SEPT 3 — Namewee, Siti Inshah, Ibrahim Ali are names that seem to be on everyone’s lips.

We all seem to be caught up about who should be punished, who should be taken to court, who should be stripped of his or her citizenship.

Maybe none of this is really the point.

I think what we perhaps failed to acknowledge is that these individuals have become such polarising figures because they represent not just themselves, but to a small and disturbing extent, the Malays, Chinese and Indians we know from down the street, or in the cubicle next to us at work.

I doubt there’s any of us who can claim that we’ve never heard the utterances attributed to these individuals before. Some of us have been unfortunate to be victims of such discrimination first hand, while the rest of us — like myself perhaps — have not always found the courage to speak out against racism expressed against “others” around the dinner table with friends of only one race.

I think this is why when comments from the individuals above make it to the public sphere, raw nerves are touched. It is not only what these individuals are saying, but how they remind us of what many of us say every day in hushed tones.

Angels and a**holes

Let’s try to put Malaysia under a critical and objective light. At the risk of sounding a little rude a la Namewee, I humbly posit that absolutely anywhere we go in the world, in any society or community whatsoever, there are bound to be both angels and a**holes — almost always following that bell-shaped normal distribution.

We should not pretend that Malaysia is any different. Every single day of the year, Malaysians hurl racial abuse at one another, rob one another, and hurt one another in countless ways.

Only a blind cynic, however, would say that this is the entirety of the story. Every single day of the year as well, Malaysians reach out across racial divides, help uplift the downtrodden, and love each other in countless ways (some more approved of than others).

Those Malaysians inspire us to carry on.

I think one of the better ways to make positive use of these incidences is to take it as an opportunity for reflection on our state of affairs, and think back on how racial dynamics have changed over time.

1 Malaysia before 1 Malaysia

One of the most eloquent and poignant articulations of this evolution can be found in an anecdote written by a good friend, currently a prominent member of the journalist community, two Hari Rayas ago.

In this story, she tells of how close she was as a child to a Malay gentleman (a good friend of her uncle’s) and his family, and how this gentleman lived in storybook harmony with the rest of a predominantly Chinese village.

She spoke of scooter rides, satay stalls, and being an “anak angkat.”

Slowly, the story changed to one where the Malay man no longer felt comfortable frequenting the Chinese coffeeshops, where his wife felt compelled to wear a headscarf more often, and where the satay stall no longer opened as it once did during Chinese New Year.

These were perhaps the saddest, and most real, barometers of change for my friend.

Malaysia is no stranger to the phenomenon of older people going “it was so much better back in the day...” In our case, we now often hear “things were so much more 1 Malaysia before 1 Malaysia.”

Like any brash young man, I have often dismissed such talk as unobjective, sentimental nostalgia.

I’m not so sure any more though.

I feel that as we turn 53, the evolution of race relations in our country has been less one of people coming together, and more one of people drifting apart in separate silos, and I think we all find ourselves asking why.

Racially divided politics = racially divided society

Here, to the disappointment of some I’m sure, I may have to take an approach that is less “universal.”

I do not believe that being objective is the same as always being neutral.

Ever since I have started writing on Malaysian issues, there is little that I have believed more fervently or more strongly than this: that a political structure based on racial divisions will invariably lead to a more racially divided society.

This truth burns in my face, and reinforces my belief that structure goes a very long way in determining both political and social dynamics.

What I mean by this is that as long as a ruling coalition is split according to racial lines, everything connected to governance will be split according to racial lines.

Race remains an issue all around the world, and will continue to do so — in other countries and in ours; but while politics in other democracies are most commonly split between liberal and conservative tendencies (this is a dichotomy I also feel is not fully representative — but that is a story for another day), we remain one of the precious few who actually name and constitute political parties and “ideologies” based on racial groups.

Walled cities: Melayu, Cina, India dan lain-lain

The nature of politics is such that it is all encompassing; and as the often dark hand of politics touches every aspect of a nation, so in Malaysia has race and the element of racial thinking come to touch everything in our lives.

Instead of questions of what is best for the nation as a whole, we find politicians in power all struggling for a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. Some seek riches “for their ‘community’”, while many more seek riches for themselves under the guise of doing it for their “community.”

In a political structure divided by race, what can we expect but constant bickering along racial lines? For instance, being an Indian party in name and substance, what else is MIC to do except fight for “Indian rights” — exclusively, and to the exclusion of others.

In the big zero sum game that is the BN formula, it is usually the rakyat who end up with the big zero.

There are a clear and somewhat prominent handful of individuals, such as Khairy Jamaluddin and Wee Ka Siong, or MIC’s S. Murugesan, who espouse more progressive views and who I believe to be decent men with decent ideas.

I feel they too, however, are irredeemably caught in the trap that is race-based politics. As long as their parties remain what they are in name and in spirit, any effort such individuals make towards a more united Malaysia would appear to be crippled and/or unable to make a truly lasting impact. When push comes to shove, we see they still have to pander somewhat to ethnocentric electoral dynamics within their own racially structured parties.

In this I am not saying that Pakatan holds all the answers (though I must say that it is only through my involvement in PKR that I can count my real Malay friends on more than one or two hands). Rather, I am only saying that decade after decade of BN’s racially divided sociopolitical dynamics have become far and away the single biggest reason our society has been pushed to crawl back into the four walled cities of Melayu, Cina, India, dan Lain-lain.

Inheriting social constructs at the makan table

Needless to say, a responsible citizenry cannot blame everything on its leaders. First of all — to some extent, anyway — we put them there. Secondly, they could not have achieved this unholy result without our collusion.

In my work with students, I have sometimes seen how effectively the opinions of parents are passed down through the generations. It is heartbreaking to see young people mouth opinions (not unlike Namewee’s or Siti Inshah’s) that they clearly cannot have formed through their own observation or experience, but rather have it inculcated into them by those older than them.

Some hours after writing the first draft of this article, it occurred to me — I think this is the biggest perpetrator of racism in our country.

It’s not what Ibrahim Ali, Namewee or Siti Inshah says, and it’s not just all BN. It’s the kind of conversations that take place around family kitchen tables, or nights out with friends. Bit by bit, we pass down the poison that threatens to unravel any hope we have of true unity.

Perhaps it is our fault too, for swallowing the race card hook, line and sinker.

I did a number of courses in university on ethnicity, race and the like, and the prevailing academic view seems to be that race is — if you’ll pardon the liberal arts cliche — a social construct.

This means that it is something that does not truly exist in any objective way in nature. We cannot define it definitively by any scientific or biological measure. Rather it exists as one of many social divisions, all constructed and all contextual. Any one of us at different times could be Asian vs Western, Malaysian vs Indonesian, Malay vs Chinese, Javanese vs Bugis or Hokkien vs Cantonese — the divisions split and go on forever, and none of them truly mean anything.

The only relevant question is whether we, as neighbours with different allegiances in terms of language, culture, religion, professions, home towns, and so on, can live together free from discrimination, lovingly, and in peace.

A thousand peaceful Malaysians for every violent one

If we can, how do we get from here to there?

Allow me to explore an analogy. Some people liked to say that the Internet caused the 2008 political tsunami. I have generally maintained that the Internet is a content-neutral medium. Anyone can put anything on the Internet.

On its best of days, the Internet helps get the truth out. This truth sets some of us free, and puts some of us in jail.

Just as you can use the Internet to spread truth, however, so can you use it to spread lies. At the end of the day, all you can depend on is on the collective wisdom of people to make the best of the available choices given to them. Nothing else is particularly sustainable. In the end, the battle is not one of choice of media, but one of a free marketplace of ideas.

I feel race and racism are the same way. It does us little good to prevent people from saying what they think, and an obsession with punitive measures will result in people whose hearts are filled with fear, not with love.

Many people think that a lack of punishment and letting people speak their minds will end eventually with blood on the streets, but I think I prefer to put my trust in a peace-loving majority.

Men who would take to the streets in violence are more often hooligans looking to break heads for any reason, rather than idealogues trying to “defend” their “race.” Call me naive if you like, but for every such individual, I wager a thousand Malaysians would step forward to rally for peace.

Trading in the marketplace of ideas

I am no big fan of Namewee’s work. I found his earlier negative references to the azan distasteful, and his general tone of rudeness makes me uncomfortable.

All that said, he’s a brash young man himself. I feel the job of a responsible society is not to be obsessed about suppressing voices like his or Ibrahim Ali’s (or Zunar’s, or Hassan Skodeng’s. We can however perhaps justify removing individuals of any race who espouse views like Siti Inshah’s from positions of power or influence over of our children) — but to respond and fill public discourse with voices from a progressive, reasonable majority.

While we decry claims that Chinese are pendatang or that the Malays played no part in building the country’s wealth, we must not fail to fill the void we leave; we must continuously shout from the rooftops that all Malaysians are equal, and have played an equal part in bringing Malaysia to where it is (good and bad).

In the meantime, even though some of us may really think that Indians are drunkards, Chinese conniving scrooges, and Malays lazy — perhaps we can take some extra effort to let the young discover and decide for themselves, instead of ever letting them hear such prejudice from their role models.

How else can we expect to build the united society we all want to see?

Our battle ultimately is not between races and sensitivities — it is a battle to win hearts and minds; a battle to replace ignorance and hate with understanding and love.

Malaysia has never lacked the potential to be a great symphony. We may never be able to silence discord, but perhaps we can drown it out with harmony.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.