Leong Sze Hian
From 2 January, the race of new born children has to be indicated on the birth certificate.
Parents who are of different races, can choose either the race of the father or mother for their children.
Before the child turns 15 and gets his identity card, the race can be changed with the consent of both parents.
So, what are the implications of this policy change?
Every year or two, Members of Parliament would bring up the issue of their residents who are affected by the HDB Ethnic Quota policy.
When the ethnic quota is reached in a HDB block, the ethnic group members who are affected may encounter difficulty in selling their flats, or see their flats’ resale price some 10-plus to 20-plus per cent lower than their neighbours’.
Imagine you buy a flat at the same price as your neighbour, but when you try to sell the flat years later, the price of your flat may be much less.
For example, if the market valuation of a flat is say $400,000, a flat-owner who may be affected by the Ethnic Quota, may only be able to sell for say $320,000, a difference of $80,000.
In the years to come, and if HDB prices continue to increase, the differential due to the Ethnic Quota may be in the hundreds of thousands in the future.
The probability of being affected by the Ethnic Quota may not be very high, as I understand that only about 25 per cent of HDB flats have exceeded the quota.
You can enter the block number and street name, in the HDB’s web site to check whether the Ethnic Quota has been reached.
I asked a friend who works in a Family Service Centre (FSC), and she told me that there were only about five Ethnic Quota households who could not service their HDB loans last year, in that particular constituency.
There are 36 FSCs in Singapore.
In this connection, I understand that the only exception to the Ethnic Quota rule which is applied to both HDB flat sales and rental, are the HDB blocks that are entirely rented out to foreign workers.
The monthly contribution deducted from workers’ salaries to help fund the various self-help groups like the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), Eurasian Association, Mendaki and SINDA, range from $0.50¢ to $1, $1 to $7, $2 to $10, and $2 to $16, depending one one’s salary.
One can choose to contribute a different amount or opt-out.
The tuition and financial assistance schemes vary amongst the different self-help groups.
The tertiary education financial assistance offered subject to means-testing, may also be different for an ethnic group.
Race is fundamentally about one’s heritage, ancestry, culture and future generations.
Should parents and children have to consider the merits or demerits of “benefits” in their “race”?
Will there come a time in the near future, when some people may for all practical purposes say that they belong to one race, only to identify with another with their identity card when they apply for a HDB flat?
After all we are all Singaporeans – should race matter at all?
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Picture from Greenridge Primary School.
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Breakdown of the monthly contribution rates to the self-help groups:
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Just label every new baby as Chinese. Since LKY is so intent on kissing China’s a.s.s.
PAP is rascist and elitist. Time to vote opposition.
The Singapore Constituition enshrines the principle against racial discrimination:
Equal protection
12. —(1) All persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law.
(2) Except as expressly authorised by this Constitution, there shall be no discrimination against citizens of Singapore on the ground only of religion, race, descent or place of birth in any law or in the appointment to any office or employment under a public authority or in the administration of any law relating to the acquisition, holding or disposition of property or the establishing or carrying on of any trade, business, profession, vocation or employment.
Rights in respect of education
16. —(1) Without prejudice to the generality of Article 12, there shall be no discrimination against any citizen of Singapore on the grounds only of religion, race, descent or place of birth —
(a) in the administration of any educational institution maintained by a public authority, and, in particular, the admission of pupils or students or the payment of fees; or
(b) in providing out of the funds of a public authority financial aid for the maintenance or education of pupils or students in any educational institution (whether or not maintained by a public authority and whether within or outside Singapore).
Why must one’s “race” (whatever that means) be stated the birth certificate? What is the purpose?
Time and time again the incumbent’s govt. has emphasised the importance of not identifying fully with one’s race, rather with their nationality.
The policy shift will have very real future implications as mentioned above. Was there any official explanation given by the relevant authorities regarding this recent change? (please forgive my ignorance).
This is yet another indefensible policy. I have this said before but it may be worthwhile to say again.
From a genomic point of view, race does NOT even exist. There is as much variability within a so-called race as across the races. All present evidence indicates that everyone on this tiny planet descended from a small group of ancestors in Africa about 70,000 years ago.
Race is a recent (last several thousand years) cultural construct for certain sub-populations in some geographic regions, likely originated from a tribal notion to separate ‘us’ and ‘them’ and to justify that separation. It is indeed sad to realize, in some quarters, how little has changed despite our scientific advances.
It is imperative for a government agencies like ICA and others to cease such an antiquated, unscientific, and discriminatory practice as to include ‘race’ in official registers; it serves no useful purpose.
I am not impressed by the seemingly innocent reply “The ICA would like to clarify that it does not assign a person’s race but only records the information as declared that is reasonably believed to be factual.” See http://www.straitstimes.com/ST+Forum/Story/STIStory_474726.html . I challenge the ICA to define “factual”.
I am most concerned with the perpetuation of the “divide and conquer” style of governance, disguised as a protection of minority rights.
does this implied i must lived in race course road if i am of poor decent
and if i am an elite class i must lived in bukit timah race course district?
so what is mine race? what do i get over the other races?
i am thinkin of upgradin my race to a romanian class
possible or not?
Personally, I am a supporter of the race ethnic quota policy for HDB flats.
Before you lambast me for supporting a PAP policy, I have to ask you… are you confident that you still be as blase about race if you grew up in a race homogeneous environment? Taking into consideration that a place in primary school is determined by proximity, a child can grow up in a race homogeneous (more or less) environment up to the age of 12.
I should clarify that I do not support racial quotas in any other policies… especially the stupid GRC thing. If HDB racial quota works as intended, then we wouldn’t mind a other race person as our MP one way or the other. In fact, I would say that since JBJ won in a time where no such GRC policies are in place, it is a testament to the success of the HDB racial policy.
this policy is ok, as long as they are no kids arising inter-racial marriages. it would be confusing for anyone who is decide to be officially one race but the name of obviously another race.
i see a can of worms opening.
the most obiang thing about those ‘Self -Help Groups”:
my race is indian,but i took up malay as 2nd language,
and have never received ANY financial assistance from mendaki.
once i came out to work, my employer said i MUST contribute to mendaki.
And these contributions vary across the board.
Here’s the thing,what the hell are we doing in trying to help different racial groups differently?
Can’t we help ALL Singaporean kids through their education?
Isn’t it embarrassing that we have kids who don’t have money to pay for their tertiary fees,yet we have F1 races every other year?
What’s with this race thing? Think we should throw that out of the window cos we are Singaporeans. We speak Singlish, share the theatre with Muslims, Hindus, Christians & Taoists, Q for Toto, get pissed with ERP & GST. So we are not much different from each other. I really hate this RACE thing! Perhaps, we just put religion in our IC; much easier.
With some many China people moving into Singapore, perhaps we will be putting MINORITY in the RACE column in a few yrs time!
Race… is one of the saddest and most simplistic take of human identities. When we could and should find the ancestral and cultural history of a single person highly interesting, the invention of the term ‘race’ kills off much curiosity in many of us towards any individual.
While I might share certain physical features with many, but many of us are uniquely different in terms of where we are from, especially in a place like Singapore.
If my father is born here, with both parents from Hainan Island, and my mother a child from small village in Shanghai and Fujian – while your paternal grandparents are from Guanxi, and your maternal grandparents are a mix of Shengyang and Xi’an, and through policies and education we speak a common language like Mandarin, we are Chinese?
If my father is from Java, and my mother is a mixture between Kedah and East Timoh – while your dad’s dad is from Bali and your mum’s heritage is from Sumatra, and that we both speak bahasa, that makes the both of us Malays??
I find that absolutely ridiculously uncreative and meaningless.
The beauty of our complexity in our heritage cannot be generalised and labeled by general geography or our similar skin colour or similar physical features.
So who are we then? How do we identify and understand each other a bit more accurately? By communication and interaction in the most personable terms, and not stereotyping with shallow knowledge by visual means.
We shall call out each other by our names, and shall find out and learn about our shared interests through common language, we shall be curious about one another’s culture, habits, similar roots and differences.
Racial tolerance?? We are suppose to TOLERATE each other? No, we should accept and try to understand each other and the one thing we SHOULD NOT tolerate is violence and discrimination.
The fact that we are able to meet is already hugely coincidental and quite special on a hindsight and how fun and interesting would it be if we are able to trace as far back as we could to figure out how we arrive here, shoulder to shoulder.
The ratio system in estates and HDB do not have the necessary positive effects. In my opinion, if estates and flats are created in the form of special general interests. For example; you would might like to move into Tiong Bahru because it is an artists village, or that you would like to go to Chao Chu Kang because of high population of motor enthusiasts, or decide to start a family in the music community of Clementi – we will then have a real community where we can come together with shared love creating positive atmosphere… Perhaps then, we would in turn create more belonging in any area, nostalgia in our estates, ability to identify ourselves towards our sporting teams like in the S-league and that will no doubt evolve natural sporting rivalry. Every estate then would be special rather than be of the conformed design we see now, and perhaps there will be stability in house pricing ( I do not think public housing should be subjected to market speculations, STOP saying it is affordable PAP!) since being far from the city is no longer deemed inconvenient and unattractve. We will have reasons to visit every estate, which will have different ‘colours’ and culture and atmosphere.
We must not be led to believe that there is multiracial factor here. Only multi cultural, multi complex heritage and one human race.
Let’s allow ourselves this thought: There are no strangers, only friends we have yet to meet.
What I also wanted to point out is that through long periods of enforced labeling, an ill informed person can easily be led to believe or to take for granted the information presented to him at hand that what might be commonly perceived as an ‘understanding’ is entirely false or severly lack of afterthought or research.
What is important is that everyone of us must learn to recognise that each of us possesses multiple identities with complex biological history, and personal characteristics and that we should never allow a shallow visual or social profile to trump everything else.
Skin colour is skin colour and not a race, and the term ‘race’ is only a recent classification of the human species, which is not only completely flawed and have thus created way too much social problems. The European physical anthropologists of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed various systems of ‘racial’ classifications based on such observable characteristics as skin colour, hair type, body proportions, skull measurements, essentially codifying the perceived differences among broad geographic populations of humans. The traditional terms for these populations are Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid with the very controversial introduction (back then) of Australoid.
Although we must rid discrimination at every level. I feel that character and personal identity assumptions through skin colour is the most damaging and ridiculous. And that we should destroy this mental construction first and foremost when it comes to people classification.
In Singapore, this ill conceived level of labelling must be stopped. Here we are introduced the term ‘race’ the day we are born. How police may use to profile individuals should not be staring at one’s face, stated and be accepted as a classification on our birthcert and identity cards.
One of the most ridiculous thing that is allowed here is that if you are born with preposed ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indian’ parentage, your folks are allowed to choose how to label your race!!
If race is such a identifyable fact, how can one actually choose which to belong???? Can I choose to identify myself as a horse, so that perhaps I can free myself from man-made obligations such as patriotism towards geographical land divisions?
If I am of such ‘mixed parentage’, and you’ve not met me yet but through some survey (all stupid surveys in Singapore have the race column which I never filled up ) you perceived me as such was written, eg ‘Chinese Race’ only to be astonished if I were to turn up looking as dark as someone from a village in Pakistan with sharp nose and curly hair! How absurd is that?
If I am that same fella but my folks decided to label me as Chinese to be a majority and I am a criminal running loose, would the police find my classification on the race bit helpful? I’m sure the bar code on top of our IC have a better profile of my physical attributes. So if that is the case, I don’t know why the race bit is helpful at all, in every sense. Perhaps only helpful in cynical politicking?
We have come far ( not far enough for many, and I for one ) as civilisations, and through suffrage, triumphs and tribulations of so so many generations, we have changed laws, tweaked policies to suit the ever changing moral zeitgeist of nations. Equal rights for women is more widespread now, traditional slavery is almost a thing of the past… etc etc. Let us take another challenge, and unlearned this highly divisible idea, this labeling, that has been imposed on us since young.
The ignorant notion of race must be crushed.
How if the child born from interacial marriage let say a chinese and indian, and the parents decide to put the race as chinese for the children, and when they grow up they married to an indian spouse and they put their children as chinese again (since one of the parents is chinese lol). I can imagine after 20 years some minister will come up and say “i/we was/were wrong about this policies”
Yes, remove the Race from NRIC. Instead, put “Singaporeans” or “Foreign Talent:”.
there used to be dialect on the birth cert
maybe country of origin: china instead of race: chinese will be more helpful?
14) Dude on January 8th, 2010 8.05 pm
Yes, remove the Race from NRIC. Instead, put “Singaporeans” or “Foreign Talent:”.
I certainly think this is the way to go as Singaporeans will become a minority in the future.
“The ICA would like to clarify that it does not assign a person’s race but only records the information as declared that is reasonably believed to be factual.”
So why do MOE report PSLE results by race and how do they know the information? Its clear that ICA information is used by MOE and for dubious reasons. Academic performance by race is superficial and unimportant.
Children are colour blind until we coloured them with the our own posioned vision. I onced asked my five year old son, what is his race. He said without hesitation – Japanese. An identity he chose because of his love for Japanese cartoon. I replied: But our surname is Tan and don’t tell your grandparents that or they knocked the brain out of you because they think you have forgotten your ancestry and they had suffered tremendously during the Japanese occupation. I asked the same question to my neighbour’ Chong’s seven years old. He said he was English because he hated learning Chinese language in school and speak very fluent English. My impulsive response was to accuse his parents for feeding him too much potatoes. Now I think i am the one that an re-education of the question of race.
Aiyah, if we don’t have race, how am I going to put a job advert looking for ‘chinese speaking’ employees serving ‘chinese speaking’ client? Don’t make my life hard lah. Don’t make me lose business as I only do business with ‘chinese speaking’ clients. Don’t care about other races who can speak chinese.
(1) Mr Lee Kuan Yew had proclaimed to the world in 1965 that Singapore would be an independent nation which will neither be “a Chinese Singapore, a Malay Singapore, nor an Indian Singapore”. In 2010, a true Singaporean should proclaim, we are not building “an English Singapore, a Chinese Singapore, a Malay Singapore, nor an Indian Singapore”!
(2) For those who can only use English or choose to do so in their daily lives, please note that, we are not building “an English Singapore”.
(3) In Singapore, we do not practice assimilation policy; therefore, all races in Singapore can maintain their racial identity, language, culture and religion besides using English as a common language (BUT NOT an assimilation language).
According to latest report, 4 in 10 married foreigner, with such highly interracial marriage in Singapore, is getting difficult to define race and may even caused family dispute later.
So to make thing simple, why not just define race as White, Yellow or Black. If the offspring of the white and yellow looks white, just label as white race.
If this system is NOT put in place, we may suffer similar outcome as in the USA – consider the Black Neighbourhood where WHITES dare not walk.
In so far as humans are concerned, RACE is one Ageless Issue… in fact, since Time Began & when GOD was realized…
Why equate race with money?
Basically, without a “majority-minorities” distinction, there can be no justification for GRC. Without GRC, I doubt the ruling party can breeze through each election and holds 98% parliament.
In December 2009, there was a report “Rebuilding Rwanda” in the ST. Of course, the role of Singapore in helping them to rebuild is highlighted — teaching them many things, etc…. (which is a good do). The thing that struck out was that they had done away with indicating Hutu or Tutsi on their new ICs. (yeah, they also have “Corruption – Zero Tolerance” on sign-posts). Talk about building a nation. And here we are, still struggling to burst out of a “City” mode. Maybe our leaders should learn from the “student” Rwandans.
Err… anyone knows the salary of the Rwandan PM?
..and this GRC thing is conveniently a useful DEVICE coincidently…
LionCity & Colour Blind – well said. We have in fact evolved into a patchwork inside though we can be differentiated racially in appearance. That was long before the surge in offsprings from mixed marriages. The quota system will soon be obsolete and useless.
Perhaps some love to kiss arses of other races as in banana. Many of us claim to be independent individuals in a globalised world. Your words and actions reflect what you really are.
Race or nationality (Singaporean) is questionable and ambiguous.
I believe we have reached a more intellectual level to question
the idea of Race, Nationality and Identity.
We ask ourself what makes us? Is it where you are borned? Is it
Nationality? Isn’t Nationality Fluid? One crosses the border and the government
gives you a Nationality.
Race-Does it matter? Identity- Is it really what you wear or how you look?
It is your Personality, your Character, your Mentality ,and above all-your Individualistic quality that makes you what you are.
Its Individualism.I ts what you are, who you are., not some words of convenience that label you. You are You.
Race shouldn’t matter. However, the reality is totally different. In fact, Singapore can’t be a Robinson Crusoe. We’re constantly bombarded by external forces everyday like it or not. Like the negative religious externalities across the causeway today that make us sympathise & empathise with the victims & minorities there over there. We are not immuned to the real world out there. How can that be? We are after all humans.
The answer to racial harmony basically is to give & take and have even handed governance & management.
Race? Seriously why did they choose the word race? haha!
12) wui on January 8th, 2010 6.58 pm
The ignorant notion of race must be crushed.
You have written a long essay… but you neglected to say ‘how’ this might be done. I am not even asking for evidence of why you think your method might work. I just want some theory which may or may not be correct. At least let me know the general direction you are heading.
For me, the general idea of HDB quota policy is to forcibly put everyone next to each other, so that they are get to know one another. In time, perhaps when we are truly race insensitive, this policy can be removed. I think we are halfway there perhaps…
How about your ‘general idea’? Do you have some kind of proposal to crush the concept of race?
very insidious way to divide and conquer. i don’t quite understand how relevant this is when we’re supposed to be racially harmonious.
meritocracy and equally my ass.
Take away the “race” on our identity cards. Replace the word ‘race’ with ‘culture’ in our pledge. Make sure that the media doesn’t use ‘race’ to identify a person or crime or an event, a national or cultural identity might be more useful.
Teach the young a rational approach when knowing someone, encourage curiosity about individual history/ ancestry. Educate everyone about how the term ‘race’ was first coined and how distructive and problematic it is. Promote public awareness about the complexity of each of our heritage through creative advertisements perhaps.
To come close to be ‘race’ insensitivity, we must first promote heritage inquisitiveness through national media, especially here as most of us do not have the same mixture of ancestral parentage which makes each of us even more unique and interesting.
If we can learn to recognise the positive break down of our identities, we probably will also learn to see each other with collective uniqueness rather than being viewed as a ‘lumped’ together stereotype base on different tones of skin colour.
I am sure many can come up with many other creative ideas of how we can face this challenge of ‘crushing the ignorant notion of race’ other than my suggestions.
Are we yet a post-racial society? The answer is an emphatic “No”. Race still matters; it shouldn’t, but it does. The PSLE results are just one symptom of how certain communities are saddled with socio-economic disadvantages, and cannot enjoy full equality of opportunity without some help from the Government.
To those (e.g. park in comment #17) who think that differences are superficial — is that opinion really sound? If the pass rates in PSLE Maths between the Chinese, Malays and Indians are 89.6%, 56.3% and 72.9%, can these hugely significant differences be waved away as superficial? If ‘race’ were indeed just some arbitrary identifier (as wui, Colour Blind, Rojak Race, and others above argue), then the differences in academic performance between the three major races should be as negligible as if the 2009 cohort were randomly divided into 3 groups — but they are clearly not. Arguing that race is irrelevant is noble-minded — but the evidence shows otherwise, whichever indicator you use (education level, income level, divorce rate, average age of marriage, etc.).
The fact is that, if you’re a member of a minority race in Singapore, the dice are loaded against you. You may still succeed, but you need to fight greater odds. And one thing you need to fight against is irrational discrimination from the ethnic Chinese majority. See e.g., “Non-Malay won’t get into lift with Malay” The Straits Times Online Forum (8 November 2005) (reproduced here).
It is imperative that we remedy such inequalities. Thus, Article 152(1) of the Constitution imposes a duty on the Government “constantly to care for the interests of racial and religious minorities”.
To this end, the HDB ethnic-quota policy is an important tool in achieving genuine racial equality, as opposed to mere high-flown rhetoric. First, it ensures that Singapore does not become fragmented into racial enclaves, so that (for example) Bukit Batok becomes ‘Chinese’ while Seng Kang becomes ‘Indian’. There are indeed currently designated zones for each race (Chinatown, Little India, Geylang Serai), but these occupy a fraction of Singapore’s inhabitable space. Second, it ensures that every HDB dweller lives in close proximity with other races, at best paving the way for greater inter-cultural understanding and friendship, at worst forcing him or her to deal with persons of other races on a daily basis.
Third, it ensures that the resale market for HDB flats does not end up perpetuating racial inequalities. Without the ethnic-quota policy, each HDB block will have a varying proportions of CMIO residents. Some blocks will become more ‘Chinese’, other more ‘Malay’, and so on. It is likely, ceteris paribus, that a Chinese buyer will prefer a flat in a ‘Chinese’ block, and vice versa — especially in light of the racism revealed in the ST Forum letter I cited above. This leads to two consequences. First, the process is self-reinforcing — thus, the more ‘Chinese’ a block becomes, the more demand for it on the resale market — so that we would eventually get entirely ‘Chinese’, ‘Malay’, ‘Indian’ etc. blocks. Second, because the Chinese form a 74% majority, this would mean comparatively low demand for ‘non-Chinese’ blocks from the respective non-Chinese minorities. Low demand means that non-Chinese sellers of HDB flats will get lower prices — thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty they are already subjected to.
Sorry, the link in my previous comment doesn’t seem to work. Here is the URL:
http://sgforums.com/forums/8/topics/161997
Any sarong party girls could identify their child (fathered by an ang moh) as ‘ANG MOH’
PRs can identify their childs as ‘FOREIGN TALENT’
LKYs cronies could state their race as ‘PAPpies’
Well, sons of VIPs who are officers in the SAF are suggested to put ‘WHITE HORSE’ on their sons’ race so they will hopefully go to OCS after BMT and continue the family’s legacy ha ha ha
32) wui on January 9th, 2010 5.33 pm
Your suggestions sound nice, but I wondered if you have given them enough thought?
Simply removing all official traces of race distinction isn’t going to do much. How one race’s negative perception of another race (or you can substitute ‘culture’ for ‘race) isn’t simply going to disappear overnight simply because it can’t be backed up by paperwork anymore.
Chinese (Taoists) burning incense or the Indian’s distinctive ‘smell’, etc will still divide people/culture. People will then tend to flock to the same race/group when there will be less repercussions to their preferred practices. HDB enclaves can thus be created. I don’t know about you, but I would think a child who grew up (to 12 years old at least) in such environment is likely to be less tolerant of another race/culture’s practice than if he grew up a huge diverse race/culture all around him/her. If you consider that neighbour secondary schools are likely to have students in the same proximity, the scenario is even worse…
In your second para, you did bring up education. I will reiterate that if people of the same race apply for the same area of flats, they are going to be in the same primary school as well. I am not too sure of how effective it will be to teach purely from textbooks. Surely it would be better if there was someone from the other race/culture who can make a simple presentation? To be honest though, the education might be superfluous if in the first place, all races/cultures are already living side by side (which the HDB race quota ensures).
Personally, I would do away with all other race/culture ‘discrimination’ in ALL matters, except in housing. e.g ST will only present national average pass grades without going into the passing rate of each race. Maybe one day in the future, we can also do away with the race quota thingy… but that time is not yet here.
Because of the racist policy of Lee Kuan Yew, Indian restaurants in Serangoon Road are denied work permits to bring in restaurant assistants of their choice. Under this unwritten policy of the manpower ministry only a particular race/ethnicity is allowed to work in the service sector.
George #37
Because of his racist policy, lots of Malays who want to serve in RSN had to forget their ambition.
yes,race does not matter. but “FOREIGN” (talents?) does…
WE A HARMONIOUS AND HAPPY MULTI-RACIAL NATION TILL YOU TAKE AWY OUR JOBS AND GIVE THEM TO FOREIGNERS who now even show disrespect to native citizens of all races like our ELDERLY and TAXI DRIVERS.
unless they are more cross marriages, race will always matter.
elmo # 42: unless they are more cross marriages, race will always matter.
If “race will always matter”, then the Indian restaurants in Serangoon Road catering to mainly Indian customers should be allowed to recruit restaurant assistants from India on work permit.
36) lobo76 on January 10th, 2010 12.38 am
32) wui on January 9th, 2010 5.33 pm
Lobo76, although removing all official traces of race distinction might seem superficial to many, but in a long run, it does do alot if we can indulge ourselves in some study of social psychology on labeling.
Your take on Taoists burning incense or the distintive smell of some people divides people can have an interesting discussion, which to a certain angle I might not disagree with you. But what I wanted to point out is that ideally we should get rid of many forms of divisions especially discriminations with many different (and hopefully positive) methods, ideas, actions, angles… starting with the superficial stereotyping of skin colour.
Nobody said it is simple or that it is going to disappear overnight. What is important is that we must try improve civility and human culture and foresight.
What I meant by education is not just about textbooks only, but by introducing, throughout our lives, positive barriers and many pathways in what was thought to be a straight judgemental road to an individual’s character, which is so complex from person to person. We need to teach the young (and everyone) that to reach any conclusions in life, is through plenty of rational and critical thought, fact find, experiences and education (most importantly in humanities like literature, appreciation of the arts and music, history accompanied by basic sciences and mathematic) etc.
Any time is a good time to introduce compassion and understanding. Any time is a good time to discourage discrimination with well thought means.
We might defer from some of our ideas how to go about this. But I think we are on the same side in regards to wanting harmony and peace and a better world.
*Shall we rebut what was written in forum page on the Straits Times today about race classification? It is these mentality that I find narrow, short sighted and unstudied*
Best Regards.
Hi, this was something that I thought off when I saw the title of the article. Could TOC write an article on the referendum that was recently passed to ban construction of new minarets in Switzerland? I thought it was a really interesting result for a country that is considered both tolerant of ethnic minorities and successful at implementing the one man, one vote policy.
#45
Singapore was founded as a multi-racial, multi-religious, meritocratic society where there is no such thing as “tolerant of ethnic minorities”. Lee Kuan Yew pledged to create a Singaporean Singapore in August 1965.
Singapore will neither be a Chinese, Malay nor Indian Singapore. That’s what Lee Kuan Yew said after he had failed in his attempt to bring a Malaysian Malaysia when Singapore was part of Malaysia.
Leong Sze Hian has hit the nail on the head in that we are all Singaporeans and I think that it is time that the PAP supposed intelligentsia came to realise this undeniable fact …. if they stubbornly refuse then it is about time to give them a booting out and get the opposition in; whatever ‘devil-picture’ they (PAP) paint about them! I say go for the ‘unknown devil’ for he may turn out to be a blessing-in-disguise rather than bet on the known devil that arrogantly brushes aside popular opinion for its own lop-sided ‘I-know-best” opinion.
The only race that the PAP is concerned about is ‘Chinese’ (no offense to the Chinese, please – I mention it as a fact as the only language that they promote is Chinese). I am a Sikh by ethnicity and am correctly shown in my NRIC as an Indian only because my original Malaysian NRIC showed me as one.
My wife is classified as a ‘Sikh’ and our two daughters have the ridiculous classification of ‘OTHERS’. This shows what a screwed-up administration we have where one family in which there is no Inter-Marriage – we have three RACES! In this country one has to be Black to be an Indian. Our older daughter was originally classified as a Chinese (by an INDIAN at the Ang Mo Kio Polyclinik) just because she was fair.
I say down with Racial Classification whatever EXCUSES the PAP have or for Heavens’ sake BOOT THEM OUT!
Let us get the devil IN!
we shouldnt have quoto, cos HDB is supposed to be based on Meritocracy. It is just discrimination.
Come and live in Old Marsiling and New Marsiling, where they r over 50% Malays and minorities. The chinese r still ok there.
Do u mean if a chinese walked into a 75% minority race place, just like the US, we will get butchered? Stop believing the bullshit by the gov, they r racist and the USA is so big. That why it difficult to patrol the neighbourhood. If they really afraid of that, why we have so little policeman ?
Then can u imagine, if u r a malay and u walk into a place with 75% majority chinese. It means to say, the chinese wont feel threatened if they r the majority?
It biased, racist and it goes against so call “meritocracy. ”
Well, our gov is full of double standards, we know already
HELLO 10S15
The silly part, is that they would clump Mendaki and the mosque together. Because of that,Indian muslims like me have to contribute to both SINDA and Mendaki. I’m ok with SINDA, as for Mendaki, I don’t see the point in contributing since I won’t be able to get any benefit from them.