Hi,
In Pm's speech, he mentioned about trying to learn from America and
we will hyphenate, Australian-Singaporean, Chinese-Singaporeans,
Chinese-Chinese Singaporeans. This is the US way of using
hyphenation, i.e. Heritage-Nationality.
He tried to use the illustration of hyphenation, i.e. follow the Us
way of hyphenation instead of the Europe way, to convince us that
Singapore should adopt the US half-citizenship policy and welcome
more foreigners to get half-citizenship in Singapore. I believe he
also hint Singaporean to open our arms to immigrants arriving in
Singapore.
Can the arrangement of race and nationality, using the hyphen, be
in the order of how one view his priority of heritage? For example,
a person who thinks that he is a Asian-American has a self-image of
a Asian prior to American, also provided he has emotional need to
understand more about Asia culture. If he feels that he is a
American-Asian, he would not be emotionally obligated to learn
about Asian heritage.
I feel that if a Chinese from China comes to Singapore, he would
feel less left out compared to an Indian from India because chinese
is the majortity in Singapore. Even Singaporeans has a tendency to
stay with the same ethic groups. It would be very rare to find a
Chinese, for example, who treat a Indian from India or Filipino
from Philipines as good as a Chinese from china.(this is my belief)
We can probably treat them well and guide them a little. However,
to make the feel like Singapore is their home would be pretty
difficult because of their previous cultural heritage. Unless, they
manage to find a clique which is of the same cultural heritage and
share the same views as them.
In fact, Indian in Singapore and Chinese in Singapore should be
hyphenated as Indians-Singaporean and Chinese-Singaporean. This is
because, people of the same cultural heritage is likely to stick
together. I am not saying this is a absolute case but I observe
that this is how majority of the people act. I suppose i feel more
sense of security sticking with people of similar cultural
backgrounds and beliefs.
Just for curiosity sake, can you guys and gals, pls give me some of
the feedbacks as in which identity comes first to you? Is it your
cultural heritage or your Nationality? For example, you feel like
you are more "chinese" or "indian" or "malay" or "any race", then
ur main identity of urself would be your race.
Thank you very much.
