This year, on 21st July 2026, Singapore commemorates her 30th Racial Harmony Day, a key annual event that began in 1997 as part of the implementation of the National Education (NE) programme. After thirty years, it makes one wonder how do we make sense of the idea of racial harmony, moving forward, in the context of the contemporary multicultural society? It is, of course, deeply tied to the concepts of “race” and social harmony with an emphasis on interracial and interreligious harmony¹. Its symbolic visibility is very much embedded in school routines, mostly as an explicit annual commemorative event, but also a constant, generally implicit, context that shapes how we see and understand multiculturalism, both domestically and globally. As the world seemingly becomes embroiled in ideological polarisation, waging culture wars and witnessing the rise of nativist politics, Singapore appears like an island of calm in a sea of storm – a multicultural safe haven with relative social harmony. The well-used realist, but nonetheless convincing, political mantra is that such a social harmony is “unnatural” and thus fragile, requiring constant conscious intervention. It is an effective national vulnerability narrative that arguably strongly shapes how we talk about race, as distinctive “racial” groups that do not naturally cohere well with one another, instilling in us a habit of conflict avoidance to keep the fragile interracial peace which contributes to a state of disempowered dialogue (Loh, 2026b). This is not to be dismissive, claiming that Singapore’s policies and regulation of multiculturalism to maintain racial harmony is not constructed on good intentions. I would say they are made with good intentions, cognisant of the sanctity of social harmony. However, such a managerialist approach to multiculturalism (Velayutham, 2007), might end up “coddling” the public, and could even unintentionally perpetuate race essentialism (Loh, 2026b). Within the framework of Singaporean multiculturalism, this can still function in keeping racial harmony, at least at a surface level. But if Singaporeans increasingly, as a habit and out of a fear of confrontation, defer to the state authorities every time a multicultural issue arises, we may gradually risk losing our capacity to reason and negotiate as fellow human beings in a multicultural society. This tendency to defer to state authorities unfortunately may not be just a Singaporean stereotype, as a qualitative study in which I examined young people’s perspectives on multiculturalism in Singapore has found (Loh, 2026a). Notably, the use of the term multiculturalism in Singapore is frequently conflated with multiracialism², with a dominant ethnoracialised lens perpetuated by the prominent CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, “Others”) multiracial model that is visibly reflected across mundane administration, social and political organising, as well as policymaking. Hence, taking Singaporean multiculturalism at face value has also arguably contributed to an ironically narrow multiracialised national identity, sharpening our views through race essentialist lens, contrary to the inclusive ethos of multiculturalism (Loh, 2025).

While social harmony is “a public good that few can deny” (Chua, 2003, p. 74), our approach to harmony need not be about treating all sorts of conflict as undesirable. Neither should we see conflict and harmony as mutually exclusive conditions. Nor am I suggesting that we can simply transit unproblematically into a utopian post-multicultural era³, with an assumption that we are all blind to race, colour, and phenotype. The fundamental problem is that we cannot just ignore and not talk about race, thinking that our social construction of it will magically disappear (Lentin, 2020). When Singapore declares itself a multiracial society and seeks to implement fairness through a policy approach of multiracialism, there is an extent of acknowledgement of a need to provide political recognition to the different racialised groups⁴, instead of assuming that sheer political will can overcome the colonial legacy of race. The introduction of Racial Harmony Day built on this understanding. These are worthy pursuits. But the underlying issue is that these racialised groups—specifically the CMI racialised groups—remain categorised in relatively rigid administrative terms, despite efforts to make it more flexible⁵. They are “racial” groups. As such, it would seem that the spectre of colonial race remains. And as long as we take on a realist view of race—seeing race as a biological and/or social “reality”—our understanding of racial harmony rests on the reproduction of race essentialism.

A possible move forward is to take on an anti-realist approach to race⁶ by understanding that “races are not real, [and] what is thus occurring in the everyday is the ongoing misidentification of people, specifically the process of racialisation, racialising people based on mistaken racialised differences” (Loh, 2026b, p. 483). This can place the idea of racial harmony in a new light, enabling us to interrogate our reproduction of racialised groups, and work on understanding that our approach to “race” is processual, that we are actively reconstructing and reproducing race (doing race). That racialised categories are loose categories, susceptible to changes, interpretations, and, at times, situational. That racialised categories are mere identity placeholders while we work on (re)discovering and/or (re)constructing our cultural identities, to transit from and de-emphasise race as an important identity. That racialised categories are not distinct culturally intra-homogenous ethnoracialised entities, but fluid racialised identities that can and do interweave often, both arbitrarily and meaningfully, especially after periods of co-existence. Such a perspective would frame racial harmony not as an unnatural and fragile goal perched on sensitive racial identities that require great interventions to tame their “natural” and “tribalistic” inclinations, but more as an ongoing reflexive and reflective endeavour towards social harmony.

References

Chua, B.-H. (2003). Multiculturalism in Singapore: an instrument of social control. Race & Class, 44(3), 58-77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396803044003025

Hochman, A. (2017). Replacing race: interactive constructionism about racialized group. Ergo, 4(3), 61-92. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.003

Lentin, A. (2020). Why race still matters. Polity Press.

Loh, P. Y., & Han, J. (2014, September 29). Racial harmony day. National Library Board. https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/article-detail?cmsuuid=d584f038-2d67-4a3b-b786-7d2116dbec3b

Loh, S. H. (2022). The continued relevance of multiculturalism: dissecting interculturalism and transculturalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45(3), 385-406. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1963459

Loh, S. H. (2025). A multiracialised national identity: Singaporean multiracialism and national identity. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 46(4), 662-680. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2025.2519251

Loh, S. H. (2026a). Disciplining the morally autonomous individual: young people’s perspectives on Singaporean multiculturalism. Asia Pacific Education Review. Advance online publication. https://rdcu.be/fqoYO

Loh, S. H. (2026b). Systemic racialisation: Singaporean multiculturalism and its discontents. Ethnicities, 26(3), 481-502. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968251330118

Rocha, Z. L. (2011). Multiplicity within singularity: racial categorization and recognizing “mixed race” in Singapore. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 30(3), 95-131. https://doi.org/10.1177/186810341103000304

Velayutham, S. (2007). Responding to globalization: nation, culture and identity in Singapore. ISEAS Publishing.

1. For a concise summary of Racial Harmony Day and its rationale, see Loh & Han (2014). ↩︎
2. See Loh (2026a, 2026b) for discussions on the problem of this conflation. ↩︎
3. See Loh (2022) for a critique of post-multiculturalism. ↩︎
4. There is of course the issue with the ironically homogenising effect of the over-simplified racialised categories. This is discussed in greater detail in Loh (2025, 2026b). ↩︎
5. For example, the introduction of double-barrelled racial identificiation (Rocha, 2011) and the apparent distinction of race from ethnicity reflected in the upper secondary school level Social Studies textbook, starting from 2016, wherein ethnic groups are seen as sub-sets of the CMIO racialised categories. ↩︎
6. I draw on Hochman’s (2017) work on anti-realism in the construction of racialised groups. ↩︎