Prejudice and Discrimination

What do you think are some of the causes of prejudice and discrimination? Is education (or the lack of it) a factor? What about an individual’s upbringing?

Prejudice and discrimination stems from an individual’s narrow-mindedness, fear and ignorance usually on the basis of race, colour, religion, gender, place of origin or ancestry. Prejudice and discrimination usually resides within the individual itself. Some of the prejudice and discrimination which could manifests itself are against a certain sex (sexism), sexual orientation (homosexuality), religion and race.

From my point of view, the way an individual’s thinks play the most important part in being a prejudice and discrimation against someone or something. An individual could cause a prejudice and discrimation in many forms such as ethnic slurs, offensive remarks, physical assault, physical intimidation, mocking stereotypes, exclusion as well as social segregation. What actually brought about these forms of racial discrimination? From what I felt, the feeling of adequacy, stereotyping, child’s upbringing, past experiences, peer pressure, ignorance, fear and media creates the basis of prejudice and discrimination.

Firstly, feeling of adequacy. The feeling of adequency is usually causes a discrimination against a certain gender. Men who are of lower social status tends to be looked down on by their opposite sex counterparts which could discrimate them in a sense whereby they thought that people with lower social status in terms of their income are often stupid and good-for-nothing people which in turn causes sexism . Another example which I heard is that women are stupid because they tends to be indecisive and incompetent while they are in love whereas men are easily manipulated as long as their balls are being hold and their heart and mind will follow soon after. For heaven sake, this are all not true due to the fact that these types of comments are often associated as a form of pigeon-hole based on false or incomplete information.

Stereotyping is another cause of prejudice and discrimination because it’s a form of prejudice whereby we tends to form a certain kind of image or fixed information which usually on false information. Usually the result of this type of prejudice causes a discrimination against a race or religion. For example, after 11 September 2001, people tend to have this misconception that Muslims or people with an Arab origin are often associated with terrorists. Another example is that we knew that India is a third world country but it is not really true that all Indians are of lesser race than us due to the third-world class status. One prime example is that the only thing India is good for is they provide lower cost overhead for Singapore companies to save a buck.

In addition, Upbringing plays a part of prejudice and discrimination Most of the time, parents influence the child from the way they comment on other people. For example, if the children are from a broken family background, the children have a bad attitude towards life and so on. If we think it in a rational kind of way, these rumours are actually not true because there is some example whereby even if the children are from a broken family, they still succeeded in life. Another example is about inter racial or religion marriage. Parents don’t think that this is kind of appropriate due to the fact that they think that its very difficult for the individual to inter relate as well as to cope with the changes in their life especially if the individual needs to convert their religion.

All and above, a past experience is the next cause of prejudice and discrimation. Experiences in this case are usually very bad. This past experience could have happened in school, workplace or even at during their childhood days. Racist jokes could be one of the reasons whereby as a student they are often discriminated or look down upon due to their academic performance and behaviour.

Being ignorance is another cause. Ignorance is bliss but without knowing much about the outside world makes us like a frog in a well. For examples, if we were to see a woman who wears skimpy clothes, we tend to think that they use their physical stature to get attention because beyond those “traits’, they are vapid and moronic whores with nothing to offer to society. This can’t be true because the woman having doing some kind of modeling which permits her to wear such clothes for the show.

Media is anther thing which could cause prejudice and discrimination. For example, recently a video clip from a comedy by Russell Peter have been circulating around which makes fun of different races in discrimatory way. Since the media have a strong influence in our daily life, we tends to follow their thinking and make fun of it even though we knew that it is wrong in the place to make fun of other races or religions.

All in all, prejudice and discrimination are part and parcels of our daily life whether we like it or not. In my opinion is that we should look on each of racial or ethnic groups positive traits or behaviour which could benefits our country as a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual mix and yet proved ourselves as Singaporean first in a country’s whereby it shows our racial harmony and national unity.

How do you think relations among people of different ethnic groups and religions in Singapore could be fostered or improved?

Back in 21st July 1964, racial harmony in Singapore was at stake. It was probably the worst racial riot ever happened in Singapore. It was a clash between Chinese chauvinism and Malay fundamentalism, instigated by the UMNO’s extremist. Does this incident teach us to be tolerance and fostering good relationships among people of the different ethnic groups and religions in Singapore? In my own opinion, we can achieve this by having a better understanding among the Singaporean and giving equal scope to the speakers of all the languages or religions. We should not despise each other due to language, skin colour or religion. I do not believe that any one race is superior to the others and the government should take stern measures to make sure all races receive equal treatment. The process of fostering racial cohesiveness and prevention of any racial polarization could be done at different level.

Firstly, it can be done at home, in school and lastly at community level.
Firstly, parents should invite friends, colleagues or neighbours of another race to celebrate their festive season. Parents should not be the “racial polarizer” whereby wanting their children to mingle around with someone of their same language, skin colour or religion. Parents should promote their children to foster friendships, cultivate emotional ties and develop a sense of commitment to one another as fellow Singaporean and not as a specific race or religion. Furthermore, parents should not stereotype on a each races and gives slanderous comments based on their self-serving standards which hinders the balance of racial harmony. At home, it makes no difference for us that our next door neighbour prays in a different manner than we do. We should be acceptance that religion is a man’s own business and he/she has the right to practice whatever religions he wishes as long as it is not against the common good or against the norms of someone else religion.

In national school especially, racial cohesiveness have already been implemented through a common curriculum, share a common experience of growing up, studying, playing, singing the national anthem, and reciting the pledge together. Furthermore, every year racial harmony day was held to strengthen multi-racialism. Not only that, English has been used as a lingual franca so that children of the different races can relate and communicate with each other despite our diverse backgrounds. Festive occasions such as Hari Raya, Deepavali and Chinese New can be celebrated further promote racial harmony values and often teachers organized it in a multi-cultural kind of celebrations. Apart from all the fun, textbooks should play a role by putting insight into one another's cultures and beliefs. It is not difficult to find someone from another ethnic group picking up skills which does not correlate with his or her culture. In addition, the minorities should be mixed with the mainstream to provide a closer bond as well as interaction to know one another.

In the community, the harmonious interaction between peoples of diverse backgrounds could be seen in community centre. Mayor of each division of Singapore as well as grassroots leaders tend to assimilate people from different race n religions to get involved in a certain of programme such as a holiday scheme or get together or merely a festive occasion to celebrate, to get together and shared their traditions, customs, belief and practices. Community centre usually conducted seminars and well as talk that will trash out the differences between the races pertaining to cause. Language differences is another difference but in order to understand each race, community centre do conducts classes in different languages to avoid any misunderstanding leading to accusations of racial discrimination. The government had set up an inter-religious harmony circle (IRCC) whereby each religious national body such as MUIS nominates a representative to bring about opportunity for the different religious group to work together and allowed a greater understand among the various religious body.

Hopefully in the new future, Singaporean can understand the cultures of the other different racial groups and religions. This would help us learn to respect the beliefs of the racial groups which in turn inculcate mutual respect in us. With this harmonious environment, peace and stability in the country and contribute to Singapore's progress.