True Prejudice

With all this hoo-ha about racist blogging, one wonders whether racism is alive and well in our country today. Anecdotal evidence points to the likelihood that it really is: everyone's got a story about snide remarks made (when thought to be out of earshot) by someone against someone else of another race. Sweeping prejudice under the carpet doesn't solve it, nor do endless programmes of national education that repeat the same tired stories about racial riots in the nation's early days to bored youths who've never experienced the energy of a protest, much less the terror of a lynching. The truth is that prejudice and any sort of -ism arises when we view another group of people as being less than human, as a collective other rather than as individuals. The only way to palliate this ill would be to encourage people of different races to interact more and enter each other's lives, to see the person behind the racial caricature. Russell pointed out in his Nobel Lecture that fear (and concommitantly hate) of unfamiliar groups is an important human factor in politics (politics in the broad sense also could be extended to mean human relations in general):

"I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. ... It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds."

Those fond of idioms may point out that familiarity breeds contempt, but I like to think it's a more personable kind of contempt, a jocular ribbing, that's being described.

Far more insidious than name-calling racism is latent racism and indeed latent prejudice in general. The fact is that racism (along with anti-semitism and terrorism) is one of the great political taboos in modern society. Anyone guilty of, or even say accused of, racism is open to wide condemnation and criticism, and social alienation reminiscent of the old tribal taboo penalties. In many cases the backlash is a kneejerk reaction (forgive the mixed metaphor) triggered by the word 'racist' alone. With the label applied, who bothers to find out what exactly the person had said? It must be abhorrent, it must be condemned, or so the sentiment goes. This is precisely the hypocrisy that makes political correctness such a supremely annoying phenomenon: when people judge by labels, without thinking of the meaning behind these labels. Ask anyone on the street whether he would consider himself a racist, and he would (unless of perverse psychology) certainly say no. But watch his behavior and gauge his feeling, and one can usually find traces of common race-based biases in him. Indeed the label 'racist' has become too politically charged to mean anything useful, in the same way that the terms 'Nazi' and 'fascist' have been used on any politically undesirable group, regardless of their actual inclination to the left or right. Those who gleefully take upon themselves the task of inquisitor, exposing racists to the left and the right of them should heed the call to nosce ipsum. The psychological drive to hunt and eliminate out racists is the same drive that made people hunt witches for burning and blacks for lynching, quite independent of the reason for the hunt, which may be a noble one. That is to say, we should be aware of our own motivations, which basally may not be as high-minded as we think them to be ("I could never be a racist, unlike them" etc.) Besides, the root of racism is prejudice, and while we may claim to be race-blind because racism is fashionable to hate, we are often guilty of other forms of prejudice, towards the handicapped, the aged, etc.

Singapore, the rojak-bowl rather than the melting-pot, has retained a diverse mix of cultures, but it is precisely because of this that our society is split along cultural lines. Culture, divided not only along lines of race but also between social classes, is the tool that can best ameliorate prejudice. Lorenz observed that dogs are so famously loyal because they view their owner as leaders of their pack, viewing the relationship between pet and owner not as we view it but rather as a bond between (slightly unequal) peers (hence explaining why the sentimental treat animals the kindest and the haughty commit crimes of abuse). Hence the question of a solution is reduced to this: is Singapore willing to go the whole hog and give up the rojak-bowl for a rather bland puree in the interests of racial stability (because cultural differences are the ultimate cause for prejudice, hence eliminating differences between cultures would eliminate prejudice), or can we maintain our healthy diversity and accept a mild form of latent racism? Latent racism here refers to race-biases that we do not acknowledge in public, but nonetheless are aware of and perhaps feel guilty for. Because if we accept the latter solution (as someone rightly pointed out, Utopia, be it that of Plato, More, or the modern PC kind, is a damned boring place to be) then we must also accept that latent racism comes in a continuum and some will naturally be more open about their prejudice. Likewise, some will be hypersensitive and attribute every little foible to the lurking devils of racism.

Here's an unorthodox solution to bridging gaps between our different races. Instead of that annoying juggernaut called National Education, and the fairly ineffective approach of trying to get students to experience the horrors of a racial riot vicariously, let's bring different races together through popular culture. Devote some time in the classroom (as I say this, innumerable teachers wince and remind me that there's no such thing as time in the classroom, but one can dream) to introducing (or better yet get the kids to do it) various aspects of popular culture to one another. Not only can we bridge the fourfold division (canonically: Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others) of our racial groups, but also class and language differences, because even within a race there are differences in taste. We'd know if we've succeeded when the Malay kid can crack A R Rahman jokes, the Indian guy can do a Jay Chou impression, and the potato stops pretending he doesn't know Chinese.