Affirmative action won't work

Affirmative action won't work

By Iwan Pranoto

BANDUNG (JP): Political observer Jusuf Wanandi said in the
Jakarta Post on July 1, 1998, that a policy of affirmative action
would bring Indonesian people closer together.

The rationale for such a policy was that existing racial
tensions had come about as the result of the gap between rich and
poor.

I strongly believe that implementing such a policy in
Indonesia is inappropriate. The policy has worked in neighboring
Malaysia because the bureaucracy there is reasonably clean, but
that is not case with our own system. How can we be sure that
help intended for poor people will reach the right target?

Furthermore, the issue cannot be set clearly along ethnic
lines because as Wanandi pointed out, not all Chinese-Indonesians
are rich. Contrary to popular belief, many of them are very poor.

Populist sentiment would have it that racial tensions which
exist between Chinese-Indonesians and those of Malay origin have
come about because of the relative affluence of the former, but
this is not true. If it were true, tensions would exist between
rich Malays and poor Malays, but this is not the case.

We can therefore conclude that economic factors are not the
primary cause of racial tension. There must be something else.

One reason is that we still cannot see people as they really
are. We still cannot accept other people if they are different
from us and we are more interested in the label one bears than
the qualities one has. It is more important to consider one's
religion, race, ethnic background and gender, rather than to
consider one's attitude and expertise. It seems we are not yet
mature enough to become a great nation.

We should ease the tension using a variety of methods, but
affirmative action is not one of them. To fight racism with
racism, which affirmative action does, is inherently
contradictory.

Our society must improve its respect for universal human
values and we must start to see things differently. Jobs should
no longer be filled on the basis of race. Teaching people to
communicate with others without considering race is the most
effective way to fight racism.

The objective of affirmative action is good, but the means of
getting there is wrong. The objective cannot justify the means.

Deep inside we can see and feel that we are all the same and
that we live on the same planet. It is true that we are not all
exactly the same, but God created us with variations so that we
could learn from these differences. Imagine if we had to live in
a world where everybody looked the same. It would be very boring,
wouldn't it?

There is an old fable on this subject. A group of fleas lived
on the skin of a dog and ate by sucking his blood. They slept in
the dog's hair -- it really was a very cozy place to live. "Skin
sweet skin," they used to say.

One day, a new group of fleas joined them. The two groups
lived together peacefully on the dog until some fleas declared
the dog belonged to the first group of flees only. The new group
did not have equal rights to the dog's blood and were
discriminated against. The first group of fleas became known as
the indigenous fleas and the second group were always referred to
as nonindigenous.

This lead to discord between the two groups and the tension
was such that even the dog could feel it.

After contemplating the problem for a while, the dog
philosophically mused: "It is absurd. They are both living on my
bony body. They are sucking the same blood, my blood. They are
sleeping in the same skin, my skin. They all are parasites on my
body. How can one colony of fleas declare that they have more
right to suck my blood and enjoy my body than another colony."
The dog then asked himself: "How can one group of flees call
themselves indigenous and brand others nonindigenous. Aren't they
the same fleas and created by the same God?"

The writer is a lecturer at the Bandung Institute of
Technology.