3 minute speech

The theme that I have chosen is racism. Does Racial Harmony Day do enough to sensitize students to racial issues? In my opinion, the answer is no, it does not. I feel that the current way of us celebrating Racial Harmony Day is insignificant to sensitize students to racial issues. I have celebrated Racial Harmony Day since primary school and still feel that it is not enough to sensitize us students to racial issues.

Given the way we celebrate Racial Harmony Day, I feel that it is not enough to sensitize us to racial issues. As we all know, we had recently celebrated Racial Harmony Day. How many of you actually are more aware of the current racial issues that we are facing now? During Racial Harmony Day, there was basically three things that the students would usually do in Hwa Chong, they dance the Bollywood dance, watch a cultural dance that some secondary 2 students took part in with other schools and finally go to the cultural bazaar.

During the cultural dance, I noticed that some students were laughing at the awkward dance steps that their friends who were chosen to dance. Isnt this action showing sensitiveness to the way people from other cultures dance? Instead of accepting that people from other cultures danced differently, these people were not giving a thought to how the people on stage dancing were feeling.

Furthermore, the cultural bazaar only provided a small knowledge of other races and their cultures. I feel that we have very little to learn from the cultural bazaar as the people mending the stalls are mostly people from our school which consists of mostly Chinese. How would those people be able to understand the cultures of other races if they are not of that race itself?

I suggest that we invite people who are aware of the current racial issues to come to our school to give talks so that we would be able to prevent these racial issues from reoccurring. In conclusion, I feel that Racial Harmony Day is not enough to sensitize students to racial issues.