On minority and majority<\/p>\n
I'm commenting on Mr. Zahar Indra's letter in The Jakarta Post
\non July 8 titled Minority and majority stock.<\/p>\n
As your perception you wrote:<\/p>\n
1. \"Yellow ethnic Chinese are better than brown ethnic Javanese.\"<\/p>\n
2. \"Have you, ethnic Chinese, ever thought of inviting your
\nethnic Javanese neighbor to a chat in front of your TV.\"<\/p>\n
3. \"It is easy to build up invisible walls around you by way of
\nnot speaking the language everyone understands, by boasting you
\nare richer and better educated, that local culture, local food,
\nlocal language, in fact everything local is inferior.\"<\/p>\n
From the above I understand you are suffering from a severe
\ninferiority complex and that you are living in a exclusive
\ncommunity. Since the jaman Belanda (Dutch colonial era), schools
\nhave been open to everyone. There is no dividing line between the
\nDutch, the indigenous and nonindigenous people. They study and do
\ntheir homework together and when it gets late, they eat together,
\nand sometimes, when it gets very late, they stay for the night.<\/p>\n
Have you ever asked your fellow indigenous Indonesian who has
\nethnic Chinese as neighbors whether they have ever been invited
\nfor a dinner or ever received cookies and dishes?<\/p>\n
\"Everything local is inferior\" are your own words, and not the
\nwords of the ethnic Chinese. The majority of ethnic Chinese do
\nnot and also cannot speak Chinese. How can you reproach them by
\nway of not speaking the language everyone understands?<\/p>\n
I have an indigenous son-in-law and a late indigenous foster
\nmother, while my brother has two indigenous sons-in-law and one
\nindigenous grandson-in-law. In addition, I have more tennis
\nfriends who are indigenous Indonesian than ethnic Chinese.<\/p>\n
Can you imagine that a lot of ethnic Chinese have married
\nindigenous Indonesian women and that indigenous Indonesian men
\nhave married ethnic Chinese women. Almost everybody knows that
\nthe president director of Bank Summa (the son of Om William, the
\nformer owner of Astra) has married an indigenous woman. Arief
\nBudiman of the 1966 Generation is an ethnic Chinese and is
\nmarried to an indigenous Indonesian woman.<\/p>\n
The majority of ethnic Chinese here cannot speak the Chinese
\nlanguage and use Bahasa Indonesia in their daily lives which
\nmeans that they are not an exclusive community because they have
\nlearned Bahasa Indonesia by socializing with indigenous people.
\nThis has been so from even well before World War I, 1914-1918.<\/p>\n
Before the monetary crisis, I heard many people speaking
\nChinese in Chinese restaurants, but a lot of them were Chinese
\nfrom Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan,
\nThailand and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
When I was still working in a pharmaceutical company, I was
\noften visited by Chinese-Americans, as representatives of
\nAmerican companies, who could speak Chinese. During Dutch
\ncolonial times we had three groups of Chinese people:<\/p>\n
1. the Dutch Chinese (the gelijkgestelden)<\/p>\n
2. the Chinese<\/p>\n
3. the Chinese who after 1945 become Chinese-Indonesians.<\/p>\n
The first group left for Holland, the second group left for
\nChina and the third group stayed in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
SENO MULIANA<\/p>\n
Jakarta<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/on-minority-and-majority-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }