Racism in Malaysia as an Element of Contemporary Malaysian Culture

Malaysia has been well-known as a harmonious nation of multiracial and multicultural society. However, the reality does not actually match the rhetoric. Racial tensions between its Malay majority and sizeable ethnic Chinese and Indian communities constantly exist. Malaysian government policies have for decades provided advantages that favour the Malay majority and the Bumiputera status to the extent of excluding the minorities. Therefore the aim of my essay is to analyze racism in Malaysia as an important element of contemporary Malaysian culture.

The Roots of Racism in Malaysia 

Racism and racial discrimination have been implemented with impunity since the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1971 (Soong, 2008). Malaysia’s affirmative action has always reserved priorities for Bumiputeras in various areas, such as quotas for public education institutions and public sector employment. For instance, in the education sector, Bumiputeras of Malay origin are preferentially offered with student places in government universities (Pak, 2013), resulting in a certain number of Chinese and Indians having to study in private universities. Furthermore, the Article 153 in the Malaysian Federal Constitution also allows a certain proportion of privileges such as scholarships, training opportunities, and business permits to be primarily reserved for Malays and natives of Sabah and Sarawak. The Article 153 has since then been wrongly misinterpreted as the justification of special provision to protect only the rights of the Malays, particularly in policies and business practices.

From my perspective, I believe that the culture of racism in Malaysia has remained stable over the past decades. The way I see it, racism remains stable in its nature, as can be easily identified from various aspects in which it manifests. On the other hand, disappointingly, racism in Malaysia shows an increasing trend in recent years. I based my conjecture mainly on the contents of the annual “Malaysian Racial Discrimination Report”, which have been repeatedly summoned since the 1990s. The Malaysia Racial Discrimination Reports highlight the alarming trends of racism in Malaysia.

Racism remains stable and continues in an upward trend. This is mainly attributed to the prevailing culture of racial politics in Malaysia that has been practiced and exploited by different political parties, of which each is either mono-racial or dominated by one race or another, since its Independence in 1957. Politics in Malaysia have long been race-based with political parties using race and abusing racial issues and sentiments to maintain their power and controlling their constituencies and the voters. The divisive practices of racial politics persist, as reflective in the 14th General Elections in 2018. Even with “New Malaysia”, leaders of political parties of the 14th General Elections have continued to resort to using race as a political tool to win support from members of their constituency. Hence, racism has remained and become more pronounced, as it is increasingly being utilized as a tool to “divide and rule”.

Malaysian Racial Discrimination Reports from the four most recent consecutive years (2015 to 2018) also show that groups, agencies, and individuals seem to be free to make provocative racial statements for the sake of assuring the interests of their own races, especially those made by pro-Malay rights groups. The lack of enforcement and actions by Malaysian authorities against these groups and agencies despite practising racial discrimination shows that the government continues to condone racism, allowing racism and racial discrimination to persist in the society.

Notably, a recent incident that occurred at the end of 2018 has illustrated another spike of racism in Malaysia, with the government back-pedalling on its decision to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The Leaders of Islamist party, PAS, and the former Malay ruling party, UMNO, and conservative groups, had claimed that ICERD ratification would threaten the Malay rights, as it would require amendment of Article 153 of the Federal Constitution on the special position of Malays. Fearing that it could dilute privileges for majority ethnic Malays, backlash against ICERD ratification had arisen from certain segments of the Malay community. The newly-elected Coalition of Hope government eventually abandoned their plan to ratify the ICERD, without giving reasons. The decision not to ratify the ICERD provided another indication that the Malaysian government condones racism and racial discrimination, which is already in an alarming trend.

The Malaysian Racial Discrimination Reports in recent years are similar in showing a rising trend of racism. Incidents of racism and racial discrimination continue to be prevalent in various areas, such as education, employment, and welfare, and have increasingly surfaced over the years, of which details cannot be described within the scope of this essay. In short, racism in Malaysia have manifested in various aspects, especially pertaining to its policy and practices. With the embodiment of racial preferences within the social and economic policies implemented by the Malaysian government since its Independence, racism has emerged, and since then remained stable as a cultural element in Malaysia, and even worse, increased with years.

The cultural dynamics of racism in Malaysia

In my opinion, there are two mechanisms of cultural dynamics that are mainly at play, namely social transmission and selection process. Approaching cultural dynamics using neo-diffusionist, I believe that the culture of racism in Malaysia involves social transmission or diffusion of cultural information within a population (Kashima, 2008). Nowadays, the Internet and social media platforms have provided easier avenues for spreading provocative racial sentiments. Racism is entrenched among Malaysians, with people often making racially discriminatory statements that criticize a particular race based on their own racial prejudgments and stereotypes, resulting in improper and incorrect impression of another race. Furthermore, since languages potentially perpetuate racism and racial discrimination, and word embeddings reflect temporal dynamics in a society’s ethnic stereotypes (Garg, Schiebinger, Jurafsky, & Zou, 2018), social media could appear as a corpus for word embeddings of racism, where people make provocative racial statements in the guise of anonymity. Cultural information socially situates within broader social networks, and communicability is positively associated with information diffusion (Clark & Kashima, 2007). Therefore, it appears reasonable that cultural information, such as those related to racial stereotypes and prejudgements are socially transmitted. Hence, social transmission has possibly become a mechanism for cultural dynamics of racism, through which information about racism is communicated and transmitted, propagating the negative sentiments between different races, and resulting in the rise of racism.

Next, it seems to me that the selection process could also be at play. Since culture acts as an adaptation device (Kashima, 2019), I would suggest that the culture of racism in Malaysia involves adaptation to social and psychological environments. Racism, particularly among Malays, may arise because it allows adaptation to social environment in which economic competition or intergroup threats exist. Malays are primarily concerned and worried about losing power or their status being affected if Chinese or other races take over the control. Therefore, the fear and insecurity felt by the Malay community over any disparity in status and power create existential issues and anxiety, which configure challenges in their psychological environment. Hence, racism may emerge, maintain, or continue to increase, as it serves as a cultural adaptation to challenges in both social and psychological environments. In brief, from my personal perspective, both social transmission and selection process play a reasonably significant role in the cultural dynamics of racism in Malaysia.

Conclusion

To conclude, while I aimed to discuss the contemporary Malaysian culture of racism and its cultural dynamics, this essay is certainly not exhaustive in this regard. It is also imperative to note that people of any race could encounter racism in any possible way, which could not be entirely covered in this paper. It may seem intriguing that as a Malaysian, I decided to talk about racism when we have just celebrated the country’s 62nd independence on 31st August. Nevertheless, what I wish to express is that while I do take pride as a Malaysian, I certainly think that all Malaysians deserve better.