Tag: “Others”

Chan Heng Chee Is Wrong – CMIO Categorisation Is Only PAP’s Tool To Subjugate And Discriminate Against The Minorities

Rilek1Corner,

As a Malay, I am insulted by the comments of the Ambassador-at-large Prof. Chan Heng Chee in http://rilek1corner.com/2015/10/05/singapore-ambassador-at-large-scrapping-cmio…. She want to defend the outdated CMIO categorisation that is her problem but what right does she have to say that scrapping it would cause so-called “unease” among minorities. She is Chinese. Not minority. Why she speaking like she macam faham?

Worse still, she say “The majority community doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s (with) the minority community (where) you have to keep emphasising it’s equal language, religion, culture (and) race”. She is trying to say what? Minority races are petty? Minority races always comparing themselves with the majority? That minority races always imagining inequalities and discrimination? Then the majority race very good not racist at all?

I want to say she is very wrong. She is from majority and she is elite. She doesn’t represent us. She ambassador she got talk to people on the ground in Singapore? Who make her expert on minority issue? She ambassador so what? Don’t mean everything she say is correct.

I tell you, don’t be blinded by what she say. This is only wayang for them. Like she say, the CMIO categorisation is a “signal” to the minority that “every race has the same standing” and that “their place in society has not been threatened”.

A signal. She knows reality is not like that. A signal because the categories are the PAP’s idea of what makes up the different communities, not what the communities really are. The categorisation is a construct that makes people fall within neat categories, that, most of the time, don’t fit them well. What is a Malay? Who is Malay? The rich cultural heritage of people that come together from different parts of the nusantara are lost because of this categorisation. Bawean, Bugis, Java, Johor, Aceh – so convenient all become Malay.

This easy categorisation benefits the PAP government, not us the people. Who knows in the future Filipinos also come under the categorisation because they can easily say that Filipinos and Malays share almost the same language and physical appearance. Even now Singaporean Chinese also cannot tell the difference until they hear the accent when we talk.

It is not ony a problem culturally. There are many legal effect on people too.

Just because you are categorised as Malay, you have lower chance of owning a HDB flat in a neighbourhood you desire. HDB ethnic quota also a problem when you want to sell your house. You go serve NS and chances are that you will be posted to Civil Defence instead of Commando. Why in Civil Defence no ethnic quota? Why the PAP government can be fine with the over-representation of Malays in CD?

Maybe you have not realise before but you should know now that the CMIO categorisation is a very convenient tool to discriminate against our community. To keep us economically backward, so that the majority elites can prosper.

The ambassador talk so much about the supra-ethnic identity but if the PAP government is really serious about forging a national identity after SG50, they should do away with the race categorisation. We will not lose our ethnic identities. Actually the opposite effect is we will explore our ethnic identities and be more in touch with it. There will be a more equal playing field. Our race will not be a factor when we decide to buy a house or when called up to serve NS. Only then will a true Singaporean identity emerge.

Danial

Reader Contribution

October 6, 2015
Singapore Ambassador-At-Large: Scrapping CMIO Race Categories ‘May Spark Unease Among Minorities’

Suggestions to scrap the traditional Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others (CMIO) categorisation may seem viable to young Singaporeans, but it would spark unease among the minority races even today, believes Professor Chan Heng Chee.

“The majority community doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s (with) the minority community (where) you have to keep emphasising it’s equal language, religion, culture (and) race,” the Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday (Oct 4).

“Every race has the same standing. It is very important going forward.”

Speaking at the Community Leaders’ Conference, Prof Chan, who was Ambassador to the United States for 16 years, added: “There’s a supra-ethnic identity we all share — we’re CMIO Singaporeans.”

This umbrella identity is created through housing, education and National Service policies, she pointed out. Singlish, for instance, is a unifying variant of English.

Taking a question from the floor on youths growing increasingly distant from their roots, Prof Chan acknowledged that young Chinese Singaporeans, for instance, would be “far less Chinese” than their elders.

But, the CMIO categorisation remains a “signal”, offering assurance to other races that their place in society has not been threatened. A new challenge to preserving racial and religious harmony, however, comes from the inflow of foreigners, she said.

“Some people say … we’re Singaporean Chinese and they’re PRC (People’s Republic of China) Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese. The rift is there,” she added.

Drawing on her experience in the US, Prof Chan pointed out that while Singaporeans complain about the accents of foreigners, the Americans do not. “The Americans don’t say, ‘You’re speaking Singlish. You’re not one of us,’” she said. “The challenge for us in Singapore is: How do we integrate the new citizens who’ve become part of our ethnic groups, and how do we make them feel Singaporean?”

Time could be a solution, she suggested. Over time, new citizens would pick up the values here, although she noted that the emergence of social media means they can also keep abreast of news and happenings in their hometown, which could impact integration.

Should they stick out as a separate community, it could lead to “new cleavages” in society, she said.

Another participant asked about the increasingly diverse slate of religions in Singapore, and if that changed the “balance” between racial and religious harmony.

Agreeing that there was increasing religiosity, Prof Chan said: “How do you make sure it does not attack another religion? … This is something that we have to watch out for.”

She added: “I’ll be quite frank here … it’s live and let live with LGBTs (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), but it’s going to get more difficult because religious groups have attitudes. But, LGBTs are Singaporeans. How do you deal with that?”

As for the school environment, the splitting of classes according to pupils’ mother tongue could lead to a situation where students interact primarily within their own races, said Prof Chan.

“When all those who study Chinese are put in one class, so that their subjects make it easier for them to move around, you only have Chinese friends in your class … I think we could try to change some of that.”

Source: www.todayonline.com

October 5, 2015
To My Dear Fellow Singaporean Chinese: Shut Up When A Minority Is Talking About Race

People of Chinese descent make up 70% of the population of Singapore. Singapore Chinese, as they are termed, enjoy systemic, racialized and institutional privilege in the country as opposed to the countries’ minorities (primarily racialized as Indian and Malay).

“Chinese privilege”, as Sangeetha Thanapal has named it, functions very similarly to white privilege in the United States and Europe. To use Peggy McClintock’s notion of white privilege and the invisible knapsack, Chinese privilege functions like an “invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. [Chinese] privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” As a Singapore Chinese person, when I am in Singapore, I never need to think twice about whether my race/ethnicity is represented on mainstream media, whether my languages are spoken, whether my religions are allowed to exist, whether I can catch a taxi. All these things are little aspects of Chinese privilege which is very similar to how white privilege functions. You can find out more about the concept of white privilege here.

Despite Chinese privilege in Singapore being very real, there is little or no recognition of this concept within the national public sphere and discussions of race. Attempts by minorities such as Thanapal to name this privilege often receive hostile attack from Singapore Chinese, who employ defensive mechanisms similar to deniers of white privilege—to name privilege is divisive, to name privilege is not a solution, to name privilege is rude, to name privilege is racist. In a stroke of unfunny irony, what happens then is that minorities who call out Chinese racism are then termed racist by their aggressors.

This is very sad because Singapore Chinese themselves often complain how they are victims of racism themselves, particularly when they visit Western countries. They complain about being complimented on their command of English (don’t these people know we were colonized by the English?!), complain about being treated as second-class citizens while abroad. However, they are in complete denial of how they take on the very role of what they claim to be victim of at home. In other words, they complain about racist treatment while overseas while being racist towards minorities in Singapore.

So if you are a Singapore Chinese person—and I am a Singapore Chinese person myself—if someone who is not white or not Chinese starts talking about race, you should really think about doing the following things.

1. Shut up and listen. Because of your privilege, the speaker will be saying a lot of things that are foreign to your experience. But that you don’t think they are “true” doesn’t mean that they are untrue, it’s rather than your privilege shields you from seeing these things.

2. Stop asking them to justify their thoughts and for facts, statistics, data, argument. It’s not the job of marginalized people to educate you.Undertake your own education.

3. Your point of view is not important. If someone is speaking about race in Singapore who is neither white nor Chinese, their stories are not told as frequently as yours. So stop making their narratives about you and what you think. This is not your party.

4. It’s also not up for you to decide whether the person speaking is “right” or “wrong.” That you think your opinion is important is already indicative of how much privilege you have, and how ignorant you are of it.

5. Because you experience racism yourself in other locations, this should not inure you to your own racism at home, but rather, encourage you to have more *empathy* for those who are more marginalized than you are.

6. EDITED TO ADD. If you want to help, next time someone asks you for a perspective on race, ask a minority who studies racial dynamics. That means asking people like Thanapal to speak rather than a Singapore Chinese like me.

If you feel like you disagree with this article and are Singapore Chinese,please read this. And finally, if you are interested to find out more about why I think the way I do, please read: “White in One Space, Yellow in Another: Being Singaporean Chinese.”

Source: https://medium.com

June 26, 2015
Lee Hsien Loong: Racial Harmony Here An Unusual And Unnatural State Of Affairs, Need To Be Worked On Continuously

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Singaporeans of all races and religions are able to live peacefully side by side despite the fact that the country’s racial and religious harmony is an “unusual and unnatural state of affairs”.

Mr Lee spoke at a Harmony Dinner at the Singapore Expo on Wednesday evening (Apr 15), an event organised by the Taoist Federation to celebrate its Silver Jubilee.

“There are studies of different societies and there was one study called a report on ‘Global Religious Diversity’ looking at how mixed different societies were – and in fact they ranked Singapore as the most religious diverse society out of 232 countries in the world, and we were the most religiously diverse,” said Mr Lee.

“The most different religions, the most intermingled, all the world’s major faiths are present in Singapore and many smaller faiths too. And yet we enjoy racial and religious harmony, and we live peacefully and happily side by side every day,” added the Prime Minister. It is something that should be continually worked on to be preserved, he said.

Mr Lee said building a multi-racial and multi-religious society is a key ideal that Singapore was founded upon.

Quoting the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister said Singapore does not belong to any single community, but to everyone. Mr Lee said the Taoist Federation worked hard to foster good relations between the different religious groups in Singapore.

All 10 constituent religions of the Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) were also present at the Harmony Dinner, and Mr Lee called on the religious leaders to lead by example.

Said Mr Lee: “Your communities look to you as role models. How you counsel and lead your congregations, your flocks, will shape religious relations in Singapore. So I am very happy that so many of our religious leaders are committed to building trust and friendships with other communities.”

“We also of course need to keep our society open and inclusive. We can be any race, any religion, but we are also – at the same time – all Singaporeans together. And we have learnt to trust and respect our different races and religions, and to live peacefully with one another,” he said.

The IRO said racial and religious harmony is also enhanced by having more dialogues between people of various faiths.

“It is educating everyone as to what another religion has and if you have better understanding of another religion besides your own, that’s when you have a better understanding and that’s where you will have peace and harmony,” said IRO President Gurmit Singh.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

April 16, 2015
Ho Kwon Ping: CMIO Categorisation A Hindrance To Cohesion

The traditional Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others (CMIO) categorisation should be dropped, so as to maintain cohesiveness in diversity, which is a challenge the Republic has to overcome in order to achieve its dreams in the next 50 years, said prominent businessman Ho Kwon Ping.

Such rigid categorisation hampers Singapore’s ability to deal with an increasingly vocal and diverse society, where there are multiple identities and more complex sub-ethnicities, he said, citing same-sex couples and intra-ethnic differences between immigrants and locals as examples.

“Race and class and a consensus on social issues are becoming increasingly complex and intertwined in Singapore,” said Mr Ho, who is executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings. He was addressing about 560 people including students, young working professionals and civil servants at his fifth and last lecture as S R Nathan Fellow, organised by the Institute of Policy Studies.

“The CMIO model … has helped to create common ground among those of different tongues and dialects, but it also has had the effect of oversimplifying the diversity that is our social mix,” he said. “How we define people often shapes how they behave, so the less we pigeonhole people, the more chances we have for a cohesive diversity.”

Mr Ho cited the example of New York City, where there is no fixed preconception of people. Despite their diversity, all New Yorkers love the city, he noted.

Similarly, Singaporeans must learn to embrace one another as individuals and not as categories, he said. “Without stereotypical expectations, we can accept and appreciate each person as different, but from whom we can learn new things.”

Mr Ho identified improving social mobility as another challenge.

Though a meritocratic system based on academic grades has served Singapore well in the past 50 years, the Republic is “in danger of being a static meritocracy that sieves people based only on a narrow measure of capability within single snapshots of time and, from there-on, creates a self-perpetuating elite class”.

Citing statistics on the backgrounds of those in prestigious schools and Public Service Commission scholarship recipients, and showing that the majority came from privileged families, Mr Ho said: “Ironically, the original social leveller and purest form of Singapore-style meritocracy — our educational system — may perpetuate intergenerational class stratification, rather than level the playing field.”

Affirmative action for disadvantaged groups is not a solution, because that would bring about “the start of an unending process of affirmative actions that will only demean and discredit our meritocracy in the long run”, he added.

While non-graduates can now take on jobs previously open only to graduates, Mr Ho said the Civil Service could do more to take the lead on social levelling.

For instance, the Administrative Service — the elite among public servants — should change its recruitment criteria, replacing academic pedigree with psychometric and other aptitude tests.

The third challenge for Singapore to overcome is in building a collaborative, and not paternalistic, governance style, said Mr Ho.

“However, such a government culture of participatory democracy can work only if the institutions of civil society can be actively engaged in decision-making,” he said, in calling for better access to information for civil society activists.

During the dialogue after his speech, questions on race and diversity dominated the proceedings. Members of the audience asked whether Singapore would go the way of New York City in becoming a cultural melting pot and whether the Republic was ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister.

Mr Ho expressed confidence that a more cohesive diversity would solidify in the coming years.

Citing the United States as an example, he said questions had also been raised on whether the country was ready for a black president, yet Mr Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

Meanwhile, Mr Bilahari Kausikan, Ambassador-at Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed as Mr Ho’s successor as S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore.

Source: www.todayonline.com

April 10, 2015