0 0 0 New Is race and racism all we can talk about?

Our national conversation has become toxic, and we have to change the course.

COMMENT

Earning a livelihood built around reading and listening to political news and developments exposes you to certain ugly truths about your country. Sometimes, you even get bored with these hideous things because they are bandied about all day in the subtext of everything we say or do.

And now the cracks in the flimsy socio-economic platform we have built for Malaysians of all races to exist on have widened to allow one particular ugly truth to ooze out from the stinking pits. We are referring, of course, to the seemingly endless obsession with race.

Now, Malaysians aren’t the only ones guilty of it, but we seem to have perfected the art of segregating people culturally and socially via the mechanism of race and racism. It is tearing at the fabric of our society, a supposedly harmonious multi-cultural nation at peace with itself and its identity as a majority Muslim country that boasts a host of other religions, cultures, and traditions.

We could already be living the Malaysian Dream if our politicians, both professional and amateur, did not choose to keep dipping into the seemingly inexhaustible well of race to shore up support – the professionals for themselves and the amateurs for their so-called causes. But when trying to divide a population to maximise political power, there’s nothing more obvious than race as a separator.

When Barisan Nasional was born, race became the first significant indicator of which party in the coalition we had the choice of supporting. Years turned into decades, and race has become such a divisive wedge to society that it is all we can talk about today. Every morning, every afternoon, every night, race is at the forefront of our news and our socio-cultural experience.

It has come to a point where I woke up one morning and Ali Tinju was warning the Chinese not to retaliate against a brawl that happened at the Kota Raya shopping mall or we, as a community, would face dire consequences. All I could do was let out a tired sigh. Again, race. Like an ouroboros, we keep eating ourselves up with the notion of race and the supposed pride it brings. Sooner or later, we’ll come out of our orgiastic display of unbridled self-indulgence and find that we have nothing left.

Now, the actions that the traders at Kota Raya were accused of are unforgivable. Cheating your customers and holding them against their will is reprehensible. The people behind the scam deserve to rot behind bars for being a plague on society. But the appropriate response is not to turn the entire conversation into one that is about race. Let’s face it; humans can be scum, regardless of colour, and turning a criminal issue into a racial one just shows how far we are willing to go in our leaps to connect any issue to race.

The truth is that no matter where you go, racism will always be a problem that plagues human society. Nevertheless, as much as the reasonable ones among us abhor the notion of race, race has brought about the varied cultures, traditions, and foods we love so much in Malaysia. But we cannot allow race to colour our lives in the worst way possible. It’s high time that Malaysians got together as one voice to reject the notion that every single issue in this country has to do with race. Enough is enough.