Justified racism?
This is another response to the July 30 article Ethnic Chinese at fault for riots. The stories of indigenous people receiving offending remarks from ethnic Chinese in day to day life have grown tiresome. Not everyone is endowed with a pleasant personality, not to mention the depressing atmosphere found in the hustle and bustle of life in a much crowded big city.
We meet all kinds of people every day. Sometimes we meet well behaved citizens, at other times we meet criminals. We can never choose who we'll meet in everyday life. It is the risk of living together with different sorts of people.
The law is designed to guarantee that there should be no "intense friction" whatsoever among the people. But, as an example, I receive insults every day from my bosses if I fail to carry out my job properly; my mother keeps insulting me for not getting married early; my father keeps insulting me for not making enough money to buy good things to bring home; my neighbor keeps insulting me for visiting their house often; my garbage collector keeps insulting me for not disposing of our garbage properly; and oh, shopkeepers! Oh, my! Shopkeepers tell me to leave and never return to their store when I bargain too much for expensive items (to which I always infer that it is daylight robbery).
Have you ever had the same experiences as me, Mr. Writer? And what do we do about it? We keep coming back for more, don't we? We can never change the way people act, but we can change the way we handle certain situations. I could lie to my mother and tell her I'm planning to get married soon (God forgive me!). And I could always learn how to properly wrap our day-to-day garbage. In fact I'm learning every day, because I'm not perfect.
The writer also sickeningly tried to demonstrate that the so- called "Chinese tycoons" were the culprits of the failing national economy. What kind of sincerity is that, when we put such frantic blame on these unfavored people? The writer tried to portray these people either as superheroes who have the sole duty of saving this country and therefore must be held responsible for their "intentional" misfortune, or, in his savored racist belief, tried to shove these people once again onto the scapegoating grandstand.
Therefore the writer must have taken it upon himself to become the grand jury all by himself. How impressive! Ultimately the writer would bundle all these "Chinese tycoons" together and have them burn in hell, for he held them responsible for the desperation of the entire 200 million population. Being a tycoon must be a dirty job, for the writer not to mention their ethnic background. But as we see, we have every facet of life in this big country which accommodates everyone who is eager to improve, because I believe that democracy would be much more desirable without having to adapt to the uncalled for interference socialism ideology as some people may desire. And I, too, believe that we should never adopt such fascist ideologies and instill them in our children or force them upon our neighboring countries. I don't like Hitler, and I don't like Pauline Hanson either, but I wouldn't slaughter them.
FRANKY SUTANTO
Jakarta