It’s all too easy to
start a riot in Malaysia these days -
just mix a little R&R (race and religion) into everything and anything. Oh, and make sure you post it on Fb, Twitter
and Watsapp. It’s guaranteed to explode.
Enough has been said
about Low Yat. In addition to being (in)famous as a place for getting good
bargains on gadgets, it can now go down into Malaysian history as the May 13th-that-could-have-happened. Everybody is breathing a sigh of relief that
it didn’t. And so start the inevitable
round of analyses, pondering, posturing and gesturing. Everybody has an opinion about it.
So whilst one section
of society vehemently denies race has anything to do with it, the other side
just as loudly asserts it’s (oh, so obviously) all about race. Of course it’s nothing to do with race – it’s
just a petty crime blown out of all proportion.
Of course it has everything to do with race – just look at the Malays
bashing up the Chinese, and the Chinese swindling the Malays.
In the aftermath of Low
Yat 2015, what’s next? We can complain,
commiserate, deplore, defend what happened or didn’t happen. We can set up Royal Commissions, task forces,
investigative committees. Of course we
can pass laws making it illegal for
anyone to be ‘racist’. Or we can just arrest people who talk about race matters
on the Internet, better yet just shut down all the social media platforms if
there is a way to do it without starting another riot .
Certainly we should
have a go at revamping our education policies.
We can always attend each other’s open houses come festival time. Oh, and don’t forget we
must show the obligatory multi-racial
videos and giant bill-boards advertising
smiling faces to make us feel slightly
better that we are all one big happy Malaysian family. We can erase the word ‘race’ from all our
official forms. How about we make it official policy to marry outside our own ‘kind’ and create ‘true Malaysian’ babies (though honestly, for
me, that raises a rather disturbing specter of Nazism’s failed attempt at
creating the perfect race)
Racist. That’s an ugly
word. Race. Now that’s not an ugly
word. The problem is we tend to mix them
up. Like it’s so easy to mix up wombat with pig. There is a difference , and it’s not just in
the spelling. It’s a pity such an innocuous
word like ‘race’ has now been
turned into a dirty offensive word that is capable of literally making people’s
blood boil and spill over onto the streets.
Yet put simply, race just means a group of people distinct from other
groups because of lineage, genetics, culture, geography, history…
whatever. It’s just an identity we carry
as a…. Malay, Chinese, Indian, Orang Asal.
It’s the skin we are born with. No amount of legislation, compulsion,
activism, moderation, government or individual
self-effort can change that.
Racist on the other
hand is an attitude. It’s thinking, even if we don’t say it out loud, that we
are ‘better’ (read: more holy/less sinful, more right/less wrong, more
privileged/less qualified, more hard-working/less lazy, more this /less that) than the ‘other’ who isn’t the same race ‘like
us’ for whatever reason, justified or
unjustified. It’s what we ‘clothe’
ourselves with on top of our skin. Now that,
like our everyday wardrobe, we can
change.
I wonder can’t there be
a Malaysia where it’s ok to say I am Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Orang Asal, where
we don’t need to kid ourselves about creating that elusive ‘Malaysian’
race which extinguishes who we are inherently? Where, despite being of individual races, we can, one and all, truly
feel (not just say) and act like we are not racist? Where it’s totally irrelevant which comes first – am I a
Malaysian Chinese or a Chinese Malaysian? Why can’t I be both? Since what’s relevant is that inside my
Chinese body flows the same red liquid
called blood that is in that Malay pak-cik, the Indian ‘ama’, and the Orang
Asli abang, though we may all be scientifically classified under different code-types.
Perhaps if we remember
our basic fundamental make-up more often
, if we can acknowledge that we are all sinners in one way or another on this
planet called earth , then we may all be more inclined to behave graciously to one another, without the need
of political niceties or legislative controls.
Perhaps with the right heart-attitude, we can actually cry and laugh
together. Perhaps there will come a day
when we can choose not to begrudge what
we each have or don’t have as a race.
Yes, a lot of things
are ‘not fair’ in Malaysia when we look through our own race-colored lenses. Yes,
many things could be better said and done . But perhaps we can learn from South
Africa where instead of revenge and retribution, the blacks chose to tread the
difficult path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation with the whites
who were their enemies.
Like the Malays say
every Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir dan Batin. Like Christians are commanded to “ Bear with each other and forgive one another
if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you”
Perhaps then
we can truly love one another as
ourselves. As Nelson Mandela said, “No one is born hating another person
because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People
must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love,
for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Then and only then will
there be no more racists. Will love really solve all our race problems? Well,
at least it cuts to the root of it all, which is the human heart. I know it’s a simplistic solution, but far
from simple really. Because it starts by
recognizing the problem isn’t with the
government, politics, social inequities, culture, religion or Internet. Those are just ‘by the way’ peripheral stuff. The real problem is us - you and I - not so
much that we hate, but rather that we have failed to love.
Published MMO 17/7/15
