Confronting the uncomfortable and embracing our differences

Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth & Second Minister for Law, at the OnePeople.sg HarmonyWorks! Conference 2021

1. Good morning to all of you and thank you for joining us today.
2. It's nice to be here and thank you for inviting me. I am going to share some views with you, but at the same time, I hope that in the next two hours that we spend together, that I will also be able to hear from you, because as dialogues go, it has to be interactive, it’s a discourse, and I hope to also learn from you as much as you will hear from me.
3. Today, 24th of July, I was just reflecting on the year that has gone by, and what I've been doing in MCCY.
4. In the last one year, I've spoken to many groups, of course, often on Zoom like this, because we've not been able to meet in person as often. And I've heard different perspectives on the issue of racial harmony, religious harmony, and I often ask participants or members of the dialogue: “What does racial harmony mean to you? What is it to you personally? And what more can we do to make it better in Singapore?”
5. I've heard many personal stories, I'm sure each of you will have a story to tell. Young, old, some good stories, some less so. And I've also heard many suggestions on what an individual should do, what can society do as a whole, and also what must government do. I think there are no right or wrong answers, there are no good or bad suggestions. I think each of them is very much shaped by our own experiences, what we ourselves have gone through will invariably leave a mark on ourselves, shape our thinking, shape our sentiment. What we've lived through will also define our own outlook on race, religious harmony.
6. But I think the one common thread that has come through from almost everyone I've spoken to across the different demographics, is that racial harmony is a constant work-in-progress. I know it sounds somewhat cliché, we've said it so often, but in very many forms of expression, that sentiment has come through very strongly to me. As Ashley our emcee said earlier, a couple of racist incidents have been brought to the fore recently. I don’t think this is an indication that we’ve become a lot more of a racist society. But I do think that this is a reminder that we cannot ever take it for granted, nor can we ever assume that what we have done is perfect. We constantly have to do something about it.
7. But I would also say that on the whole, if you look at our country, almost six decades of independence, we have done well. We have been on an upward trajectory. We have put in place policies, and I would like to offer you a perspective since Racial Harmony Day was celebrated just three days ago on 21st July. And I don't know how many of you here would remember why we picked 21st July. It's important to remember, not just the day itself, and how it is celebrated moving forward, on how do we build a better society, a more racially harmonious society, but also to remember how it came about. And how 21st July is relevant.
8. There were serious race riots in 1964, on the 21st July and that was in the aftermath of the merger with Malaysia in 1963. On that fateful day on 21st July, there was a procession to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. 20,000 to 25,000 people gathered at the Padang. There were a few racial incidents, and a couple of fiery speeches were made, and from there it spiralled into one of the worst and most prolonged riots in Singapore's post-war history, between the Malays and the Chinese, something that we would find difficult to imagine occurring today. An incident at the Padang with tens of thousands of people spilling out into neighbourhoods, even far away in suburban areas. It became a Malay versus Chinese riot. It lasted three days, it took until 24th July, before we were able to quell the worst of the riots. But that was not before there was loss of lives, injury to many people, and damage to property. However, the most important damage of all which was suffered in those three days was the damage to race relations, the trust between Chinese and Malay, and by extension, because race is sometimes a proxy for religion as well, racial issues became religious issues as well.
9. I wanted to go a little bit into that background because it sets the context for what we will discuss. When we look at where we are today, we must always remember that, much as we want to deal with the racial incidents that have occurred, much as we believe that we have a lot more to do, we must also look at how far we have come, and appreciate the context in which our race relations have made it work for us in Singapore.
10. When we say constantly work at race relations, I think it is also really not much different from how we foster relations in a family. All of us live in a family, we have our ups and we have our downs. It's a constant work-in-progress too, between husband and wife, between siblings, between parent and child, it's a constant work-in-progress, and race relations ought to be no different.
11. So the one thing I've been happy about, as I go about my different discussions and dialogues the past one year, is that we have over the years, created space for Singaporeans to discuss many of these potentially sensitive, very divisive issues. I'm also equally heartened that people want to be in that space. Such as this morning, so many of you at this dialogue today. You all want to be in the space, you want to discuss difficult issues, you have views to exchange, you may disagree respectfully, but we all want to have discourse about how we can be better. It gives me a lot of encouragement that we have people here who care about not just where we are today, but where we want to get to, that we care deeply about our racial harmony.
12. So, let me segue into three broad points that I'll share with you about how far we have come, where we think we can carry this conversation further, and eventually, what a post-race society can look like.
     
    

    Key institutional building blocks are in place

13. So my first point, picking up from what I've said earlier, is that we start from a good position. Today, we can very easily bring different parties or communities together to discuss our differences. A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with the IRO Council – 10 major faiths from different parts of Singapore. I looked around the room, and the one thing that struck me was that how many other places in the world would we have been able to come together like this? And of course with different religions you inevitably will see people from different races in Singapore. We have Eurasians, we have Indians, Chinese, Malays. How many times, and how often would you be able to do this in another country? I think that signifies really how far we have come. Many of these discussions take place in closed settings, many in open forums, some in private, some more intimately, but I think the important thing is that it's something that we are prepared to talk about and put out there.
14. I believe that our founding fathers, when we look at the context and you look at our founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew when he was faced with the challenge in 1965. Of course putting the 1964 race riots as one frame, is just one data point, but I think those are the things that he was concerned about as he started to set up an independent Singapore, and this shaped the thinking of our early leaders. They knew, our forefathers knew, just how volatile it could be. Just a few speeches, a few careless incidents could spark a serious race riot. And remember, those were the days before social media, before we could put up things on social media and it would travel quickly within minutes.
15. So whilst we must be conscious of being updated with the times, if you look back at our foundations, we were determined to be clear where we stand on race relations. Mr Lee made it very clear upon independence, we are not a Chinese, Malay or Indian nation. It's for all. Our Constitution guarantees minorities a place in this country. We have 8% Indian, 15% Malay, and 76% Chinese in this country. But it requires our government, the Constitution, to look after our minorities.
16. We embrace our differences – and we are not just saying this. Many other countries say this, but in practice, they actually try and make everyone homogenous. If you're a foreigner trying to work or study in Germany, you must learn German. You can't really get by without learning German. In France, many people come and say they are French, but actually they came from other parts of the world, Africa, very many Algerians, Tunisians are coming into France. But they are French-speaking, they must be French-speaking, and they put them into a system where effectively, they become one culture. It's a melting pot.
17. We are not. I like to use this analogy, we are like rojak, where coming together, we have a unique flavour, it’s a dish in itself. But if you were to pick out individual pieces, the pineapple, the turnip, the tau pok, all of these are different constituent elements of the dish, and it has a unique flavour. So that's how I would look at it, as opposed to a melting pot.
18. You just look at, France, take football as an analogy. I'm a big football fan and I know many of you are as well. You look at the recent struggles they had at Euro 2020. The struggles were not because they were bad players, but because they don't get along. And when you analyse who doesn't get along, you will find that there are some fairly distinct racial lines, the ethnic Africans versus the ethnic origin Europeans. So it's a constant work-in-progress because racial harmony is not a natural state. We have built up our race relations over the past many years, but are not necessarily understood or fully appreciated by subsequent generations, myself included, because I was born in the late 60s.
19. From the Constitution we then moved into other frameworks. We had the Presidential Council for Minority Rights. What does it do? It guarantees, it ensures a commitment against discrimination, not just by words, but by deed, at a very institutional level. It's hard-coded into our system. Ask yourself again, which other country requires a separate body to review every single piece of legislation and law, which Parliament passes, to ensure that there is no minority prejudice? Parliament is the supreme body in Singapore. It represents the people, but despite that, we ensure that every single bill that is passed, goes through PCMR. We have the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, that was recently amended, to ensure that we not just have a framework, but that we practice what we preach. I mentioned the IRO earlier. Policies like EIP, GRCs and so on, they serve a function. Is it the best? Perfect? No. But in the context of what we have, does it fulfil our purpose? Yes, I think so. We can have a discourse about that later on.
20. Multiculturalism is not just something that we speak about. It's something that we actually do. We actually put in practice, day by day, living it out everyday.
21. And so I encourage you to look at what Ashley said earlier about the recent incidents, and to put it in context as well. To look at our country, we have a history of racial differences, diversity, but yet we maintain a multiracial, multicultural society. We live in close quarters, each of us. In this context, where do we stand in terms of hate crimes, religious crimes, racial discrimination? I think very low. If you study many of the numbers in many of the other countries, in Sweden, in the US, the number of incidents there far exceed the proportion that we have.
22. So my point is to say, let's understand in context, where we are, we have to deal with the recent racial incidents, they have no place in our society. We must call it out, but at the same time, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. On our policies that we have, they serve a function, but at the same time, they are not and cannot be immutable. The policies are not the ends in itself. They are designed to deliver religious, racial harmony. There will be rough edges in some of these policies, whether the EIP or GRC. Can we have a discussion on what else we can do, how we can make it better? Of course. We must always be prepared to listen, to evaluate, to change if necessary. And what's important, in my mind, is to build consensus, to strike an equilibrium between government and people, an equilibrium which evolves and takes into account new norms, and of course, new aspirations of our people. 
     
    

    Common and shared experiences

23. Second, our common and shared spaces and experiences make a difference too. Our daily lived experiences will shape, as I said earlier, how we look at race and religious harmony. So take a couple of examples, sports for one. I think it's a great way of partaking in daily lived experiences with no regard, no conscious regard at least, of racial differences.
24. I've always told this story: when I was in school, it doesn’t matter whether my friend was Chinese, Malay, Indian. I mean of course it was there but it was subconscious. I never came home and told my parents I got a new Malay friend or a new Indian friend. It was homogenous to me, and if anything else, the only marker, the only difference was which of my classmates owned the ball, brought the ball to recess, because you have to be his friend. If you're not his friend, you won't be able to play football at recess, so that was what was important to me. And we didn't have so much of these racial distinctions.
25. Food is another example. We share food easily. We are all exposed to different cultures, different races, their foods, their food heritage. Having made it to UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage last year was something that gives it a bit of a boost and allows us to use food as a way of broaching differences, bridging across different cultures, different races and their practices. So even though we can't quite do it now with the restrictions, I do hope that we will all be back in the hawker centres again when the COVID situation improves.
26. I was talking to people about what UNESCO saw special in us, and again, going back to my IRO example, if you take an average hawker centre, how many other places in the world would you see a place where you have food of such diversity and not just that but people sitting on the same tables, almost elbow to elbow? My Muslim friends eating their Halal food, across the table there'll be someone else. We respect our spaces, but at the same time we want to grow our common spaces, and I see that a lot in the hawker centre example.
27. And really these shared examples are only possible if on a daily basis, Singaporeans do come across each other in workplaces, at home, in coffee shops, in markets, in schools, and that's the essence of the lived experience. 
     
    

    Respect for one another

28. The third point I'll leave you with is fundamentally, how do we deal with discourse, and how do we deal with differences? And I think the key point here is really to have respect for one another's views. For long, when I was growing up, we talked about racial and religious harmony as one of racial and religious tolerance. I've always asked myself: why do we use word tolerance? Perhaps, in the context of what we now know about the 60s and 70s, and the racial tensions there, I can understand why when I was growing up in school in the 80s and maybe the 90s, we were fixated with ensuring that we at least tolerated. But I think we can move beyond that now. I think we have now reached a stage where we can go from tolerance, perhaps to understanding, and eventually to acceptance if not embracement.
29. And I think we can only do it if we have a constant dialogue, like this setting, and we also are able to deal with differences in a respectful manner. It's really not an abstract notion, it's a day to day thing. And by and large, I'm quite happy to say, generally Singaporeans are respectful of each other's cultural sensitivities, feelings, and it's something that we must always be mindful of. And I feel that the majority, whether in race or religion, must always be cognizant of this. My colleague, Minister Lawrence Wong, touched on this a few weeks ago. He said especially in a multicultural, multiracial society like Singapore, it's much harder to be a minority than a majority. And I think that's true.
30. It's true of every social setting. If you were the only foreigner in a room, you would feel it. If you were the only race in the room, if I was only Chinese in a room of Indians or Malays, I would feel it, and I would be very conscious of it. If I was the only male in a room of all women, I would feel it very consciously. If I was the oldest person in a room of young people, all 20s and under, I would feel very conscious about it as well. So I think these are examples of how our lived experiences must factor in our configuration. And as we go through this process of getting to understanding and to embracement, with respect being the key builder, I think we must be very conscious of the cultural feelings and the sensitivities of the minority population. And I mean minority in various senses, not just in race.
31. Social media today is also a double-edged sword. In one fell swoop we can communicate a lot more extensively, we can reach out better. But at the same time I think it promotes a degree of polarisation. You find that the algorithms mean that salacious, emotive content travels better, fake news travels better, extremist views travels better, and they end up in the same echo chamber. So we have to be mindful of it, have to be careful about it and be very conscious how it comes across.
32. We all saw the incident that Mr Dave Parkash uploaded, focused on the lecturer and what happened. I know many of you would have seen it, we’re all upset about it because of how it was expressed. And I think rightly so. Singapore is a multicultural society, intercultural, interracial relationships and marriages have become almost a norm for us, and I don't see this pattern changing. And so for someone to come and call that out in such an inflammatory manner was really quite disrespectful.
33. But at the same time I do take a lot of comfort in the way in Dave responded and reacted. You look at that nine, ten-minute video and I thought he was very measured. He was put into a situation where I don't know how many of us would have reacted quite emotionally. I certainly wonder whether I would have reacted in the same way if it was put to me that I was preying on someone. I think that's uncalled for. But his reaction has taught also us something: that there is a way in which we can respectfully put up our differences, call it out, put it out there for people to discuss, have a discourse about. It's a great learning point about not just what not to do, but how to react in this situation. And so, it overall made it a lot more of a constructive incident than perhaps what happened in 1964. And I think this is why we must constantly look at this as having an ability to come together to exchange views and to agree to disagree as well.
34. Finally, let me just touch a little bit about where we go from here. So we celebrated Racial Harmony Day three days ago. It's important, of course, to set aside a day to recognise how far we have come since 1964. But all of you would agree that racial harmony is certainly not a one-day endeavour, it's not a one-day incident, it's not a momentary point in time, but it's a 365-days-a-year endeavour. Every time we go out, we step out of our homes, in our homes, our behaviour, how we set a good example for our children, how we mentor our young people at workplaces, in schools. All of these things are our common experiences, and these are experiences that bind us, open our eyes to what harmony in Singapore is, how we want it to be, and it shapes our thinking, influences how we also make sense of other people.
35. As I've said, the more we interact closely, the more we know someone of a different race, religion, background – it can be a different race, different religion, different sexual orientation perhaps, different gender – we will have a little bit more of care and understanding each time. It will be built up slowly. And I think that's how it ought to be, it will shape our thinking and how we look at others, and how we see our own place in society as well.
36. Overall I believe that while we have policies, we have laws, these are only good enough to give us a framework. Because policies and laws, they tell you what you can’t do. You can't go out there and make hate speech about other religions, but laws and regulations can't tell you what to do, to foster better relations. They can't tell us how to behave in society, they can't tell us how to respectfully call out something which is as emotive as what happened to Dave. So all of these things I think are shaped by our interactions, our discourse with fellow members of society. And I think in this regard, having dialogues like what we do today, having the ability, the courage to speak up, to exchange views, to understand, and to keep an open mind and to understand that not all of us are the same, will bring us very far.
37. So once again, thank you very much to the organisers for having me. I'm very glad to share this morning with you, not just for you to listen to me, but also for you to give me your perspectives, tell me your views and tell me how you think we can chart a path forward together, because the one thing that is constant is really change. Again cliché as it may sound, it's all the more apt for dealing with race and religious relations in Singapore.
38. Thank you very much. I look forward to having a discussion with you.