thinking of....

liz, is there such a thing as too little racial discrimination..

there shouldn't be racial discrimination at all and on your point of s'pore youngsters taking racial harmony for granted...i see your point, however i beg to differ. we should be able to make racist jokes without the risk of offending others, unless race is indeed a segregating factor in the society ---which it should not be in the first place.

telling a racist joke should be somewhat like telling a normal joke where we make fun of various professions, nationalities and idiosyncratic aspects of others character or physical appearance. likewise, there must be moderation. yet there should not a great fuss made if one indeed regards race(in a more crudely put way the skin colour of others) as a mere appearance and in no way contributing to divison in the society.

perhaps telling racist jokes right in front of a particular member of that race/skin tone might be overdoing it (don't say i didn't warn, if you get a black eye, don't find me!) but let's jus put it in this way, if people can openly crack 'lawyers being the biggest crooks and liars' in the vicinity of lawyers. i don't see why our society cannot gradually progress to such a situation where skin colour hardly matters.

i've been told i'm a little too idealistic.

you know the typical "if only the world sees everyone as humans and nothing else"

singapore's still a relatively young nation thus i too feel it might take a few more decades to reach such a open-minded and liberal society. racial and religious differences are all too of often exploited by society's troublemakers and no nation would ever want to risk such a possibility of it happening...

therefore i can only hope...

lastly, just a quick question to ask:

" Will you feel more at ease with your Chinese/Indian/Malay/Eurasian neighbour in your HDB block or with a

(if you are Chinese) a 18th century girl with bounded feet
(if you are Indian) a 18th century girl still bounded by the caste system
(if you are Malay) a 18th century girl who gets married at 15
(if you are Eurasian) a 18th century girl with no education

actually it's all about the same...

my choice is rather obvious but

which do you chose?