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Anonymous

16 Sep 2020

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How can we, as a society, move towards providing equal job opportunities for all, especially in terms of race?

As a Chinese, I realised I have taken my majority privilege in Singapore for granted. Some of my peers from other races have gotten rejected for part time jobs simply because they do not speak Mandarin. I understand that Singapore has a majority Chinese, so it makes sense to want to hire someone Mandarin speaking, but yet again, that's not really fair... Thoughts?

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I think we can start looking at the business model of MNCs. They are more willing to accept diversity.

Broadly, I think an interesting approach that might work is ensuring the HR departments are filled with people from diverse backgrounds. However, that's again to the discretion of the companies so its unlikely it would happen.

I don't think being rejected for not speaking Mandarin is a form of discrimination though. Its more of the lack of a skillset required for the said job. I'm sure if someone of Chinese descent who could not speak Mandarin tried to get the job, or if an Indian who could, they would likely not get or get the job respectively.

I think sadly, being the Chinese majority does entail that we have an advantage in that speaking our language is considered a more valuable skillset. To bridge this, minorities may want to consider picking up Mandarin as a third language or simply choosing a field where that's unimportant. There's no systemic discrimination here, its more of something that occurs by phenomenon so there isn't really anything we can do about it.

Starting in our own small world.

are we ourselves really 100% free of

stereotypes? I guess not.

...

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