The indefatigable James Francis Warren, at the Asian Civilisation Museum, sharing about his life's work on Southeast Asia. His historical methodological emphasis on understanding the "little" people is a reminder for historians to go beyond archives and to engage people through social history.

The trees at NIE, NTU look and feel different in the evening. Can almost hear their singing... urging me to send my drafts to my supervisor as soon as possible... oh wait, that is my Meadian Me talking my Meadian I back to work...

My concern is that there is an emerging narrowly-defined multiracialised framing of the Singapore national identity. And that it is partly born from Singaporeans' interactions with Singaporean multiracialism that has inculcated a heightened race consciousness. ...

In Irene Ng's biography of Raja, the understanding is that Raja was concerned with the "systematic appeals to citizens to identify, organise and express themselves along ascribed ethnic [racialised] lines" that could raise race consciousness and thwart the cultivating of national identity. ...

But what I wish to point out is that although I think it is fair for SM to see Raja's idea of "forgetting" everything else as an ideal and perhaps a "tall order" indeed if taken in itself, there is also a need to contextualise Raja's stance, on top of LC's clarification. ...

LC followed up by invoking the late S. Rajaratnam's (Raja) understanding of Singaporean as not based on ancestry, and by extension "race" (due to a common assumption of race as biological and conflated with ethnicity), but "choice and conviction". SM and LC's discussion is worth reading in full. ...

In response, moderator A/P Leong Ching (LC) who was SM's discussant asked whether globalisation or internal (within-nation) "fault lines" is a greater challenge to national identity. While stating it is difficult to determine the more salient one, SM also highlighted our racialised inclinations. ...

Senior Minister (SM) Lee Hsien Loong's dialogue at a recent NUS forum reignited quite some interest regarding the Singapore national identity when he said that national identity is not the most important part of many Singaporeans' identity which is multifaceted. ...

www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/SM-...

And Walid's book "Why Palestine?", a passionate and concise primer, though mainly for a Singaporean audience, on the significance of Palestine, highlighting Palestinian resilience as a powerful act of resistance against Israel's systematic dehumanisation.

I argue that these problems come from systemic racialisation in Singapore, born from well-intended but paternalistic policies and laws, drawing from the wells of race essentialism, that heighten race-consciousness as well as school a habit of conflict avoidance (an aversion to confrontation) ...

Rain, trees, and sky in western Singapore =)

Examining Singaporean multiculturalism, my new article published in Ethnicities is an attempt to conceptually distinguish systemic racialisation from systemic racism in order to expand and encourage more nuanced discourses on race, racialisation, and racism.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Out of my office space at the university and homeward bound after a fairly good afternoon and evening of writing.