Provincializing Critical Race Theory through the Lens of Southeast Asia

There is a growing acknowledgement for the need to ‘provincialize’ knowledge claims based on European social and political categories in the context of non-European societies. However, despite the common ground that Critical Race Theory (CRT) shares with postcolonial thought (Winant 2004), the US-centric nature of its origin and focus has been understated. It is claimed that CRT presents ‘a rich framework to address the multitude of global racial manifestations’ (Weiner 2012), and attempts have been made to utilize CRT in a transnational setting (Wing, 2000). This paper uses the states of Malaysia and Singapore to illustrate the limitations of using CRT as a framework for understanding racial dynamics on a global scale. I argue that CRT has been formulated to explain racism in a black/white paradigm and is unable to account for the fluid racial hierarchies and intersecting oppressions which characterize Southeast Asia, as racializing projects and relations of racial oppression occur within and between various non-black peoples of colour. For instance, the usage of the term ‘Chinese privilege’ in Singapore consciously mimics the language of CRT, in which dominant white majority of the US is replaced by the ethnic Chinese of the island city-state. This does not account for the realities of Singapore’s racial politics, which has developed in a different historical, institutional, and cultural context from the US. Furthermore, CRT is difficult to utilize in Malaysia, where an elite Malay capitalist class exists alongside prejudice and racial stereotyping against Malay workers in the private sector (Lee & Khalid 2015). A theory of racism for Southeast Asia cannot entirely rely on the precepts of CRT; but must consider the history of British colonialism and the continued phenomenon of global white supremacy, while being rooted in local racial discourses and indigenous forms of racial thinking. 

Day 2 (May 28, Fri HK/SG time / British Summer Time (BST) / Central European Summer Time (CEST))

Panel 4: Criticisms of Anatomy

3-5pm HK/SG / 8-10am BST / 10am-12pm CEST / 3-5am EDT / 12pm-2am PDT