In light of the recent diversity-in-top-schools controversy, I would like to point out that I have the most boring racial history in the ACS Independent Stage EXCO 2011-2012. From left to right, we have an Indian, two Chinese, a Peranakan-Chinese, an Indian-Vietnamese, and a Vietnamese. By the way, I'm the one holding the camera. And by the way, we all love each other to death.
I find it a sad coincidence that the Straits Times poll of 100 students, which included students from my school, failed to reflect the racial diversity we have here. At a glance, seven out of 19 people on the ACSIS Year 6 contact list don't have Chinese surnames. Three out of our seven Student Council presidents have been non-Chinese. In fact, my school (along with Nanyang Girls' High School, another school that was polled, and others I'm not aware of) accepts and houses a boarding school for a large number of foreign scholars from several countries.
I guess it's true that other "top" schools might not provide students with such a conducive environment to meet people outside our own ethnicities and backgrounds. But the ability to do this, in my opinion, doesn't have as much to do with being "elite" or not as one might think. Maybe whether we meet people outside our usual social circles depends on, well, us, which doesn't necessarily depend on the schools we're in. Maybe it's due to chance. Maybe it's due to all these things. Generalising isn't going to solve one bit of anything.
(Cross-posted to Facebook here!)