Ethnic Chinese

Anti-essentialism -- the doctrine that environment not heredity is the principal determinant of the individual character -- has been the prime mover of the dizzying social changes of this century. Suffrage for women and independence movements in colonies such as the Dutch East Indies are examples of causes inspired by it.

Masli Arman's article Ethnic Chinese at fault for riots, however, is evidently essentialist. "Indonesian culture" -- which is not a fact of nature but an ideological construct -- has the right to extinguish "foreign" languages and cultures: "assimilation". The world will be a drab place if a couple of ideologues of Masli's stamp divide it into a couple of blocs and "assimilate" everyone.

Essentialism lurks in the suggestion that ethnically Chinese Indonesians (and I suspect all other non-Moslems) should be tolerant toward Moslems "for their own sake". Translation: "We are (essentially) violent people, historically unchangingly violent people, and we will kill you!"

Essentialism underpins the "logic" in machete -- slaying the children of a man who... shows you his penis. "Bad bird, bad egg," the Irish used to say.

Finally, it is apparent that Masli perceives some objectivity in his philosophy derives from the fact that he took his degree at an Australian university, in the 1950s. The world has turned. Such views would be pilloried today, and a person adherent to them would certainly be ineligible for a teaching post.

MARK BLAIR

Jakarta