Kita dah cukup manis? (We are sweet enough?): Resisting the bitter pill of racialised health framing on the Malay community

Based on my chapter in the volume Brown is Redacted (Ethos Books, 2022), this talk will examine the ways in which problematic racial categories, stereotypes and beliefs about minority groups become ascribed as the reasons behind poor health outcomes. Through this simplification, factors that are socially complex are reduced and pathologised as belonging to a particular community, becoming their ‘responsibility’ to solve. Racial stereotypes thus become adopted as the lens through which health issues are viewed, and solutions proposed. In this talk, I aim to problematise the pathologisation of social problems which is frequently inflicted onto the minority groups in Singapore. In doing so, I hope to engage in an exploration of these questions: “Why do stereotypes and attribution of blame to specific ethnic communities continue to persist despite evidence to the contrary? Why are minorities frequently described as being predisposed to certain health issues due to their poor choices?”