{"id":20055,"date":"2012-01-22T19:23:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T19:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20055"},"modified":"2012-01-22T19:23:04","modified_gmt":"2012-01-22T19:23:04","slug":"racing-ahead-going-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20055","title":{"rendered":"Racing ahead, going nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racing ahead, going nowhere<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Very Fine Commentary<\/a>
\n2011-04-17<\/p>\n

Yoong Ren Yan<\/a><\/strong>, Editor<\/p>\n

Are we running around in circles with our policies on race?<\/em><\/p>\n

Racism is bad. What more is there to say?\u201d<\/p>\n

It may not have been the case just 50 years ago in the time of Rosa Parks<\/a> and Martin Luther King<\/a>, but in today\u2019s world, being against racism is rather unremarkable. Part of the reason Nelson Mandela<\/a> is such a universally revered figure is because his cause is no longer controversial. Those that are the least bit racist are promptly and collectively refuted, and with good reason: racism is not only astoundingly irrational, but also one of the worst forms of injustice humans have ever inflicted on others.<\/p>\n

Yet there is more to the issue of race. Our insistence that people not be judged based on their skin has not extended to consensus on how to achieve that end. While we all agree that racial discrimination, exploitation and conflict should be things of the past, there are, broadly, two contradictory visions for the future. Which of these should be pursued, and by what means, are sources of unrecognised controversy, and therefore deserve further debate.<\/p>\n

More is not better<\/strong><\/p>\n

Singapore represents one of these cases. The Singaporean model is encapsulated in our national obsession with \u2018multi-\u2019: we are taught that our nation is multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual. We present ourselves as a rojak<\/a><\/em> society, a mix of different cultures and ethnicities whose flavours blend into a single dish. Our government is committed to \u2018racial harmony\u2019, and envisages Singapore\u2019s four races coexisting peacefully, accepting one another\u2019s differences and working together to build a nation.<\/p>\n

For a country that not so long ago was mired in communal violence, division and mutual mistrust, Singapore has made notable progress. It is a prime example of multi-racialism. It has succeeded with two parallel strategies: firstly, to group the population into CMIO (Chinese Malay Indian Others); and secondly, to encourage, and where necessary enforce, cohesion amongst these four races. This approach has manifested itself in our policies on language (English first, no dialects), education (English-medium schools), housing (the Ethnic Integration Policy), social security (ethnic self-help groups) and even the media (censorship, the Sedition Act).<\/p>\n

Yet, as Minister Mentor<\/a> Lee Kuan Yew<\/a> constantly reminds us, our multi-racial society is still fragile and vulnerable, and could just unravel if we become complacent. In a world stricken with ethnic conflict, his words resonate. But in some senses, Singapore\u2019s drive to become multi-racial has sown the seeds of subterranean tension by continuing to entrench notions of race in society, just at a time when such notions are gradually fading away. Instead of allowing the winds to blow over our divisions, multi-racialism deepens the lines in the sand and widens our already narrowing differences.<\/p>\n

This is exemplified by Racial Harmony Day<\/a>, an attempt to promote cohesion by showcasing the four nationally-sanctioned cultures. Exposure to cultural differences may have been useful in our formative years, but today, a day that celebrates differences rather than similarities and inculcates the notion of race in our children from a young age seems rather anachronistic. Worse yet, divergent racial identities are enforced even when these identities have become far fainter over the years. The result is a farce where Singaporeans put in the special effort to buy cheongsams or learn how to play the angklung on Racial Harmony Day to fit into the race and culture of which they are supposedly a part…<\/p>\n

…In concentrating on multi-racialism, our strategies have obstructed society from becoming less race-conscious, which has artificially perpetuated the existence of race in Singapore, with its attendant tensions and clashes. It is difficult enough to encourage integration. If society spontaneously turns away from race, why should the government stick obsessively to its multi-racial stance?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Racing ahead, going nowhere Very Fine Commentary 2011-04-17 Yoong Ren Yan, Editor Are we running around in circles with our policies on race? Racism is bad. What more is there to say?\u201d It may not have been the case just 50 years ago in the time of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,26,394],"tags":[3519,9331,9330],"class_list":["post-20055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-singapore","tag-very-fine-commentary","tag-yoong-ren-yan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}