The practice in Singapore has been rather mixed.ĭuring the days of colonial rule, the British were happy to segregate immigrant races into different living quarters in the city, ostensibly in order to divide and rule the place more easily. The melting pot is often used to describe the US, where past generations of immigrants supposedly became successful by shedding their historical cultural identities and adopting the ways of their new country. Multiculturalism can be defined as a demographic make-up of a country where various cultural divisions are accepted for the sake of diversity.Ī melting pot, on the other hand, is a society where all of the people blend together to form one basic cultural norm based on the dominant culture.Ĭountries like Canada and Australia have often taken pride in their practice of multiculturalism.

This exchange raises another more important issue that Singapore, with its growing diversity and immigrant population, needs to start dealing with: The issue of multiculturalism versus a melting pot social make-up of our country. The paper went on to explain that the Geylang shop signs were in only Chinese for “purely commercial reasons”, as if that were an excuse for their cultural insensitivity. In response, the Straits Times in an editorial slammed Ms Loh as being “xenophobic”, pointing to economically vibrant cities like London and Sydney as evidence that “recruiting foreigners” has brought great benefits to those cities. She cited examples of how almost all new shop signs in Geylang are in Chinese only, fast turning this into a Chinese enclave.

Last week, Straits Times reader Amy Loh wrote to the paper expressing her disquiet about how the government’s emphasis on the need to speak Mandarin could be perceived as a clear signal to encourage residents of mainland China origin to choose to continue speaking only Chinese.

Ck2 melting pot cultures