Racial Harmony Day – Because not being dicks to each other is a cause for celebration

Race is not a real thing. It most certainly exist, but not in the physical sense, and is an idea that we have willed into existence while continuing to strengthen racial divisions. And because of that, racial discrimination becomes a real thing, and that is just disgusting. I recently learnt from a doctor friend that the only way to get rid of a bad wart is to cut it off; for a wart as deadly as racial discrimination, we are applying nonsensical ointments such as racial laws and policing hate crime and wish that the wart goes away. That never works.

The term racial harmony needs to be deconstructed and dissected before any proper discussion of this topic can be held. To me, the term is simply ironic. Race is a construct invented for the sole purpose to divide and differentiate in order to assign different social roles and rights to other members of the human race (which is a real thing) based on bogus research studies that are, sadly, still being funded and conducted to this day. Harmony is the opposing force that is supposed to bring people (back) together, and for the most part it is a desirable state of being. Except if you enjoy the chaos brought about by people fighting over stupid ideas, such as racial uniqueness, otherwise we can mostly agree that harmony is a good thing. I like harmony. I do not necessarily care for peace, but I like it for the fact that people in this imaginary harmonious world are smarter and more logical than those in our world. So when we speak of racial harmony, I like to think of it as a world where people do not fight over racial issues. When you choose to employ a candidate over another, you do so because of their gender, class status, their merits or simply the way they look, and never because they are of a certain race. When a man tells you her wife is a dentist, you do not ask whether they are Chinese or Malay, but instead make comments like “so she is a nurse at the dentistry?” Because eliminating racial divide will be the end of all our problems, and therefore racial harmony is of utmost importance and needs to be made into a special day for celebration.

Jokes aside, I do think the intention of having such a day for celebration is good, at least partially, depending on how you view nations and nationalism. It is definitely not pure and sincere in any sense, but good. Despite being ironic how we can celebrate unity in diversity, the end goal is at least unity, a fairness in treatment to all despite being told that we are different. Like most scientific projects that end up being part of military weaponry, good intentions do not always yield merits nor intended results. Perhaps it is out of pure naivety of our socio-political scientists, perhaps it is simply required for the grand plot of the nation building story which has not been updated for 50 years, as we were painfully reminded last year. But again, the intention to try and create equal grounds for everyone is faultless unless you really despise the idea of nations. It has certainly not solved racial discrimination, but I cannot find myself to hate on a program that tells kids to not be assholes to other kids because their skin colour is different or they talk funny or something. On my end I will make sure my kids learn about the very basics of linguistic and accents develop from the language other kids speak at home, and not go down the easy path of telling them people speak differently because they are of another race. I will be quite disgusted if educated university friends, especially those who majored in that major where they do nothing but talk about social problems, if they decide to raise their children as lazily (intellectually) as our parents did. I still immediately assume all the ‘Malay’ people I know are Muslims because of my upbringing, and it annoys me to no end even though I am aware that it is a major misconception.                                                                                                                                                         

And after all that setting up we can finally talk about the Yishun Secondary School incident, where students were apparently told only those that are eligible for JC are going for the Racial Harmony Day celebrations. (The original Mothership.com post later updated that it is not in fact the celebration itself that is practising this discrimination but a half day off to prepare for the celebrations, but nonetheless, still differential treatment in relation to this Racial Harmony Day, thus this discussion still needs to be had.) If anyone has not read the web comic On A Plate on class privilege then I do recommend you read it and tell me whether this discrimination of students by results is a class issue, because I most certainly think it is. The rest of this post will be a very angry rant on the idiocy of flaming discrimination in public schools, so I will preface this by saying two things. First, I believe the intention of the school to be good. Selfish, but good. They want the students who are not doing as well and pulling up the school’s ranking to have half a day more of lessons, because that will most certainly help them get into JC. But I can at least where the school is coming from. Secondly, I do not believe the students’ demands are pure. They just do not want classes. But in this case their selfish reasoning is the one I will side on because our goals align despite having different starting points, like how I will stand with people who are against social welfare because they do not want to pay more taxes despite knowing that they are being assholes.

What is the point of sending children to public schools? For me it is to place them in a harmonious fantasy where you are supposedly judged base on your merits and nothing else, so that when time comes for them to rule the world, they will run their world like how their public school society was like. But alas, the ‘real’ world that everyone speaks badly but does nothing to change it will not be moved by such idealistic wishes. There are two ways to go about it. The first way is the easy way; you let kids know that their teachers are discriminating them based on arbitrary favourism, and are focused to help the good ones get better, all while hiding behind the rhetoric of “I cannot help you if you do not want to help yourselves”. You teach them the rules of that ‘real’ world we so proudly uphold, where being of a certain gender, sexuality, skin colour, language group and/or religion determines whether you serve coffee or receive coffee in a meeting room. The second way is the harder way. You raise the future generation into one that can change our twisted world. You do everything you teach them in the first method, and you make the children think about what they can do for a better future. You force these children who have lived through that fantasy create solutions to turn that fantasy into reality. The worst thing that can happen now is that Yishun Secondary School backs down and lets everybody get the day off for Racial Harmony Day. It certainly solves the problem at hand, but similar to the first method, you simply expose the children to the fault lines of discrimination but do not request a solution out of them. I believe a majority of children at that age would want a day off. What about making them abandon that selfish thought for the sake of equality? I think, give them a chance to vote on it. Give them three options, continue with the current plan, make it a day off for everyone, or let everyone go back to normal curriculum. Inform the children about your concern for the students who are not doing as well in class that you need them to carry on with classes on this day. If there is any hope left for the future, I think the third option will win. And if it does not, I guess we just need to try again when my kids and their generation grows up.

I believe that there was a question I was trying to answer with this post, on the importance of dedicating an entire day to celebrate Racial Harmony Day in public schools. The solution that I have provided above is what I think we can do for now, because you are not going to resolve all the issues with the system in a single day, through a single event. But we can take a step towards that better future. And if the upcoming generation cannot balance the need of their establishment (the school, in this case) for the non-JC eligible students to not have the off and continue with their normal curriculum (I am not saying I agree with the method, but neither do I know how to run schools), and yet ensure that equality is maintained by not discriminating anyone with any arbitrary markers, then they need the idea of harmony beaten into them with as pompous a celebration as possible. So yes, if Yishun Secondary School decides to let everyone off in preparation for Racial Harmony Day together after this backlash, then they need the celebration so very much to hopefully turn them into better adults who will not be dicks to each other.  

I will like to hear someone from that generation provide me a rebuttal with a better solution to this crisis – tell me my ideas are outdated and the future requires solutions that I am unable to think of – that will make me really happy.