Ah Seng, Ahmad and Muthu - the race debate.

Let me start this post with Ah Seng, Ahmad and Muthu. 

“They are in a playground playing marbles. Ah Seng has 10 marbles and Ahmad and Muthu have two marbles each. If Ahmad and Muthu give all their marbles to Ah Seng, how many marbles will Ah Seng have?"

"In Singapore, it doesn't matter how you add, subtract or multiply. At the end of every problem sum, the Chinese guy ends up with the most marbles!"

That’s my intro to this post taken from our local comedian Rishi Budhrani. He runs his own company with his wife, Complete Communicators. 

In an interview, Rishi said that if you want to joke about race in Singapore, it is a tricky balance to tread. He however points out that ”there is a big difference between "doing racist jokes" and what he does, which is "mocking the ridiculousness of racial stereotypes"”. 

He says ”he also takes care to take the sting out of a racial joke by balancing it with something that people can feel good about.”

So, this brings me to racism in Singapore, and the article written this morning by Jeremy Au Yong, “Who should decide what is racist?” 

But before I go further, here’s what started it all. 

By now, we should be familiar with the recent brouhaha over Dennis Chew’s portrayal of a Malay woman in a tudung and an Indian man with visibly darker skin. The ad caused an outcry with siblings Preeti Nair and her brother Subhas Nair retaliating by making a racist-taunting video filled with expletives and middle fingers targeting at the majority Chinese race.

Jeremy quoted what our law minister Shanmugam said recently about both racial trespasses, that is, the Dennis Chew’s brownface ad and Preetipls video: -

“This rap video insults Chinese Singaporeans, uses four-letter words on Chinese Singaporeans, vulgar gestures, pointing of middle finger, to make minorities angry with Chinese Singaporeans," he said, adding that it was no defence to say that it was a response to the advertisement.

"If (it was) something you didn't like, then you ask for an apology. If you think it is criminal, you make a police report. You don't cross the line yourself." On the ad, he said: "Today, I think it's worse than that. You need that cultural sensitivity. You have a Chinese brown out the face and pass off as Indian or Malay, there's going to be a lot of distaste."”

So, however side you look at it, both the ad and video failed the ”Rishi’s test”. They were not funny, that is, they failed to make us laugh at ourselves. 

And to put it in Rishi’s whimsical way, Muthu and Ahmad do not think a brownfaced Ah Seng merely mocks the ”ridiculousness of racial stereotypes” like the maths-problem sum did. It was done in bad taste. It was racist to those being caricatured with a cavalier attitude of those who gave it little thought. 

As for the video, it pissed Ah Seng off because it made no pretensions about it. It was openly offensive, with middle fingers to boot. In any event, it was meant to be a tit-for-tat, publicly-ventilated response, what do you expect?

In the end, as Jeremy asks in his article, who is then to decide what is racist and what is not? How do you tell jokes about race that make us laugh at ourselves, and racist jokes that make us mad? 

Jeremy asks, where do we draw the line? Is ”some kind of agreement on basic parameters...required?” 

Jeremy writes that “this is a debate that is taking place not just in Singapore, and one that has few easy answers. Do we go with the path of least offence, that is, steering clear of anything that someone is sincerely offended by? Or perhaps let the majority decide?”

Alas, maybe there is a deeper issue here at hand. I recall a December ST report on the IPS survey, which minces no words when it published this: "The sharpest social divisions in Singapore may now be based on class, instead of race or religion.”

PM Lee himself warned us about such divide: -

“The issues of mitigating income inequality, ensuring social mobility and enhancing social integration are critical. If we fail - if widening income inequalities result in a rigid and stratified social system, with each class ignoring the others or pursuing its interests at the expense of others - our politics will turn vicious, our society will fracture and our nation will wither."

While we have succeeded to some extent to live together as one Nation and one People, regardless of race and religion, we may have overlooked class divide altogether, until lately. 

The meritocracy we have known since Independence had fashioned a society that has ended up prosperous, thriving, and world class, but not everyone is enjoying the same fruit of this success. 

The issue is not about merit per se, but its system of redistribution. That has broken down, and I believe, that has a deleterious (or domino) effect on how people of different races would react to it. 

When you see your next-door neighbour upgrading their cars, bank accounts and houses, while you languish in your modest status quo, your mind tend to play tricks on you. 

In other words, you start to think about things that may not have a direct causative link to the widening income and social gap. You start to think about entitlement, privileges and discrimination. You start to question the government, their policies, whether they really mean what they say, and say what they mean. You start to look for the lowest hanging fruit, be it culture, creed or colour.

Mind you, this gap only worsens the attitude of the ”have“ and ”have not“. For the “have“ would think they deserve it while the “have-not” would think they don’t. 

The former (the “have”) thus flaunts it, mindlessly, and the latter resents it, also mindlessly. I call that the loosening of the mind, and the tightening of the emotions, resulting in a resenting, suspecting and inflammatory society. Inevitably, we start to take refuge in tribalism revolving around our race or religion, and polarise the society further. 

In the book Identity by Francis Fukuyama, he wrote this: -

“According to Hegel, human history was driven by a struggle for recognition. He argued that the only rational solution to the desire for recognition was universal recognition, in which the dignity of every human being was recognised. Universal recognition has been challenged ever since by other partial forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, or by individual ls wanting to be recognised as superior.”

“The rise of identity politics in modern liberal democracies is one of the chief threats that they face, and unless we can work our way back to more universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.”

So whether it is Ah Seng, Muthu or Ahmad, the question is not so much about marbles, brownface or the tit-for-tat video. The question is about a ”more universal understanding of human dignity” or, recognising our universal struggle for human recognition, and giving deference (and effect) to it, not dismissing, ignoring and belittling it. 

That is the basic perimeter we need to identify, and draw the line on. And every society is different in where we draw that line, and how we adapt that line as circumstances change over time.

Well, I know it‘s not going to be easy, for we all play a part, in particular, the men-in-white at the top.