WAHAHAHA, now even SPH's reporter delivers a slap on mr airhead.
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Glad to see that Saturday’s column (‘Zero tolerance for intolerance’) has continued the ongoing discussion on xenophobia, and I thank everyone for giving their two cents’ worth. In response to a few things being circulated online, I thought I should make clear some points:
1. Just because I say that xenophobes like to be known as pro-Singaporeans, it doesn’t mean that all pro-Singaporeans are xenophobes. That’s a very important difference.
2. Some have compared Saturday’s column to an earlier Singapolitics piece I wrote about the online reaction to Amy Cheong. I hope people have taken the time to read the two pieces and not just the headlines. Fundamentally their messages are different, yet linked. Broadly speaking, Saturday’s column argues we should stand up to discrimination, while the Singapolitics piece talks about the way and manner we should go about doing that pushback.
3. Some have also said that Saturday’s column makes it sound like I am only blaming people for xenophobia, and not so much the Government. Firstly, that isn’t true, because the column talks about how the population White Paper stoked anxieties, and how our political leaders appear to have ceased their talk about integration.
Secondly, there have been other pieces, both online and in the mainstream media, that have already pointed out how their liberal immigration policy and lack of intragovernment coordination has resulted in many problems and much unhappiness, and it’s something the Government has recognised and is attempting to rectify. How well those attempts are going can be the subject of other columns (and rightly so). But the point I was interested in making is that as active citizens, we should take responsibility for our actions. We are perfectly justified to be unhappy, but that unhappiness should not translate to hatred towards foreigners. We take responsibility by venting the unhappiness at the right way, and we take responsibility by telling those who do it the wrong way to stop it, as civilly as we can (see point 2, and the Singapolitics piece).
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Tessa Wong
SPH Journalist
http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/04/03...st-xenophobia/