Thinking With Thambis

Morality -  Basically the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. What really determines right from wrong and is it always so clear cut? Episode 10 took awhile but your Thambi's put themselves in a bit of a dilemma this week, so tune in and find out what got us so worked up!

Singa, the Courtesy Lion, was Singapore's mascot for the government's campaign to encourage kindness and graciousness. How sad is it that we needed a government campaign? I guess eventually Singa realised this so he retired in 2013. To your Thambis, Singa was always a reminder of what was wrong with our society's priorities, but what he said in his resignation could not be more true, "We are responsible for the sort of society we encourage and create". 

Covid-19 related content is everywhere, and honestly we're about as over it as you are. We've been inundated with life and apologise for the delay but in this weeks episode, your thambis reflect on what they have learned from being in lockdown during the pandemic.  

We're not going to say too much about this episode because we don't want to give anything away apart from the title!  It is a pretty crazy ride as we explore our train of thoughts stemming from a mini disaster Spancer had earlier in the week! Enjoy!

Hey guys we're back! We took a little two week hiatus to catch up with our own lives and catch our breaths a little after that monster segment on racism. It was hard not to get invested in such a difficult yet familiar topic but we resume with our normal programming now, serving up our  blend of unfiltered and unapologetic thoughts on Singlish and the fake accent that friend of yours suddenly developed after studying abroad. 

This is our final episode on the topic of Racism and it picks up where we left off from episode 4! Our thought journey exploring Racism was honest, confronting and emotional so we thank you for joining us on it! 

The first three episodes of TWT covered racism and privilege, and many of you have reached out to us asking us how to deal with it. Honestly we don't have all the answers but, you've certainly got us thinking. For this episode we brought in a special guest to try and tackle the topic. 

It's only in the last several years that the term "Chinese" Privilege became part of the discourse in Singapore when discussing issues pertaining to race. In our last episode we spoke about what that privilege means for those of us who don't have it. In this episode we dive deeper and explore how this Privilege came to be! Yes we kept this episode short so that you guys can go and do some reading for yourselves! 

For more reading, do check out:

Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Controlby Chua Beng Huat, (2003)//Chapter 8 of Ethnic Relations and Nation-Building in Southeast Asia: The Majority's Sacrifices and Yearnings: Chinese-Singaporeans and the Dilemmas of Nation-Building by Eugene K. Tan, (2004)//Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-building Projectby Michael D. Barr and Zlatko Skrbis, (2008)//Singapore in the Malay World by Lily Z. Rahim, (2009)//Confronting 'Chinese Privilege' in  Singapore by Hydar Saharuddin, (2016)//Races without racism?: everyday race relations in Singaporeby Selvaraj Velayutham, (2018)//Chinese Privilege in Singapore: Understanding the Invisible Knapsackby Christopher Chee, (2018)

We were made painfully aware of our race from a very young age, but what even is race? Is there any basis for a classification of people by race? We then discuss how race can confer certain privileges to those in Singaporean society and what it means for those of us who don't have that luxury. 

The Singaporean pledge states, "Regardless of race or religion" , but lets think about that for a bit. This episode was a hard one for both of us to record give our own personal experiences with the subject, but we decided to go ahead anyway given all that was going on in the world especially with the BLM movement in full swing.