There are four official languages in Singapore: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. This reflects the four major peoples who came to populate the city-state: Chinese, Malay, Indian, and colonial British. Every citizen of Singapore is issued a piece of government ID (the National Registration Identity Card) which has one of these races printed on it.

Does this discourage people from having mixed-race children?

Singapore twists the Asian brain.  Just about every other Asian country is uni-cultural, at least according to the mainstream narrative. The Japanese people live in Japan and speak Japanese. The Vietnamese live in Vietnam and speak Vietanamese. The Thai people live in Thailand and speak Thai. Etc. This makes identity really easy — except if you live in Singapore, and there’s no Singaporean race, no Singaporean language, no ancient and venerable Singaporean hertitage. Blood and place and language and culture used to be inextricable, but we can no longer use any of these things to define one another. Fortunately, it says what you are right there on the card. I don’t think this is a particularly good idea.

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Obama is the son of an African father and a European mother. Why is he black (with a white mother) instead of white (with a black father)?

What makes Obama black? Is it nothing more than the color of his skin? How light do you have to be before you’re white? (If anyone brings up “just one drop” I’m going to slap them for exhuming idiocy.) Does the fact that he married an African-American woman make him blacker? If he had married a white girl would he have been whiter? Or maybe it’s the work he did in the black communities of Chicago, but what about the service he’s given to the white people of Illonois as their Senator? Perhaps it’s the fact that he shoots hoops — with white guys.

According to Rolling Stone, he listens to Jay-Z, but also Bruce Springstein.

Tell me what “black” means, because I honestly don’t know.