I HAD the opportunity to interview candidates for a publication I work for some time ago. The promising candidates I met with are, coincidentally, ‘white’.

If I had done this, let’s say 3 to 5 years ago, it would have been a run-of-the-mill thing. Pick the best person for the job. Mission accomplished.

Yet, for a brief moment, there is this darker voice that speaks inside of me that says, see how the tables have turned, now you are the Asian guy with the funny accent who decides the fate of the ‘white’ people, instead of the other way around.

Concerned about how the interviewees would feel if those thoughts had hit them too, I tried harder than usual to look friendly to minimise appearances of the power dynamic that is inevitable in a job interview setting.

It is not that I harbour those sentiments; to the contrary. That is why I went to great lengths to avoid any suggestive behaviours on my part.

Yet the discursive reality I inhabit still tells me that I have an obligation to feel something. To be specific, I am referring to the discourse of white supremacy that has pervaded both intellectual and popular debates in the Western world.

While the supremacy is true in many degrees (and the history of colonialism has plenty to say about it), at times I also feel that the discourse has evolved into a form of outrage-centric cultural politics that came to dictate our humanity.

That is, I have to be first and foremost a ‘non-white’, in battle-lines drawn before I have any say (because there are many Asians I can’t relate to in this foreign land either), and with fixed set of mental barriers I have to impose on other human beings before I even get to know them.

Not someone who can claim to be Westernised until my late 20s, I can’t help but notice the differences in how I perceive reality before and after I get acquainted with this polarising form of postmodern identity politics.

During my short stay in London seven years ago, I was rather naïve about identity politics other than the Malaysian kind. I don’t feel the need to adjudicate everything based on my identity then.

It may have shielded me from perceiving the prejudices others levelled at me due to my skin colour, but it has also prevented me from making prejudicial assessments about how others viewed me.

Parallels can be found in Malaysia too, even if the context behind our identity politics differs a lot.

For example, this feeling and responsibility to ‘get even’ for ‘our people’ is also forced upon us in our daily politics, which is why the ethnicity of ministers and other senior positions in government continues to be a matter of intense scrutiny.

My point is not that we cannot recognise phenotypic differences. Of course, we can. But what we make of such differences is acclimatised by the social world we inhabit. It’s one thing to say we are political animals, but it’s another to say the kind of politics we play today is natural to us.

To be sure, I am not denying past and present injustices perpetrated in the name of group identities. As someone who is born and bred in Malaysia, how may I think otherwise? I am not saying we should not learn about it either. We must.

Just look at the debate surrounding the attorney-general’s appointment, strip away the pretentious legal language and the subtext is that some groups of people are subhuman and are inherently unworthy of another’s trust. To think that identity politics is all about empowerment and without trauma is naïve and dangerous.

So far, my personal experiences taught me that identity politics did not make me a better person. If anything, it taught me to be the contrary. It gave me this repertoire of senseless pride, hubris, prejudice, and anger that’s largely useless in my life. Gender politics and its bringing to attention of toxic masculinity might be the only exception.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not selling a message of ‘ditch the collective for the self’ here. I still believe systemic change is necessary. I just don’t think it should be a game of musical chairs, swapping one type of self-limiting, ascriptive identity politics with another. – June 9, 2018.

* 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.