Race Matters

As a Malaysian Chinese living in Australia, the topic of race is always hugely interesting to me. Ten years ago, when I was about to come to Australia to study and actually still to this day, people from the older generation keep telling me to take care in Australia because gweilos are racist against Chinese. Which in ten years, I still have not experienced a drop of racism. Or maybe I'm extremely ignorant...blur as they would say in Malaysia...Not to say that there's no racism here, because I'm sure there is and then, there's the extremely interesting issue of the emasculation of Chinese men in Western culture. Here's an interesting blog about  Asians in Western society, specifically Asian Americans. Still I find the "gweilos are racist" advice to be so ironic. 

All through growing up in Malaysia, we were taught in school that Malaysia is a multicultural place with many races and religions and we live in perfect harmony and unity. Sounds very lovely, doesn't it? And me being innocent and naive, I came to Australia with that opinion too. I was quite high and mighty about it even. "Hah, these gweilos don't know a thing when it comes to living in a multicultural society! Look, they're all gawking at fire crackers and lion dances as if they've never seen them before." And that was really my extent of knowledge into multiculturalism and racism. I thought us Malaysians were better at being multicultural because we know lots of the customs, traditions and languages of other races, whereas the average Caucasian Australians speak only one language and don't know much about other cultures. 

I don't think knowing all that is a bad thing, in fact I do feel proud that I can speak English, Bahasa Melayu, Hokkien, snippets of Mandarin and even less snippets of Cantonese. (Actually, I consider that to be pretty bad when I'm at home trying to remember how to order food in Cantonese, but its seems impressive here in Australia) However, it's taken a journey to a whole different continent away from Malaysia for me to realise its not about what you know or tolerate about other races or religions, but how you respect them. 

I've seen a lot more respect for other cultures here in Australia than I have back home in peaceful multicultural Malaysia. In Malaysia, I see a lot of grudging tolerance. Its not nice, but I can see why people feel like that. Starting from the way we're questioned about race and religion in school to entering into adulthood with the government policies that segregate according to race, everything seems to me to be about separating Malaysians, not uniting us. It seems like most people in Malaysia are first and foremost Malay or Chinese or Indian, and then secondly they're Malaysian. 

I hate to admit, but I have the same kind of mentality too. When watching anything about Malaysia in the world arena, I'm a true Malaysian. I'll cheer any Malaysian athlete on in any sport regardless of race, gender or religion. And I can get all fired up when any non-Malaysian says anything negative about Malaysia. But first and foremost I want to be identified as a Chinese, specifically a Chinese Malaysian. 

Many years ago, I was with a couple of Australian friends and when one learned that I came from Malaysia, he remarked "Oh, so you're Malay." And I said "No, I'm Chinese. I'm a Malaysian, but I'm Chinese. My other Australian friend said to him, "Whoa, you can't say you're a Malay to just any Malaysian, man! Malaysians get max pissed off when you just assume they're Malay."

That got to me, because it was somewhat true. At that moment, I was quite fired up because this person didn't seem to know that just cos you're a Malaysian doesn't mean you're Malay. I felt that they should know what race I was. But then why should they? After all, we call people from Vietnam Vietnamese, people from Thailand are Thai, Irish come from Ireland, Italians from Italy, New Zealanders from New Zealand but yet, I'm a Chinese from Malaysia. 

I think this kind of mentality is unhealthy but how do you fix it? Its so deeply ingrained since we were all young. Even though none of the government policies in Malaysia really affect me on a day-to-day basis, just the fact that race segregation policies exist is enough to sow negative seeds. Actually, if the policies are removed, would it fix things? I'm not sure, it might but it would take a long, long time to change the mentality of the people. 

I love Malaysia and will always consider myself a Malaysian. But sometimes, I'm don't feel too proud of being Malaysian. And I definitely don't feel proud of my own racist mentality either, no matter how much I try to tell myself that I don't have any.