The Sideways Joker

I wanted to be ‘The Joker’, but I was lying on my side when they painted my face

More on the country’s obses­sion with “race”, Yu-Mei Bal­asingam­chow writes:

as far as this racial labelling in Sin­ga­pore offi­cial­dom is con­cerned, we should all just tick the ‘Oth­ers’ box — and carry on

From her post, I went on to read Alex Au’s (Yawn­ing Bread) study on the mat­ter, and as I suspected:

What was inter­est­ing when I sifted through the bureau­cratese was how this change, which was spun to sug­gest an increase in flex­i­bil­ity, was actu­ally a decrease. Where par­ents pre­vi­ously could leave the race of the baby blank, they now cannot.

Aiyah, “Oth­ers” lah.

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