Racial Harmony Day is a pretty unique Singaporean celebration, meant to promote, well, harmony among races.
Sometimes this involves cultural exchanges, like dressing up in a different race’s traditional clothing.
One student at Raffles Institution (RI) decided to dress up in a questionable manner.
RI Student Criticised for Insensitive Clothes on Racial Harmony Day
Originating on TikTok but gaining traction on Reddit on 24 July, the post was captioned “What RI students wore for Racial Harmony Day” alongside “bro’s outfit” and a skull emoji.
It showed an alleged RI student with light skin dressed up as a foodpanda delivery rider.
Alright, not too bad.
Except worn over his head was a mask of a dark-skinned man.
This combination immediately drew fierce criticism over how in poor taste it was. The student was not only accused of racism but elitism as well.
Racial Harmony Day takes place on 21 July in 2024. Perhaps because it’s a Sunday, RI instead had their Year One to Four students celebrating it on 17 July.
Year Five and Six students donned all sorts of ethnic attire on 17 and 18 July.
As such, it’s likely the photo was taken on one of those two days.
RI Principal Claims Student Had No Intention to Offend
The display of racial disharmony caused queries to be pushed in the way of RI’s principal Aaron Loh.
Mr Loh said on 25 July that the school had taken “disciplinary action”, of some nebulous kind as no details were given. He said the school would give the students involved counselling about being sensitive to the feelings of others.
It appears the black-shirted student in the photo also got in trouble.
He also stated that the student was “inappropriately dressed” but had “no intention to make fun of any group or community.”
Mr Loh claimed the student had instead done it for the trending memes involving a basketballer.
The mask appears to be depicting American basketball player LeBron James.
A quick search on TikTok did reveal a handful of videos with such a LeBron mask, but not many, and certainly not viral.
Netizens for the most part were not happy with Mr Loh’s response.
Some said that the combo of the mask and foodpanda costume was too specific to not be intentionally offensive.
Another agreed and questioned why the student was not made to publicly apologise by the school.
One commenter jokingly sided with the claim that the student did not intend to offend, saying he accidentally fell and rolled into a foodpanda uniform complete with a LeBron mask.
Not the First Racial Insensitivity Incident for RI
Believe it or not, this isn’t even the first time an RI student has come under fire for racial insensitivity.
In 2020, an RI student had old pictures from 2016 resurface of him and his friends in black beauty masks standing around a friend of Sri Lankan descent.
Said friend had a bag with the words “whitening kit” on it.
To his credit, that RI student called his behaviour “stupid” and “insensitive as f***”, and apologised for the incident.
Despite the seeming trend, one Redditor put their two cents in.
They alleged that every school during Racial Harmony Day probably had a student pull a racially insensitive stunt like the RI student in the foodpanda uniform did.
“I don’t think they are ignorant,” the commenter opined.
As much as Singapore prides itself on its racial harmony, it’s clear there’s always more work to be done.
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