We were on a road trip once, and we had about three or four
cars in a convoy. I was sitting in the second car, when I noticed the lead car
swerving dangerously and seemingly losing control. I called in to the lead car’s
passengers and asked what was going on, and they said one of the passengers (Person
A) had pissed the driver (Person B) off and they’re going to drop him off as
soon as possible. This was the story in that car. Person B was of mixed
ethnicity from East Malaysia, and Person A, being the usual dungu, decided to
ask Person B if their I/C’s ethnicity was “Dan Lain-Lain”. And yes, Person A
did get kicked out of the car as soon as we reached a place that wasn’t so
narrow and dangerous to stop.
Ethnicity – the sore
subject that still divides our nation. We refuse to move past these labels and
look at ourselves at think, “I’m a Malaysian”. Not I’m a Malaysian first,
[insert ethnicity here] second. I am Malaysian, period. We continue to allow it
to define us, and to pit us against each other. We allow it to colour our
perspectives, and to bring about prejudice and hatred towards “The Other”.
The news is all about our nation’s leaders decrying the
treatment towards the Rohingya in Myanmar, yet I hear about the plight of stateless
people in our own country that the same leaders have turned a blind eye to, and
it saddens me. I hear of how the Sulu people in Sabah, who have grown up all
their lives in the coasts of Sabah, but are bullied and harassed by law
enforcement because their ancestors were too illiterate to register for
citizenship, and now they have nowhere to go, but live in perpetual fear. I
hear about the straight A student in SPM, but because of an administrative
issue at his birth, has no I/C and therefore cannot apply to any universities
in Malaysia. Again and again, we hear all these stories, and yet we turn a deaf
ear because they are “The Others”.
54 years as a nation, and still a nation divided.
