The Difference Between Race & Ethnicity in Lee Et.al’s Article

Lee et.al’s article studies on how children view themselves and others, children’s intra and inter-racial friendships, ways in which these friendships takes place in their school lives. Throughout the study, Lee et al stated that they cite race rather than ethnicity and race continues to be the most distinguishable in public discourse on diversity matters. It describes the study as ‘Microcosm of a Singaporean community”. Lee et.al discovers that for mixed race friendships, the most common reasons for selection of friends for students were common play activities, personal affinity and acceptance, not by race. As students have shared “..the same personality with me thus we do not quarrel easily ” The older children were able to express thoughtful rationale, placed values on mutual understanding, compatibility, shared interest and trust. Race does not seem to weigh as much. This is coherent with the videos in the lecture “Race as in race cars” and “Tan Hong Ming”, which tells us children do not have a strong concept of race. As suggested in lecture, it is not because that children are colour blind but because they are not taught the implications of race.

On the contrary, Lee et.al observes the birds of a feather phenomenon. His findings have shown that students of the same race participate more in certain activities. For instance, the Malay and Indian boys predominantly play soccer, and for Chinese, badminton and basketball. In addition, Lee et.al also finds that speaking in mother tongues during informal interactions reinforced same-race grouping, and sometimes exclude others. This relates to Chua Mui Hoong’s article which states that race has always been a sensitive issue, because what brings one social group together, can divide as well. Even though science has refuted our popular belief of race, and in Andy Ho’s article, which states that humans are 99% genetically similar, the way we perceive ourselves are still based on skin colour.

In Lee et.al, students who were darker in skin colour were alienated by peers and branded with nicknames such as “Black Coffee” , “Belachan”, “Blackie”. Even researchers in Lee et.al admitted they deduce the race of each child by stereotypical physical characteristics such as skin colour and facial features, and concluded that skin colour remains the most visible discriminator in defining others. These shows our perception of race is still of superficial level. Moreover, the supporting document in lecture made clear definitions on race and ethnicity. Ethnicity is a self-conscious collection of people, closely related, by shared experiences. Further explanation was made in the lecture, the difference in Singaporean Malays to other Malay cultures in the world. It is not formed in isolation, but in midst of other cultures. Lee et al’s results is consistent as they noted “local children distinguished between Singaporeans and others. ” Thereafter, they define children by countries, such as “China boy”, but did not say the same for the Singapore Chinese.

This clearly demonstrates the difference between race and ethnicity because what a Singaporean Chinese experience with the nation’s history is different from an Indonesian Chinese or China Chinese. Even though they are part of a Chinese race, ethnicity also contributes to their identity. In conclusion, race and ethnicity are unquestionably two different concepts. Racialisation is used in Singapore extensively by using the CMIO system to identify and classify ourselves. And as Andy Ho mentioned, we need to destabilise race. In my point of view, race is an artificial construct with no scientific proof, yet it holds such power to divide us; hence, it would require collective efforts by everyone in the society to destabilise the ‘race’ concept.