Casual racism must be addressed but hypersensitivity not the answer, SM Lee says in dialogue with youths
Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the HarmonyWorks! Conference on Aug 3, 2024.
- At a conference, Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke to around 300 young people who asked questions about racial sensitivities in Singapore
- Questions ranged from online discussions about race to promoting cohesion among different racial communities
- Answering a question on casual racism, he said that people should express disapproval of casual racism and if it is done with ill intent, "we have to be quite firm to come down and put it down". But people should also not become "hypersensitive"
Students from post-secondary institutions, madrasahs, Special Assistance Plan schools, as well as community and religious groups attended the event held at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College East.
During the dialogue, participants also asked Mr Lee questions on navigating race relations online, integrating new immigrants into society, and fostering deeper engagement on these crucial issues.
The conference was supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Community Development Councils and Mirxes, a biotechnology company.
The transcript of the dialogue was released to the media on Aug 3.
TODAY picked out five pertinent questions that the students asked and Mr Lee's responses to them. They have been edited for clarity.
ON CASUAL RACISM
Q: Many of us would acknowledge we have come a long way in terms of our race relations in Singapore, but there are still some concerns about the incidents of casual racism that happen from time to time. Do you think things are going to improve on this front?
Mr Lee: I think it is something we have to pay attention to. We should see it in its context because the basic requirements for us to get on well together is to have harmonious racial and religious relations in Singapore at a national level and going back to very fundamental things — we are one people regardless of race, language and religion.
And therefore, the way we construct our society and the way we make sure that we have equality, we have meritocracy, we have fair treatment, that we respect each other, that we accommodate each other, we do all these things and in Singapore, you can expect to be respected as an individual, to be treated equally regardless of race, language and religion. That is a starting point.
If you do not have that, then I can be very polite to you in-person, but you will feel it is a very unjust society. And it is like that; it can be like that in a lot of places, but I think, generally, we have got things right.
But at the same time, at a personal level, we have to make sure that we interact with each other with respect, understanding the sensitivities, not rubbing against and causing offence to each other.
And that is where the question of casual racism comes in, if you look at the incidents we have had over the last few years. People just scolding others on the basis of race or religion, or people sometimes having a conflict and they decide to post something intemperate and make everybody agitated. Or it could be a religious matter and in the process of talking about your own faith, you denigrate some other faith.
When this happens, we have to express disapproval and if it is done with ill intent, we have to be quite firm to come down and put it down. We cannot accept that. It is not just one of those things and we just walk away. And we have done that.
But at the same time, we have to respond in a measured way, and we have to see what the situation is.
Because if it is in public and if it is with a big crowd, and you speak intemperately, you can cause offence to a lot of people. (It is a) great outrage. If you are among friends and you are comfortable with each other, you are chatting, you are joking, you may say things you did not intend to offend but it may cause offence and you may not be conscious of it.
And how should the response be? Should I therefore go home and make a post online and say so-and-so said this to me yesterday, we were in a group of three or four and I am outraged about it, and everybody then gets outraged about it to share your anger, or should you just stand up and say, "Sorry, you may not intend it but I do not think that it is nice or fun or cool and please do not do that".
And in that process, get to understand each other better. And therefore, avoid causing offence to one another.
I think we need to be able to manage that, to calibrate that and a lot of it is not book knowledge but growing up together, interacting with one another, talking about these subjects, and therefore being sensitised and naturally knowing what to do.
But I would also say we should not become hypersensitive. Because if you look at what is happening in Western countries, there is a mood now where you are so careful about not doing anything that may cause offence to anybody. And sometimes, they even say, "I am going to say something that you may be unhappy about, so if you do not want to hear me, please leave the room before I say it".
And then life becomes very tiring, and I think it is not an adult or a mature and practical way to get on together with one another.
With give-and-take, with understanding, I am tolerant, but I am also respectful. And I am able to get on together because fundamentally, we believe that we are Singaporeans.
I think we should take that kind of an approach. And will the problem go away? Probably never completely. But should we keep on working at it? Answer is yes, of course.
ON RACIAL PERCENTAGE
Q: On the topic of race, do you think that it is important to maintain the racial percentage in Singapore and why?
Mr Lee: I think in broad terms, yes, to the extent that we are able to influence it by immigration. We try not to upset the racial balance because I think there is a certain comfort level that we have achieved with the way our society is.
It is majority Chinese, but it is not dominant Chinese. The Malays have about 15 per cent of the population, the Indians have about 9 per cent of the population — if we are talking about the citizen population.
I think if you change it drastically — the only way it can change drastically is through immigration — if you do that, I think there will be a very, very strong sense of unease and pushback from the group that feels like, suddenly, I am fewer, or suddenly, why are there so many of some other groups who are here. It can cause a lot of tension.
Therefore, as a matter of policy, to the extent that we can, we would like to keep this broad mix.
NAVIGATING SENSITIVE TOPICS ONLINE
Q: Why is MOE (Ministry of Education) seemingly avoiding touching on such topics and has the scrutiny since the Hamas-Gaza lesson changed the way MOE approaches race-sensitive topics?
... Right now, we have OB (out-of-bounds) markers to determine what issues we can talk about online and everywhere else.
So in order to ensure that these discussions about race and religion are happening online, while preventing such negative stereotypes from happening, how wide do you think these OB markers should be for safe discussions for race and religion?
Mr Lee: I think that it is two aspects of the same question, which is that how do we discuss a subject that is inherently sensitive? You need to talk about it and yet you must also know that if you just let fly, things can easily get completely out of control.
And it depends on the audience. It depends on the maturity of the kids, what age they are. It depends on the context. I think how far you can go depends on the format and on the readiness of the kids.
We need to be sensitised to them, but it is a very difficult judgement to make, exactly how to do it.
And with Israel-Hamas, the lesson plan for CCE (character and citizenship education) in schools here, I do not think that it has changed our approach.
What it has done is to show us how difficult it is in order to do it right. The best efforts you make, in the end you must be able to do it so that the teachers are comfortable and feel equipped to teach it and can convey it.
Online, where should the OB markers be? This is one of the things where it is not like when you go on a golf course, the OB marker is very clear — you have a stick on the ground with some colour on it and if we go beyond the red line, you know you are beyond the red line.
But when you are talking about human things, race, religion, people getting along or not with one another, right or wrong — there are no lines that are so clear at all, where you know when you are way out, you know when you are perfectly okay.
And in between? Well, that depends. And we have to judge and sometimes you only know after the fact whether it is okay or not. And we have to be careful. So that is how it is. I think I would say online, we have to be extra careful.
INTEGRATING FOREIGNERS
Q: Mr Lee, there are two dimensions to effective integration. On the one hand, even Singaporeans can perhaps be a little more gracious and inclusive.
At the same time, new migrants must also put in that effort, and they must want to integrate with larger society. So which of these dimensions do you think poses more difficulty, or poses more challenges and may be more difficult to overcome?
Mr Lee: I think both are challenging, both take effort. For the Singaporeans, it takes effort because we know we need to be an open society. We know there is no way to close up because there is no future in that.
And yet, it is not so easy to be a society, we are continually having a steady stream of people arriving, joining you, and not quite the same and not quite fully integrated into our society yet.
For the migrants, it is a process. They come to Singapore, sometimes visitors, sometimes studying, working. Sometimes, some of them go on to be permanent residents. Eventually, some of them, not so few, go on to be citizens.
There is a range and I think we want to be welcoming to them and we treat them as friends. And there are gradations of friends, from friends to family.
We want to welcome you and we hope you will be a good guest. To make that journey takes time, because they come as non-Singaporeans and as I said just now, Chinese Chinese is not the same as Singapore Chinese. Same same, but different.
I think it takes effort, it takes interaction, we also need to know certain things.
In Singapore, we are multi-racial, that we get on with each other, that if I have a neighbour, he may be cooking something fragrant. Maybe curry, maybe satay, maybe some Chinese spicy dish. I share my neighbours’ aromas; we live cheek by jowl and are friends with each other.
And that is the way Singaporeans are. You need to know that, and you need to know the social norms, that you do not go around flashing your latest car, your watch, your shirt, your shoes. All of these can cost millions of dollars. It is a certain tone in our society, and you fit into our society.
Q: How can we improve the way that society is structured, either physically where homes are located, where we house various communities together, especially Singaporeans and foreign workers being separated through foreign worker dormitories, and we have expats who have their own enclaves as well.
How can we maybe improve on those structures such that they become more conducive to more intermingling and more cohesion among the communities?
Mr Lee: I think the foreign worker dormitories are a specific solution to a specific problem. The specific problem is, we are talking about construction workers, process workers. Many of them come from South Asia, some from China, some from Southeast Asia, but they are a specific group of people and they are very large.
You are talking about 350,000 people in construction and maybe 80,000 more who are in the shipyards and process industries, so 400,000 people.
I think if we did not have those dormitories, the social impact of having 400,000 people like that scattered all over our public housing estates will be quite considerable and I think we will have a lot of problems.
Interaction with them — yes, you have community events. They come out, they go to all the entertainment places, all the normal shopping and food places in Singapore.
You interact with them, but basically that is a more or less self-contained community, working in our midst and generally working quite well. They are not really meant to be integrated for the long-term because this is a transient population.
Others are integrated. Many are living in public housing estates, they rent rooms, sometimes they rent an entire flat, some are living in private properties. In public housing, we have set limits on the foreign proportions, so that we try not to have a very dense enclave, but in the private estates, it is harder to do.
It is not legally easy for us to control that. In a private estate, sometimes we have a concentration and we have to make a bigger effort in order to engage them and to have them have interactions together with the rest of society.
There are opportunities for mingling when we have community events. Foreign work permit holders, foreign workers here sometimes do participate. Numbers may not be small.
I often see them when I go down for events in Ang Mo Kio or Teck Ghee, and we welcome them. But at the same time, you want it to be a Singapore event.
If a lot of them came for a Singapore event, you will also feel the balance is not quite right. It is something that we have to progress in a practical sort of way.
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