Is There A Racist In The Room?

"Was that you talking, or the Newater in your drink?"

There's this lingering suspect that Lee Kuan Yew's retraction of his offensive allegation about Muslims being last to integrate into the multi-racial milieu of Singapore society is less than sincere. It has to do with his half hearted press statement and his unusual reticence to show his face in the aftermath of the outrage. George Yeo could provide valuable clue when he told a religious conference yesterday that "Satanic Verses" was banned while "Last Temptation of Christ" was allowed because - brace yourself for the aftershock, folks - "Christians are less likely to riot."

Talk about throwing a monkey wrench into the works.  Now that should go down well in his Aljunied GRC.

George Yeo was positing that maintaining racial harmony is a "daily struggle for Singapore", at the dialogue attended by religious leaders from eight countries in Asia. The way he painted it, riding the MRT is a time-bomb, with closely packed commuters seething with bottled up racial under currents, ever ready to tear at each other's throats at the slightest provocation. Whatever he's got in his cocktail glass, none of us want to drink of the same poison. Call us daft, call us whingers, but please don't call us Singaporeans closeted racists.

Besides the Salman Rushie / Nikos Kanzantzakis illustration, Yeo also aired how the Government allows Punjabi Sikhs to wear turbans to class, but forbids Muslim girls to wear headscarves in school. Outsiders might see this as selective social engineering, dividing the minions to justify the subjugating hand. Like the Brits used to do in the bad old colonial days. The Belgians did it in Rwanda too, favoring the Tutsis over the Hutus, with catastrophic consequences. Yeo likens the citizens to plants in a garden, claiming that Singapore is beautiful because it is" all the time being interfered with." He got the last part right, but conveniently omitted the bit about peasants being treated like mushrooms, always kept in the dark and fed with bullshit.

Whatever happened to "one united people, regardless of race, language and religion"? One theory is that a united people will scare the pants off these genetic supremacy adherents, like how the sight of Falungong followers doing morning exercises unnerved the Chinese Communist Party. "The day we stop worrying, the problem may get out of control," George Yeo claimed. He shouldn't lose sleep over imagined ghosts, the real worry is about the dilution of the Singapore identity by the influx of foreigners. That plus affordable housing and the widening income gap.