The Chinese 'problem'

Categories: Wormie Says

Before I start my blog, I would like to clarify that I am a Chinese. The title is so named because the government usually address the Malay issue as the Malay 'problem'. Let me address this issue from the point of the majority. This blog was partly prompted by a letter to the Straits Times by a Mr Osman Sidek. [link]

Singapore has about 75% Chinese majority. What this translate to is that being a Chinese you can go about your daily life without having meaningful contact with the minority group. Let me illustrate.

Radio and TV here have very clear distinct segregation of the dialect channels. This means that if you were to listen to the Chinese channel, then you hardly see any minority group. Not much can be said about these channel as it is difficult to imagine a minority group to be conducting a show in Mandarin. However when it comes to the English channel, then the lack of the minority group is hard to understand given that English is the de facto national language. Therefore from TV and radio, there is hardly any 'contact' with the minority group.

Then comes the charity shows which is televised live on national TV. It is strange that the is a lack of artiste from Suria and Central. This make the charity program very skewed. Again no meaningful 'contact' with the minority.

If you go to work, we tend to meet people from the majority group. Granted that this is inevitable because just by the law of chance, there is a three-quarter chance of meeting a member of the majority group. Couple with the fact that people of the same race tends to congregate together, this further reduce the chance for a meningful 'contact'.

Therefore it is no surprise that the social worker quoted by Mr Sidek said 'Wah, today I am very happy. At last I can say I have one Malay friend and one Indian friend.'

Like Mr Sidek, I think it is easier for the majority to reach out to the minority and not for the minority to try to 'integrate' into the majority. But unlike him, I think there is more to education and upbringing that can bridge this 'great' divide. I think there should be a more mixture of artiste and language in the national TV so that artificially the people is 'forced' to learn about each others' culture. This will make for greater tolerance and respect through understanding.

I find it sad when some of my fellow majority race friend do not know about meaning of such simple things like 'haram' and Muslim fasting. Although we may not agree with what out northern neighbours are doing, maybe we should learn from their TV channels. Their TV channels were previously like ours - one for the National language (Malay) and one for the rest (Mandarin and Tamil). But times have change and now both channels have a mixture of all languages. There is no need for a full hour program but just a minute-long clips on cultures and practices may all that is needed for the majority to understand the minority.