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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

    Race: Caucasian

Maybe it's cultural bias, but I was really surprised they'd list something like that on an ID card!

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Singapore's position on race is difficult to characterize. This is what I've heard:

Most Singaporeans live in government-owned housing blocks. The distribution of the races within each housing block is roughly the same as in Singapore as a whole. Within these blocks, you are only allowed to sell your apartment to another person of the same race as yourself.

Officially this is to promote "racial harmony." That's probably true. Unofficially, it seems clear that it's also a form of gerrymandering: the government assumes that the Chinese majority will always support the ruling party, and this system stops any district from gaining a Malay majority.

I've also been told that your second language in school (which is taught in English, a neutral language) is determined by your race: Mandarin for Chinese, Malay for Malaysians, and Tamil (!) for Indians.

I really love Singapore -- been there several times as a visitor, studied its governance, society (and its food stalls...) but I would be seriously pissed off if I were told that I had to do certain things because of my race.

"I've also been told that your second language in school (which is taught in English, a neutral language) is determined by your race: Mandarin for Chinese, Malay for Malaysians, and Tamil (!) for Indians."

Remember though that Singapore is bilingual, so the "second language" will be the primary language spoken at home (although some Chinese may speak Hokkien or another dialect instead, and many families speak mainly English).

Roughly around 60% of Indians in Singapore are Tamil (mostly from Tamil Nadu, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka), so that could be one reason the government chose Tamil as the "second language" of Singaporean Indians.

Fair enough, it is a very different situation from the US where most students are taught in the language they speak at home (English).

I know nothing about Singapore or their motivations for the racial integration, but the official response is at least plausible; see e.g. Schelling's segregation model: http://www.google.com/search?q=schelling+segregation+model

There are several Java applets around that demonstrate the model.

Having observed "white flight" in the US, I agree; it's just that there's other side effects that are desirable for the ruling party.

It's pretty useful when trying to describe someone, or prevent a photo from being swapped out. Gender, hair color, skin color, etc. are all obvious physical traits.

"Race" is a useless descriptor for all four of my children. I've heard a lot of wild-ass guesses of their "race" over the years in public places. More detailed descriptive terms with less ambiguity would serve a lot better for matching photographs to identity cards, if that is the concern. (The internal political history Singapore might might refer to for identifying "race" on identity cards

http://www.mha.gov.sg/isd/ct.htm

http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/2011/01/danger-of-racial...

probably makes for different categories, with different definitions, from the definitions used in the United States, which fortunately does NOT put "race" on national identity cards.) Categorization by race on national identity cards is a matter of considerable concern to human rights scholars who have looked at real-world examples of that practice.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/AboutGen_Group_Classific...

The long answer about how ridiculous "race" is as a descriptive category can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...

One od the reasons is that Singapore is pro-racial integration, so they put it on virtually every official form... for example there are rules to prevent segregation by 'race' within the public housing system.

But even after living here 4 years it still strikes me as strange.

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