By Petra Gimbad in Project Malaysia
How we sanction racism again and again. Little attention is paid to how in some way, all of us have walked as a willing lamb to the slaughter.
If you see an Indian and a snake, kill the Indian, a laughing man told me.
I have a friend who spits on the ground everytime she sees a girl in a tudung, a friend narrated with pride. Dark skin to signify an Indian; a tudung as a cue to spit. It was a grown man who told the ‘joke’ of the Indian and the snake. The protagonist of the latter was a young woman, fresh out of high school.
These little jokes and stories are now part of our Malaysian landscape.
More often than not, we repeat the stories that divide us, forgetting our neighbours whom we break bread with and call on at 3am to drive us to hospital. Too few of those stories are told. The stories which divide have seeped into our psyche so effectively, we are no longer conscious of this division we carry or how we propagate it.
Both young and old are affected, and still it is written: the children shall inherit the earth.
A few years ago, an academic presented that children learn how to be sexist and racist as early as kindergarten age. Without meaning to, it is too easy to teach a child to bully another of a different ethnicity and to reduce a culture into a mere stereotype. These racist attitudes infect our children more effectively than we think. Our children learn within the home and the environments they are placed outside of it. The assumption that children are innocent of prejudices no longer holds. Therefore, the view that our world is filled with diverse human beings who are equal, must be taught.
Having grown up in Kuala Lumpur with Chinese relatives, I was comfortable interacting with fair faces. Then, we spoke English. Spending time with my East Malaysian cousins was an experience different from everything I knew. Faces of different shades surrounded me. Sharing Orang Asal blood to varying degrees, this did not include the histories of other cultures which flowed in our veins. We spoke Malay. Everyone in our state spoke Malay, including the Chinese women who ran the shops.
Upon return to Kuala Lumpur years later, I realised that convenience was not the sole reason many friends chose to converse in English and Chinese. This language of Malay become the innocent target of their frustration after university quotas created in them a sense of rejection. Having grown up in a Chinese community with very few Indians and even fewer Malays, it was easy to turn the community they did not know into a straw doll target.
A fellow East Malaysian spoke of her experience: “People of different races in East Malaysia mingle more and there are fewer stigmas in speaking the Malay language. There is intermarriage. Almost everyone I grew up with is mixed. How on earth are you to hate someone based on race, when you have Chinese relatives, Muslim cousins and a crazy Orang Asal (indigenous) uncle who’s a bomoh (witchdoctor)?”
Recently, I explained the role of the kacip Fatimah herb to a fascinated Chinese friend. Previously, the only time we spoke of the Malay community was during our teenage years, criticising they stole her opportunities and left her nothing.
“If you had these same study and work opportunities you speak of, even if they were based on your Chinese blood, would you take advantage of them?” I asked.
“Yes.” She realised what her answer meant and laughed nervously.
It was left unspoken: how then, are you any different?
Later, a different friend accused Malays of corruption.
“Have you bribed?”
“Yes.” he admitted.
Again, the unsaid was left unspoken.
These experiences shatter you. Once, I spent time with a Muslim girl who was pregnant with the child of a non-Muslim boy. She wanted to keep the baby; he wanted no part of it. It is difficult to cope with an unplanned pregnancy. The courage needed for the task of raising a child, comes not from one person alone. But when you see how a boy is terrified of taking responsibility also because he fears marriage and the conversion that comes with it, it breaks your heart. It breaks your heart that the important task of preparing a loving home for the baby is shunted aside for the paramount fear of telling your parents that you got a Malay girl pregnant. In such circumstances, all semblance of religious superiority is forgotten. Would any faith approve of his abandoning the mother of his child and his baby? Would his parents even care?
She aborted the baby. Its impact lives with her still.
When I sat with my East Malaysian cousins for the first time, they asked: “Betulkah orang hitam pergi neraka?” (Is it true that the dark skinned go to hell?) One of my tiniest cousins, arguably the darkest skinned of them all, was crying because he believed his soul was damned.
“Apa pendapat awak?” I asked. (What is your opinion?)
Everyone nodded vigorously, including the darkest ones. Most of them were dark.
“Jadi orang India pergi neraka dan orang Cina syurga?” (So the Indians go to hell and the Chinese to heaven?)
Yes, they nodded.
“Jadi kalau kulit hitam awak pergi neraka dan kalau putih pergi syurga?” (So if you’re dark you go to hell and if you’re fair you go to heaven?)
They confidently nodded.
“Tengok kulit sendiri.” (Look at your own skin.)
They stared at their hitam manis skin in horror.
So, I asked them, who goes to hell and who goes to heaven? Most of them had no answer. A few faces crumpled, trying not to cry. Gently, I told them that heaven is for those who live in their hearts. Our salvation lies within and through our actions, not the colour of our skin.
Gloria Steinem said, “Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.”
Are willing to give up our racist jokes and divisive comments? Can we see how it affects our children and the lives of other children? Are we courageous enough to admit to our own inherent racism, and how we have created the country where we now reside? Our response defines our future and of those to come.
All things are connected, say the wise, and whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
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