Kwik's remark

I always enjoy reading about and admire such an intelligent person as Kwik Kian Gie. His political and economic judgments are phenomenal, drawing admiration from many.

What disturbed me lately, however, was his terminology of black versus white conglomerates, to denote bad versus good ones. In terms of physics, it is correct but in politics is not, because the term also reflects the skin color or ethnicity of people. Black to denote bad will certainly hurt the feelings of our Maluku and Papua brothers, our Australian Aborigine neighbors and, further afield, our African and Afro-American friends. Please Pak Kwik, use more politically correct terms, such as dark or simply bad conglomerates, in the future.

Another disturbing remark was his term of tempe (tempeh), used as an adjective for bad, soft, indigenous, lazy, or nonperforming traits of an individual or parts of a community. This is no longer applicable because tempe now has the highest respect as a very nutritious super food from scientists here at home and all over the world. Tempe has better protein digestibility, better essential amino acid balance, lower cholesterol, antioxidants, vitamin B12, essential enzymes such as superoxydasedismutase (SOD), lipases and phytase and other superior traits of a perfect food. Although Pak Kwik is only citing the well-known remark by Sukarno, nonetheless he seems to agree with that. Please Pak Kwik, use more politically correct terms in the future.

SLAMET SUDARMADJI

Yogyakarta