LETTER TO THE EDITOR
In the wake of Barack Obama’s electoral triumph in the United States, some Malaysian politicians, NGO activists, newspaper columnists, and members of the general public have made utterly shallow and superficial comments about the significance of his victory to minorities and ethnic politics in Malaysia.
The US’ majority-minority dichotomy has very little relevance to our country. Though a member of the African-American minority which is about 12 percent of the US population, Obama subscribes to Christianity, the religion of the White majority. His mother tongue— English— is the mother tongue of the majority community. His culture is to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the culture of the majority.
Like most other African Americans, and indeed most of the other minorities such as the Latinos and the Asians, Obama has been absorbed and assimilated into what is sometimes described as mainstream ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ (WASP) culture. However, for African-Americans in particular their total assimilation was hampered and hindered by the racial barrier of colour. It was the colour bar with all its historical (slavery) and sociological (lower economic echelon) implications that underscored their minority status.
Compare their minority status to the position of the Chinese and Indian Malaysian minorities. The vast majority of Chinese and Indian Malaysians are non-Muslims and have no affiliation whatsoever to Islam, the religion of the majority Malay community. The Malay language is not their mother tongue. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the Chinese community in particular remains deeply attached to its own mother tongue. More than 90 percent of Chinese parents send their children to Chinese primary schools. For the most part Chinese and Indian cultures have preserved and perpetuated their distinct identities.
Chinese and Indian elites whether there are in government or with the opposition have always been opposed to any attempt to absorb their communities into the cultural ethos of the majority community. Neither has the government been inclined towards assimilation as a cultural policy. By and large, it is the path of integration that the government has chosen which accommodates cultural diversity, and, at the same time, seeks to promote unity by emphasizing the primacy of Malay, the nation’s lingua franca. The Chinese and Indian communities, there is no doubt at all, prefer integration to assimilation. Since this is their preference they should not expect an assimilated ‘Obama’ to emerge from their ranks. They cannot have the cake and eat it at the same time!
To explain this in more concrete terms, one should perhaps try to visualize the life story of an Obama equivalent in Malaysia. His father would have come from a Buddhist, or Hindu or Christian family outside Malaysia, married a Malay- Muslim woman from say Kedah or Kelantan, and produced an offspring (Barack Obama) who would have spoken Malay as his mother tongue, studied in a Malay medium school, graduated from a Malay medium university, and would have been thoroughly assimilated into Malay culture and Malay society. How could one regard such a person as the poster-boy of the Chinese or Indian minority in this country?
This illustrates the danger of making simplistic comparisons between minorities in two totally different situations without any understanding of their respective milieus. Rather than indulge in such rhetoric which invariably has a communal edge to it, our politicians and media commentators should help to promote our Bahasa Malaysia based primary school as the school of first choice so that young Malaysians will at least have the opportunity to interact with another during the most impressionable stage of their lives. Of course, interaction alone will not enhance national unity if we are not just and fair to everyone, regardless of their cultural or religious affiliation.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar.
Kuala Lumpur.
7 November 2008.