None of us like to be labeled or pigeon-holed into categories we feel we don't belong.
But much of our private perceptions and the wider systemic worldview will continue to shape the way we view people or settings around us. Recognizing and dismantling these ideas must form part of our growth in intellectual reasoning and humility. Whenever we fail to adopt a sense of 'critical distancing' from what we talk or write about, we fall deep into the very trap that GP warns us against. The portents are shown in many poorly written essays. You must know.
Academic fields like the social sciences particularly Anthropology and Sociology were founded to arrest some of these issues. Interestingly, they too have their own gaps in research. But that is for another day.
That is why it is very difficult to handle various essay questions in Social Issues and Media unless we first recognise that much of what we see / think or are expected to do are in fact determined by social norms or constructs that attempt to make us view or argue something as ' therefore true, real' or are a 'fact of life in all' societies. See the red ink spilling?
The 3 articles and clips here will challenge us to rethink the way we view issues like 'race' and stereotypes foreigners have of Singapore. Hopefully, this will impact much of your writing whenever you formulate an argument- to articulate a point from a thoughtful distance and not pontificate in ways that may sadly reveal you as naive, misguided or arrogant individuals. Even writers in the Economist are not immune to that charge...since it's all about perspectives, they say.
Foreign policy and national identity in Singapore:
On Biology and Race:
Here are 2 videos (shorter & full versions) by geneticist Spencer Wells that aims to show, regardless of our skin colour, face shape, etc., we all go back to the same source DNA.
I hope that sharpens our take on important issues like prejudice, discrimination and social justice which we have been talking about in our tutorials.
