News: The Straits Times -  16 January 2010


DOUBLE-BARRELLED RACE CLASSIFICATION
Little impact on ethnic-based policies: PM Lee
New move is 'a liberalisation, not a revolution'
By Zakir Hussain, Political Correspondent


HANOI: The move to allow double-barrelled race classifications will not have a major impact on ethnic-based policies in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday.

This is because the majority of the population will still comprise the major racial groups - Chinese, Malays and Indians.

The number affected by the shift 'will remain small for some time to come, and maybe for a very long time', he said.

Whether it is ethnic quotas in housing estates or the requirement for minority representation in Group Representation Constituencies, he did not foresee any major impact.

'I think it is a liberalisation; I don't think it is a revolution,' he said, adding that ethnicity is 'something which is self-described' and the change is simply to give people greater choice in identifying or describing themselves.

On Tuesday, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Ho Peng Kee told Parliament that couples in mixed marriages could use 'double-barrelled' race classifications to register their children.

But the race listed first will be used for administrative purposes, such as ethnic-based policies.

Responding to questions from the Singapore media at the end of a four-day visit to Vietnam, PM Lee said it would be unrealistic to disregard race in government records or public policies.

'Race and religion are very sensitive matters and they are never going to disappear from Singapore society or indeed from human society,' he said.

'If you look around us in Malaysia - you see what's happening on this issue of (whether non-Muslims can use the term) 'Allah' and the attacks on churches and even one Sikh temple - those issues are never going to disappear.

'And we in South-east Asia are never going to be able to ignore them.'

Mr Lee said it was realistic for the Government to acknowledge that each individual has a sense of which ethnic sub-group he or she belongs to.

'Each person carries along somewhere in his database his personal record. In his mind, there is a field which is ethnicity: Which sub-group do I belong to?

'We have to acknowledge that in our government records and in our public policies. Otherwise we will have a big problem,' he said.

He cited Singapore's ethnic integration policy, which requires that housing estates retain a certain racial mix so that no racial ghettos form.

He noted that in France, the government prohibited collecting data on race, preferring to see all French people as the same. But there were consequences, such as segregated neighbourhoods for immigrant communities.

'It's best that we face reality and we have practical policies which gradually bring people together but acknowledge that we are not identical,' he said.

Mr Lee also explained that the Government had decided to allow double-barrelled race classifications because of a significant number of Singaporeans marrying across racial lines.

Last year, one in six marriages were between persons of different races, double the proportion a decade earlier.

'When you have that, the couple has to consider carefully how their kids will be brought up and what the kids' identity will be: Will they be a Chinese kid, an Indian kid, maybe European, maybe Japanese, maybe Vietnamese - there are many Singaporeans here who have married Vietnamese spouses,' he said. 'We think it's best to leave it to the parents to say how they want to describe their kids' ethnicity.'

But there had to be some limits, he added, as having triple or quadruple-barrelled races would not be practical.

He noted that the announcement had generated 'a lot of coverage, commentary, excitement, even some angst, in the newspapers'.

But he added: 'Take a few days and things will cool off.'

Noting that the shift had generated mixed reactions, he said: 'Every time there is an adjustment to the policy (on race), there will be a range of responses - from those who wish that we were all the same, to those who say 'You are diluting my identity and I want to maintain who I am'.

'That is to be expected.'

Yesterday, before he headed for home, Mr Lee visited the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which has exhibits on Vietnam's ethnic groups.

- end of ST article