Monday, August 30, 2010

selamat menyambut hari kemerdekaan

Racism depends on an individual, not the race in which the individual belongs to.
Having said that, you cannot simply make generalizations and say "Kaum ____ rasis! Bigot! Etc Etc!!"
There are Malays who are racists. There are Chinese who are racists. There are Indians who are racists. There are individuals belonging to minority groups who are racists. But you cannot simply accuse every individuals in the respective groups as racists. The sayings 'kerana nila setitik, rosak susu sebelanga' may be true, but then, you cannot expect a large group of people to be squeaky clean without any 'perosak kaum' either.
Racism is intolerable. Politicizing racism is far worse.
When you live together with different people of different sorts of background / needs / behaviour / beliefs, toleration is crucial. A typical prep may be forced to live with an annoyingly emo-ish roommate with an affinity to all things weird and macabre, but they can still live peacefully (if not happily) with each other should toleration is practiced. The same principle can be applied in the context of living together in a multiracial country. This is why we have things like Perkara 14-18 and Perkara 153 in the Federal Constitution. While I may not be well versed in law, I do believe that the Federal Constitution was carefully designed to be fair and just for all citizens of Malaysia. I am not saying this because I am a Malay (although I am a Malay according to the constitution, I am only half-Malay and prefer to address myself as Malinja - Malay+Indian+Javanese XD), I am saying this as a Malaysian.


By the way, I do know that the government cannot always be right, but I think being a rebel for the sake of rebelling is just ridiculous. Not all things implemented by the government need to be protested.

Happy 53rd Independence Day. May we can make it to the 54th.
Alice

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