I read this article on the Straits Times blog after seeing a friend share it on Facebook, and boy I was totally floored and flabbergasted by its content.

In short, the author, Luke T Johnson (he’s apparently assistant to the editor), attempted to make the case that racial stereotyping is not always bad. In his words, racial stereotyping can “prove useful, even life-saving”. In order to make such distasteful content palatable, he placed a few paragraphs of disclaimers upfront before narrating in detail a single incident which he was robbed by a Hispanic and two African-Americans, concluding that he would have avoided being robbed if he had done some racial stereotyping. The icing on the cake? Trying to link his incident with the recent Gates-Crowley incident.

Total bullshit. It’s bad enough that the Straits Times is often derided as State’s Times, but with this latest piece, I can’t help but wonder if the ST is continuing on its downward devolution into BS Times.

Racial stereotyping for the purpose of fear-mongering and perpetuating irrational hate among people can never be justified. One can find murderers, rapists, robbers, burglars, thieves, con men and other kinds of criminals in any racial group. Therefore, what good reason is there to engage in racial stereotyping? Johnson claims that the danger in harbouring racial stereotypes is the possible degeneration of such thinking into “twisted ideologies” but he conveniently drops the discussion of whether racial stereotyping is logical to begin with so as to be able to make his bullshit claim about racial stereotyping being potentially useful.

You know, crime is potentially useful too. Burglary is potentially useful because it will make people double bolt their doors, triple lock their windows and install burglar alarms. Shoplifting is potentially useful too. It will make shop owners install security cameras, anti-theft alarm systems and hire security guards, boosting the economy and the labour market. Robbery is also extremely useful to deter people from showing off their expensive Rolexes and Tiffanies. Allowing robbery would be much more effective than throwing money at PR or advertising agencies to come up with a campaign.

I rest my case.