The Great Divide

Why do we need the concept of race? What is its purpose other than to include and to exclude?

For a multicultural society, I think some of our policies can come across as rather racist. We often have it on our minds. As Singaporeans, our pledge commands us to live in harmony “Regardless of Race, Language or Religion”. When this solemn oath was written, Singaporeans were just walking out of the shadows of racial riots in the 1950s and 1960s.

Our Identity Cards have our ethnic group emblazoned on it. It was a small detail I took for granted altogether, until a certain Non-Singaporean friend pointed it out to me and asked, “why?”
I see classic propaganda posters exemplifying friendship between Chinese, Indian and Malay children and I ask: how about just Singaporean children? Quit giving so much importance to our percieved differences.

Why the need to indicate? Aren’t Singaporeans just Singaporeans? If it doesn’t matter if you’re Chinese, Malay or Indian, then why the declaration? If I’m Malay and look Chinese, is it better to have my ID checked, just in case? How can you tell by looks anymore? We’re so mixed! If your Dad is Chinese but your mom is Indian, you take after your dad. It's hardly logical.

Racial differences within any country stems from the fact that people are always painfully aware of these divisions. When there is a we, there will always be a them. Conflicts arise only at such boundaries, perceived or otherwise.

Let’s be honest. The concept of race is racist. It’s a means to categorize, to place people into boxes. It is division and fragmentation of world population. Biologically, you can’t delineate where one race stops and another race begins. With so much mixing through thousands of years – and especially in the past 2 centuries - the concept of race doesn’t hold. Evolution has done its good work in adapting early Homo sapiens based on where they resided geographically, changing facial features and skin colors to ensure the species’ survival with respect to climates and food sources. But strange as we might look to one and other, the undeniable truth is we’re all intrinsically of the same construct.

It just baffles me how, in a so-called modern world, people fail to see themselves as one people and choose still to adhere themselves with disparate groups. Globalization is doing much to shrink the world. But the human race has much further to go in pursuit of unification. Even for a nation as small as Singapore, try as we might, it will take a lot longer for the misconception of racial divides to be purged from our systems. Although how we’re going to take the first baby-steps, with constant reminders of ethnic differences (and tagged on our IDs), is beyond me.

So is the concept of race a natural or a social construct? You know my opinion to that.