Race-specific data can help society if used properly

I refer to Dr Nazry Bahrawi’s commentary “Breaking out of Singapore’s little boxes” (Oct 28).

An axe is merely a tool. In the hands of an industrious person, it becomes an aid to collecting wood; given to a murderous person, it becomes a weapon.

Likewise, empirical observations or findings of undesirable phenomena in certain races are, by themselves, neutral, with the potential to beget good or evil.

Such empirical data can be misused to advance discriminatory agendas, but when considered properly, they can lend no credence to racialist ideologies.

This is because a correlation between phenomena and ethnicity does not imply that inherent, immutable properties present in the group, if any, produced the phenomena.

Any perverse peddling of racialism using empirical data thus becomes an affront to the scientific enterprise and is infelicitous for a cohesive, multi-ethnic society such as ours.

Having greater rates of an undesirable phenomenon in a certain race is no indication of its inferiority to other groups, but simply that such problems are endemic in the group at a certain time.

To conceive of those problems as emblematic of the ethnicity requires a discriminatory mindset, independent of the empirical observations. In the hands of agencies and institutions, empirical findings of these sorts are tools for progress and egalitarianism.

In Australia, government agencies have noted significant social and health problems within the ethnic minorities of the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders, and have implemented policies and interventions based on such data.

As no two races are the same, the collection and use of data in such a case goes towards formulating ethnic-sensitive remedies that will be received well by the target group.

The goals are the improvement in quality of life and the levelling of opportunities for everyone in the society. To discard an axe because of its potential for evil is unwise. To stop collecting or to ignore race-specific data because some have used them for racialist or racist purposes is to discard their potential for improving society.

Ultimately, whether a tool is used for good or evil is determined by the one who uses it. Those who hold discriminatory attitudes will conceive evil from the data; those who are better-natured will use them for good.