Why Shouldn’t Young Malays Reject Equal Rights?

The problem with Malaysians is that we are assuming too conveniently that we all share the same identity, when it is as clear as daylight that we don’t.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

In a revealing snapshot of Malaysia’s racial divide, 73% of young Malays have voted to maintain their special privileges – effectively endorsing unequal treatment of their fellow citizens in a country where they form 60% of the 32 million population.

I don’t understand why anyone is surprised by this outcome. All of us enjoy our privileges and will refuse to share it with anyone we don’t have to share it with.

Take a family for example. How will you feel if you have to share your privilege of being a member of your family with some stranger across the street, under some unrealistic concept of equality, meritocracy or fairness? Even if the stranger across the street is a better student or a more capable worker than you, would you accept it if your parents sent them to university or passed down the family business to them instead of you?

Of course not.

As it is with our family, so it is with our nation. None of us are going to accept our government sharing our privileges of being a citizen of this country with someone from a foreign country. Even if there is someone in Somalia or Colombia or Cambodia who are more intelligent, talented, hard-working or capable than our citizens, we expect our country to expand its wealth, resources and attention on our citizens, not them.

Like it or not, the concept of privileges, equality, meritocracy or fairness is tied to the concept of identity. Concepts like equality, meritocracy and fairness only carry meaning if they are applied to people who share a common identity. It is because a common identity serves as the frame of reference for concepts like equality, meritocracy and fairness, that your neighbour will never complain that your parents are sending you to university although they got more A’s in the exams that both of you sat through. They won’t complain, because it will be understood that your parents, sharing a common identity with you, will obviously be biased in your favour in the same way that their parents will be biased in their favour.

The problem with our country is that we tend to put the cart before the horse, and straightaway talk about privileges, equality or meritocracy without settling the issue of identity first. Because of that, everything we say becomes mired in confusion and whenever we want to discuss anything related to equality, meritocracy or privileges, the more we talk about it, the more will we all get suspicious that we are being taken for a fool, and end up quarrelling or becoming petty or passive aggressive during the discussion.

The fact of the matter is that only your brother or sister can complain to your parents about you receiving too many privileges without merit, not your neighbour or some stranger. Your brothers and sisters have the right to make that complaint because they share the same identity with your parents as you.

They have the right to make this complaint because they too will feel sad when your parents are sad, or happy when your parents are happy, or feel like they are winning when your parents are winning and feel like they are  losing when your parents are losing, not just you.

When they identify with your parents to the point that they experience what your parents are experiencing, they have a right to ask your parents why your parents are treating you more favourably than them for no good reason, when they identify with your parents just the same as you.

If your neighbour or some strangers were to make that complaint and if your parents were to entertain their complaint, when your neighbour or a stranger can hardly be said to be that affected by whether your parents are happy, sad, winning or losing, everything will descend into confusion and meaninglessness.

For the same reason, only the Malays can complain about other Malays receiving too much privilege without merit, not the Chinese or the Indian.

The problem with Malaysians is that we are assuming too conveniently that we all share the same identity, when it is as clear as daylight that we don’t.

Which Indian do you know that is sad when the Malay race is losing or which Chinese do you know is happy when an Indian race is winning?

Look, I have Chinese and Malay individuals that I identify with as friends, but I identify with them on the basis of friendship, not on the basis of race. Sure, I am happy when they are winning and sad when they are losing, but my happiness and sadness is limited to them, not their entire race. When their race is winning, they are the ones that are happy, not me.

As a matter of fact, when their race is winning, there is a good chance that I am sad, because there is a great likelihood that their race won against my race, which will make my race the losing race.

There is a saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln, which says that “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

I can pretend or trick myself into becoming happy when the Chinese race or the Malay race is winning, and I might be able to fool myself and  everybody into believing that I am genuinely happy when a race that I don’t identify with is doing well, but I can’t fool them or myself all the time.

The more everybody knows me, the more they will realise that I am just fooling them or fooling myself.

“The sun, the moon and the truth, cannot be hidden forever.”

For that reason, I am not at all surprised that most young Malays are voting to maintain their special privileges even if it means that they are effectively endorsing unequal treatment of their fellow citizens of a different race.

Young Malays are just young. They are not stupid.

After spending 20 or 30 years in the Malaysian Experience, they know what the score is – they know that the other races don’t identify with them, and thus they have no obligation to treat the other races as they would one of their own.

Some people might feel exasperated and frustrated at the view point of these young Malays, because they had conveniently assumed that such ideas like “racism” or “discriminative viewpoints”, are something that was limited to the older generation, and they had hoped that the younger generation, being more educated and exposed to the world, would be more inclined to discard such a narrow and parochial viewpoint, but who are they kidding?

There are 5 million foreign workers in the country who we treat as abject unequals on account of them not sharing an identity with them.

When we are the sort of people that can justify treating these 5 million foreign workers as abject unequals on the ground that inequality to those who we do not share an identity with is not unfair, why should the young Malays not follow our own example, and not deem treating us unequally as being unfair, when they don’t share an identity with us?

Mahatma Gandhi has a saying.”You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

When someone proposed to Lycurgus,the lawgiver of Ancient Sparta, to govern Sparta along the lines of democracy, he replied: Start with your own family.”

If we really believe that everybody should be treated equally in this country, the first thing we should do is start with ourselves, and treat every foreign worker under our employ as we would our own people, or demand that they are treated equally as any other worker in the country.

It is only if we change ourselves, that our world will change. It is only when both ourselves and our world changes, that our reality will change. It is only if our reality changes, that we will genuinely experience change.

Expecting our world to change, but stubbornly insisting that we will stay as we are, will only condemn us to be forever frustrated and exasperated, for deeming ourselves to be someone that we are not, in a nation that never was.