flowchart for anyone considering doing brownface" (2 August 2019)

A brief recap of what went down:

• Faris Joraimi documented the appearance of a NETS advertisement for epaysg.com using brownface (26 July 2019)
• As Visakan Veerasamy and Yogesh Tulsi have pointed out, this is at least the sixth brownface incident in the last seven years.
• The creative agencies involved in making the ad, but not the client NETS, apologised "for any hurt that was unintentionally caused." (28 July 2019)
• Singapore YouTube artists Preetipls and Subhas made a rap video, "K. Muthusamy", responding to the brownface advertisement (29 July 2019)
• Someone promptly made a police report about the video. As Kirsten Han observed, "‪A government initiative can employ a Chinese actor to put on brownface and just get away with a half-assed apology, but a satirical rap video by actual brown people in response gets investigated for allegedly containing offensive content?!"
• This comic at A Good Citizen also captures the preposterousness of the situation.
• Or as Ruby Thiagarajan observes, "the backlash against calling out racism turned out to be worse than the backlash against racism".

The backlash continued, focusing almost exclusively (as of 4 August 2019) on the rap video, not on the original brownface advertisement:

• IMDA sent notices to Facebook users to remove their links to the video (31 July 2019). Jolovan Wham provided screenshots instead.
• "Rapper Subhas Nair removed from CNA musical documentary over 'offensive' rap video", TODAY (31 July 2019).
• Aqil Haziq Mahmud, "Videos that 'attack another race' cross the line, says Shanmugam on rap video by Preetipls", Channel NewsAsia (30 July 2019)
• "NETS apologises for 'any hurt' caused by controversial E-Pay ad", Channel NewsAsia (1 August 2019)
• Preetipls and Subhas's apology, posted on Facebook and Instagram (2 August 2019)
• "Preetipls, Subhas Nair's statement 'a mock, insincere apology': MHA", Channel NewsAsia (2 August 2019). MHA, apparently, decides what reality is in Singapore. Talk about gaslighting.
• A joint statement from Preetipls and Subhas Nair (3 August 2019)
• Jalelah Abu Baker, "Preetipls video: Racism 'a basic fact' in Singapore, but situation much better, improving, says Shanmugam", Channel NewsAsia (4 August 2019)

Some excellent commentaries on the situation:

• Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh on "a story of Shanmugam attacking the (hilarious) Indian whistle blowers rather than addressing Singapore’s Chinese-majority racism" (31 July 2019)
• Alfian Sa'at on feeling penatlah, the deep fatigue faced by minorities in Singapore, because "when we say that your amusement is the cause of our pain, we get told that your amusement is more important than our pain" (31 July 2019)
• Crystal Abidin, "Minority influencers, satire, and subversive frivolity" (31 July 2019)
• Ng Yi-Sheng draws a parallel to the Josef Ng performance art piece, Brother Cane, in 1994 (31 July 2019)
• Kirsten Han, "Brownface, rap videos, and race riots" (1 August 2019)
• Ruby Thiagarajan, "Brownface and racism in Singapore", New Naratif (1 August 2019)
• Lakshmi Ganapathi on how Singapore's minorities inhabit what W.E.B. Du Bois called "double consciousness": "... that's how we learn to inhabit the spaces and ways of the majority. Our silence or laughter has never meant that it [racist humor] was ok." (2 August 2019)
• Lim Sun Sun, "Why depicting 'brownface' characters is no joke", Straits Times (paywalled, 3 August 2019)
• Ruby Thiagarajan on how Chinese people can "step up and demonstrate that a Singapore without racism is one that will benefit all of us, not just the minorities" (3 August 2019)
• Faris Joraimi observes, responding to Home Affairs Minister Shanmugam's comments, that "we cannot respond to these tensions the same way we did 20, 30 or even 10 years ago. People are angry and exhausted, and will not stand for the same kind of respectable discourse that fundamentally invalidates and trivialises the hurt of minorities. ... the State still believes we are stuck in the 1960s and acts as if we will riot without its high-handed intervention." (4 August 2019)
• CAPE (Community for Advocacy & Political Education) "presents a primer of 6 infographics reflecting on racism as more than just some 'western SJW thing'" (4 August 2019)
• Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh soundly rejects the argument of those like Margaret Chan (summarised here by Sonny Liew) who try to dismiss the brownface saga as an importation of Western norms. As Vadeketh writes, this "ridiculous line of argument" "seeks to present 'Western-influenced' Singaporeans as uncritical sponges of Western norms" "whenever Singaporean conservatives and chauvinists feel threatened" (7 August 2019)
• Edoardo Liotta, "Two Singaporean Siblings Published A Viral Video Questioning Chinese Privilege. They Were Investigated By Police", VICE (26 September 2019). From the subhead: "In their first-ever interview since the controversy, YouTuber Preetipls and rapper Subhas talk to VICE about their controversial music video that led to a national conversation on race."

Unrelated to the brownface saga, I happened to read two other commentaries on black-white race relations in the US that transpose somewhat if you substitute "Singaporean Chinese men" for "white men":

• Ijeoma Oluo, "The anger of the white male lie", 
• Chris Boeskool, "'‘When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression’", Huffpost (14 March 2016)

I'll keep updating this post as things develop. I'd like to think the situation is winding down, or at least people will refocus on the original brownface advertisement instead---but knowing Singapore in 2019, I'm not optimistic.