Indonesia and Malaysia face racism allegations

Indonesia and Malaysia face racism allegations

Is racism alive in Indonesia? According to Bill Hayden it is.
The former governor general of Australia said recently that
Malaysia and Indonesia are racist countries. Arief Budiman takes
a look at this issue.

SALATIGA, Central Java (JP): In Indonesia and Malaysia, racism
is associated primarily with the state policies against people of
Chinese descent albeit they are citizens of these two countries.

Before we talk about racism, first we have to differentiate
between racism at the individual level and that at the state
level.

Everybody has his or her likes and dislikes as an individual.
When somebody dislikes a race, then it is racism. This attitude
is unacceptable because it is very certain that one's dislike of
a certain race is based on limited or unpleasant experiences with
some members of this race.

To impose this attitude on the whole race is, of course, not
reasonable because even those members of the race with whom one
has had bad experiences are capable of change as individuals.

Unfortunately, an individual's bias against a given race is
difficult to change. The question remains as to whether anyone
has the right to change someone else's individual preferences.

Things are different when we talk about racism at the state
level, as the public policy of a country. A public policy based
on racial prejudice is difficult to accept. The former state
policy of South Africa that barred Blacks from being with the
Whites in public places is an example of this outright racism.
But what about a public policy that discriminates against the
Chinese in order to alleviate the poverty of the indigenous
people?

Here, we come to the task of differentiating between a racist
public policy and affirmative action.

Racist policy and affirmative action are both discriminating
policies based on racist criteria. Racist policy is based on
strong dislike of a certain race, thus it is heavily colored by
human emotion.

In affirmative action, the purpose is to assist the weak or
the marginalized and to elevate them to a higher social or
economic level. Affirmative action is based on the assumption
that the liberal principle of the free market will not be able to
help the weak. It is believed that the free market will always
benefit the strong, and that the state must intervene to correct
the unjust imbalance. This intervention is affirmative action.
For instance, in the United States, affirmative action involves
hiring more African-Americans and placing more women in public
offices.

After discussing this, we come to Bill Hayden's statement
about Indonesia and Malaysia being racist states.

On the individual level, I am sure that many, if not all,
Indonesians and Malaysians have their likes and dislikes about
many things, including certain races. However, this is also true
of citizens of other countries. If many individual Indonesians
and Malaysians dislike the Chinese and look up to Europeans and
Americans we cannot do much about this. We can only make a strong
effort to correct this attitude on the individual level, because
this attitude is not right and just.

What about public policies in these two countries?

Both in Indonesia and Malaysia, there is legislation, mostly
in the economic field, discriminating between the pribumi
(indigenous people) and the Chinese.

In Indonesia, the Politik Benteng (Fortress Politics) of the
early 1950s, and some other state policies that favor indigenous
people over people of Chinese decent, are good examples of this
kind of legislation.

In Malaysia, Mahathir's New Economic Policy also favors the
indigenous people over the Chinese.

The above public policies are defended by putting them into
the category of affirmative action. They are said to be meant to
help the economically weak indigenous people so that they can
compete with people of Chinese descent. However, it is difficult
to defend this kind of argument.

Everybody will argue that this specific type of affirmative
action would better serve the purpose if they were based on
helping the poor of all races and communities compete against the
rich, rather than the indigenous people against the Chinese.

Although many people of Chinese descent in these two countries
are rich, there are also a substantial number of Chinese who are
poor. Also, although there are many poor indigenous people, there
are also quite a number of rich ones. Therefore, affirmative
action based on race to fight poverty may hit the wrong target
and end up justifying racial stances.

Moreover, unfortunately, in the case of Indonesia there are
still public policies that cannot be defended as affirmative
action. For instance, the governor of Jakarta released a decree
on Feb. 14, 1996, prohibiting public celebration of Chinese New
Year. This decree is based on Presidential Instruction No. 14,
1967, that regulates the religions, beliefs and cultural
traditions of the Chinese.

There is other legislation that limits the spread of Chinese
traditions in Indonesia. The most notorious ruling is the
prohibition against the use of Chinese characters, including
bringing any documents written in Chinese into the country.
(Unfortunately, in recent years the Chinese culture has found its
way through the back door, in the dubious form of the Kung Fu
films aired on the many private television stations. These films
have become popular among the middle and upper classes).

The reason given for the prohibition against Chinese culture
is to make the Indonesian Chinese more loyal to Indonesia. The
argument goes that tolerating the spread of their culture of
origin will erode the nationalist feeling of people of Chinese
descent in Indonesia. It will create dual loyalty, to Indonesia
and to China.

This argument is difficult to accommodate when we observe that
in the United States where Chinese culture is not only tolerated,
but also cultivated, the phenomenon of dual loyalty among the
American Chinese does not occur. This culture, together with
others such as the Irish, Italian, Indian and African-American
cultures are considered national assets that contribute
positively to the creation of the present American modern
culture.

And we can see that America's ethnic groups are very
nationalistic.

The same thing has happened in neighboring Malaysia. It is
officially a Moslem country, but it lets the Chinese and Indian
cultures flourish. And people of Chinese and Indian descent in
Malaysia are proud to be Malaysians.

Experiences from the history of many countries tell us that
nationalist feeling has more to do with the performance of the
state in distributing economic wealth and political justice,
rather than cultural factors.

Indonesia will be better able to defend itself against the
allegation of being a racist country if it eliminates its racist
public policies and corrects its race-based affirmative action in
the economic fields. Otherwise, what Bill Hayden said will be
difficult to deny, more difficult than in the case of Malaysia.

The writer is a sociologist and researcher living in Salatiga.