“I’ve read Mao Tse Tung. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.” – General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

 There used to be old joke among my friends which talked about a general being interviewed by a reporter about teaching kids how to use a gun. The reporter questions the general and argues that teaching kids how to shoot makes the killers. The general’s retort is “You’re equipped to be a prostitute but you’re not.”

Interestingly enough, the world got to see the real-life version of this joke being played out in the American Congress when Matt Gaetz, the Congressman from a district in Florida whose main combat experience has been dealing with sex trafficking allegations and any attempt to increase funding to combat human trafficking, decided to grill the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for allowing member of the American military to study “Critical Race Theory.”

Despite his best efforts to deny the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s any speaking time, his criticism with rebutted by General Mark Milley, a combat veteran who has seen action in places like Iraq. The general explained to the Congressman that it was important for members of the military to be well read and to understand the country that they were sworn to defend. Details of the exchange can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZOQOJcdCQ

 

Copyright CNN – Combat Veteran versus Veteran Combat Against Sex Trafficking Allegations and Preventing More Power to Deal with Human Trafficking.

As with the usual exchanges between politicians from prominent families and members of the military, it was the former who made sense. The General explained that studying an ideology did not make you a believer of that that particular ideology and if you wanted to “combat” that particular ideology, you had to understand it. He gave the example of how he read communist thought from the like of Karl Marx, Lenin and Mao and had not become a communist.  

For coming up with a common-sense answer, General Milley, who had nominated as Chairman of the Joint Chief’s by Donald Trump, earned the ire of Tucker Carlson, a talk show host who believes that facts are a political conspiracy. Mr. Carlson, proceeded to call the General all sorts of derogatory names and went as far as to insinuate that the General only got his job by “sucking up” and by implication was somehow part of the corrupt swamp. More on Mr. Carlson’s ire can be found at:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fox-tucker-carlson-white-rage-b1872849.html

This latest exchange in America is unfortunately just the latest example of how inconvenient facts can be dismissed as being a “right/left wing conspiracy.” Critical Race Theory, which seeks to provide a theoretical frame work or a set of perspectives in which institutional racism can be examined, is the latest example of an academic discussion that one side is dismissing as a conspiracy of the other. If you listen to Mr. Gaetz’s criticism of studying critical race theory, you’ll realise that the main thrust of his argument is that it should not be studied because it will make one side feel that they’ve been screwed over and therefore be divisive. The fact that Mr. Carlson, who has a history of denying the need to discuss racism, seems to agree with Mr. Gaetz only confirms this.

Unfortunately, I can’t dismiss this as something particular to America or the Western world. It also happens in Singapore, a nation that takes great pride in being “regardless of race.” The critical difference between denying the obvious in Singapore and the West is that we’re actually much better at it. We can make morally ambiguous things sound reasonable.

Let’s start with the obvious place – the messenger. In America, the people who deny the existence of racism and argue that any attempt to discuss racism and the feelings of “hurt” that the aggrieved party might feel is in fact worse than the racism itself, are inevitably those whose sanity you are likely to question. Think of Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor-Green.

In Singapore, the guys doing the same are inevitably the intelligent and somewhat rational people. Interestingly enough, the guys denying racism and any discussion of racism are inevitably the guys who from the minority community.

Let’s look back at the “Blackface” incident, which involved a Chinese comedian painting his face black and brown to impersonate an Indian and a Malay. Two Singaporeans of Indian descent made a rap video to express their displeasure at having their community parodied, which earned them official ire for stirring up racial divisions.

Interestingly enough, the Minister leading the charge against the two was non other than Mr. K Shanmugam, who is of Tamil decent and Amrin Amin, a Member of Parliament who is of ethnic Malay. More can be seen below:

 

The government got upset with the people who spoke about their feelings getting hurt by something which denigrated their community. Using a member of the “minority” community to lead the charge gave the government “cover” from accusations of racism.

Interestingly enough, you had the same minister rushing to comment on how shocked he was at the extent of racism in Singapore in the latest incident. It was as if Mr. Shanmugam had realized that we can be quite racist despite our official claim of being otherwise.

Singapore has also been pretty good at giving room for steam to be let off whenever an incident takes place. Just look at the current incident involving the “racist lecturer” accosting the interracial couple. All sorts of discussions involving racism are suddenly appearing in the main stream. Little worms of racism are being allowed to come out of the woodwork like the lady who beats a gong every time her neighbour tries to pray and the lady making racist remarks on the train. These discussions will appear for a while, the government will look good and then that will be that.

What is missing is the fact that the question of institutionalized racism. The only attempt to question if the system itself, came from our new finance minister, Mr. Lawrence Wong who had to answer a question on the claim made by the ruling party that the country is not yet ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister.

No one, for example has questioned if a non-Chinese military officer will ever make it to become Chief of Defense force. Why, for example, haven’t we had a non-Chinese Commissioner of Police since independence (the last non-Chinese being John Le Cain in 1967). Are we seriously lacking in talent for the job from the minority communities? Sure, the military has argued that we can’t have Malay-Muslims in sensitive positions as our most likely enemies in the war situation would be Malay-Muslim majority nations. However, can you use that argument for the police?

I’m not trying to suggest that our institutions are inherently racist. However, its surely worth having a public audit and discussion on the wider topic. Still nobody discusses these issues in a serious manner and you get the likes to the government’s favourite lap dog, the Fawning Follower, writing about how there is “No Racism” in Singapore.

Sure, our record looks pretty good from the outside. However, that doesn’t mean problems don’t exist and denying the problem, no matter how “slick” you do it, isn’t going to solve anything – unless there is no intention of actually solving anything.