Accept that there's no single 'S'porean' look, says panellist

Singaporeans need to be open to the fact that there is no single "Singaporean" look, said Ms Wendy Zeline, who runs popular social media account Afro.sings with her siblings.

And a Singaporean need not look Chinese, Malay or Indian, said the 27-year-old permanent resident with roots in Tanzania. She was speaking yesterday at the People's Association's (PA) first dialogue on inclusivity in multicultural Singapore.

"There is no look to being a Singaporean because we are essentially a land of a lot of immigrants," she said, adding that frequent statements about her family not appearing to be Singaporean had prompted them to think about what that meant. They started Afro.sings to talk about their lives and growing up in Singapore.

Ms Zeline was one of six panellists, including Olympic gold medallist Joseph Schooling, who fielded questions from an audience of over 250 people spanning those from polytechnics, universities and volunteer groups.

Mr Schooling said he is no stranger to having his citizenship doubted because of his ethnicity, and cited an incident where his late father spoke in a mixture of Malay and Hokkien "just because people didn't believe that I was a true blue Singaporean".

He said: "Eurasians are less than 1 per cent of our population but still very much a part of this nation. That blew my mind because in no way, shape and form did I ever think that my dad had to come out and do that."

The dialogue at Raffles Town Club was attended by Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Second Minister for Law Edwin Tong and moderated by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Law Rahayu Mahzam.

The other panellists were PA Narpani Pearavai Youth chairman Ellamaran; inter-faith initiative Roses of Peace founder and president Mohamed Irshad; Singapore Kindness Movement head of partnerships Michelle Tay; and PA Mesra Youth sub-committee chairman Zulayqha Zulkifli.

Allowing different communities to express their identities and carry out their cultural practices free from discrimination and not letting any minority be taken advantage of is a core part of Singapore society, said Mr Tong in his opening speech.

To protect Singapore's multi-ethnic, religious identity, the Government has not left social cohesion to chance, he said, citing laws and policies such as the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act to guard against actions that undermine religious harmony and the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) to avoid ethnic enclaves forming.

At a separate inter-faith discussion yesterday, Minister for National Development Desmond Lee reiterated that the EIP, which sets quotas for flats owned by each racial group in a block or precinct, can cause pain as it may not be easy for minority groups to sell their flats due to the quota. The Government is looking to address the issue.

Still, he added, the policy is important in ensuring Singaporeans of different races, cultural backgrounds and religions are brought together to interact, which is an important condition for social harmony.

"Dialogues like today's session allow us to ask questions to each other, in a safe space, and... gives us a deeper understanding of one another's beliefs and practices... to counter the misinformation that increasingly circulates online to stoke anger and unhappiness," said Mr Lee at the talk by inter-faith movement Humanity Matters, which centred on incense burning by different faith communities.