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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

http://sgforums.com/forums/8/topics/161997

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.

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.