AS Malaysians embrace the double-celebration of Merdeka and Malaysia Day, the question of race continues to haunt us.

This is reflective of the way we still process ideas of unity and diversity in terms of race (which often acts as a shorthand for religion given how race and religion overlap in Malaysia), blatantly ignoring how other aspects of identity (e.g. gender, class, experiential, faith, and ideology) is equally definitive of our divisions and diversity.

As heart-warming as the Petronas ads are, they will not be able to achieve much if our thinking about race continues to be simplistic and muddled.

Such muddling happens most with three terms that are often conflated and confused: racism, monolingualism, and racial segregation (or mono-racialism).

Let’s begin with the popular idea of unitary nation-building. Within this idea, racism sits on top of a pyramid, with racial segregation and the lack of monolingualism actively contributing to it.

At first glance, the idea seems intuitive enough. The lack of inter-racial co-mingling and a common tongue will lead to reduced communication and increased prejudice, which, in turn, leads to racism.

But we all know that’s not the full story, especially when racism in Malaysia has deep historical roots and varied manifestation in economic, social, political and cultural spheres. We can’t explore all of that in one article, but what we can do is to return to the pyramid.

Pyramid of race, language, and space

To illustrate how complex the relationship between these phenomena can be, one can imagine flipping the pyramid around and still make a convincing case, in that racism becomes the reason for monolingualism and racial segregation.

Monolingualism can become the result of a proactive homogenisation policy, such as China’s sinicisation policy that endangers the survival of minority identity and languages.

As such policies were usually made with a racial bias, it’s unlikely that they would eradicate racism but entrench it further instead.

Also, racism is not exactly a problem of language but attitude. Anyone who has experienced the kind of “you are in my country so speak my language” racism can tell you that.

One person’s ability (or inability) to speak a specific language has nothing to do with the other’s racist attitude.

That a common tongue can end all social divisions is also not realistic. Anti-Chinese racism in Indonesia shows that forgoing your own cultural markers, such as your language and even your name, does not mean other people will forget or even forgive you for who you are.

Indonesia’s deep and often violent regional and sectarian divides also show that having a common tongue does not necessarily lead to common grounds. 

In a situation where minorities face forced assimilation or persistent discrimination, a monolingual environment guarantees nothing at all.

Race remains a polemic issue in American and many European countries despite minorities mostly having adopted the majority language.

Just because many ethnic Malays of southern Thailand “think in Thai”, it does not mean that the dream of separatism is dead.

Racial segregation can also be a product of racism, too. For example, if the mainstream environment shows no acceptance and respect towards minority customs and cultures (or worse, maintains a systemic bias against them), minorities will rightly retreat to their own spaces for self-protection and self-regulation.

To infringe on those spaces with a sledgehammer without a clear idea of the power relations that result in their formation in the first place can only lead to counter-productive, if not downright disastrous results.

For example, closing Howard University (of which the late Chadwick Boseman was an alumnus), a university with a 85% African American student makeup, for reasons of ending racial segregation would only harm the prospects of the black community without really ending racism.

This is because the university was established as a response to racism, not as a product of it.

Targeted, gradual and consequential change

Having clarity about a complex issue does not mean we risk doing less to address racism. However, we risk wrecking more damage without knowing: first, what are we facing (is it racism, racial segregation, or mono/multilingualism?) and, second, how does addressing them help with reducing racism? Are we dealing with racism’s causes or its effects?

Blanket rules are almost never productive. For example, while we can hypothetically end monoracial environments by enforcing a 20% minority quota in all schools, it may not be practical in places such as tahfiz schools, Orang Asli-dedicated schools, rural schools where the environment is largely monoracial and Tamil vernacular schools for a wide variety of reasons.

The term “minority” here refers to a minority defined by the school’s population, which means a Chinese-majority school will need to have a 20% non-Chinese minority.

Tackling racism does not require the most polarising and traumatic of decisions. For example, instead of forced elimination of communally exclusive spaces, we can look for ways to lower the entry (so that an “outsider’’ can enter easily) and exit barriers (so that a person’s move to a more multicultural space is rewarding instead of punitive) of these spaces.

In lieu of enforcing minority quotas in all workplaces (which would just lead to token hires), it is much better to ensure diversity at the decision-making level.

A Malay job interviewee should not be met with a full non-Malay hiring panel and vice versa.

Instead of thinking of swift systemic changes across all schools, we can instil minute but consequential reforms, such as diversity training for teachers and innovative curriculum design, in which we could use literature as a medium for enhancing cultural understanding.

Malay-majority classes should devote substantial time to reading minority literature that is translated into the national language.

Conversely, non-Malay-majority classes should be asked to translate Malay works of fiction into their own mother tongue. Sabah and Sarawak literature should be taught in the peninsula and vice-versa.

By breaking the language barrier through stories, it is hoped that we could break the cultural barriers between students too. In fact, fiction probably works better in cultivating empathy when compared to “cultural interaction programmes” where pupils can only maintain a “hi/bye” relationship.

The current gridlock, consisting of each side yelling “you be less racist first!” to the other, only detracts us from the many options we can take, and the many small progress we can make.

It also hinders us from differentiating between those who really want to do something about racism and those who wanted to maintain a racialised order in the name of ending racism, such as those who celebrate assimilated “model minorities” instead of actual sociocultural differences, or those who use reasons of colour-blindness and meritocracy to mask pre-existing inequalities.

It is far from the case that the best measures to address racism are those that impart the most resentment and trauma on one community or the other.

There is so much more we can do if we drop the zero-sum mindset. – September 13, 2020.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.