Learn to honor others as individuals

By Harry Bhaskara

JAKARTA (JP): People who live in a pluralistic society like Indonesia find it difficult to imagine social conflicts in more homogeneous societies.

There are so many things which can trigger social conflict in pluralistic societies, as the numerous riots and bloody clashes in Indonesia have attested. Curiously, however, the same can be true in homogeneous societies.

To most Indonesians, a mixed marriage is one in which a Christian marries a Muslim. If a Protestant married a Catholic, it would not be a mixed marriage because both Protestants and Catholics are considered Christians.

But this is a mixed marriage according to the people of Manson, a small town in Iowa, the United States. This town is a very homogeneous society.

Now, if Hong Kongers had a dispute with mainland Chinese, would this be a racial conflict? No, because both are Chinese, aren't they?

The Feb. 24 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review reported this was a racial conflict. The dispute swirls around Hong Kong's immigration policy, which is considered by many as discriminating against mainland Chinese.

Why the seeming inconsistency?

"People have a tendency to label their enemies as coming from different ethnic or racial groups," Merle Ricklefs of the University of Melbourne said in a lecture here last Saturday.

The people of Manson, where Ricklefs comes from, have very similar backgrounds. The town of 2,000 in the central part of the United States is very homogeneous in term of race (white), citizenship (Americans), language (English), religion (Christian), tradition (northern Europe and British), level of income and education.

And yet people are divided into several groups according to either their religious or family lines. And conflicts do occur.

A Catholic-Protestant marriage is a mixed marriage, so it could create problems, according to Manson residents. More startling is their perception that a marriage between someone from the German Lutheran Church and American Lutheran Church is also a mixed marriage, Ricklefs said.

"Humans will always look for their differences despite their great similarities. Manson proves that there will always be differences between people anywhere in the world all the time," he said in a lecture organized by the University of Melbourne alumni association at the Regent Hotel.

Racial prejudice can be based on small differences considered trivial by outsiders, he said.

What factors contribute to racial stereotyping? Ignorance is one, said the professor of Asian Studies.

The five districts which supported Pauline Hanson's anti-Asian One Nation party in the 1996 elections were those districts with the lowest average educational level in Australia.

Ricklefs added that well-educated people like Margaret Thatcher also held that every ethnic group had a distinct culture, characteristics and ideas which would be wiped out should different ethnic groups mix.

Presaging Hanson's idea of Australia, Thatcher said she was afraid Great Britain would be swamped with different types of people from other Commonwealth countries.

The British had contributed democracy and a good judiciary system to the world due to its distinct characteristics, Thatcher said in 1978.

Ricklefs said the works of two other intelligent people -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Samuel Huntington -- had traces of racism.

Huntington asserts in his book Clash of Civilizations that Western civilization is the most precious not because it is universal but because it is unique.

Ricklefs said that Huntington, who predicted a clash between Western culture and Chinese and Muslim cultures, overlooked the cultures of Latin American countries and Greece, as well as Buddhism.

"If Huntington was only a lecturer at a small university in Jakarta, nobody would have noticed his book," Ricklefs joked. "The problem is that he is a Harvard professor."

In Clash of Civilizations, Huntington quoted Schlesinger, who wrote about the uniqueness of European ideas, such as individual freedom and democracy, in his 1992 book The Disuniting of America.

Schlesinger also wrote racial antagonism was the most natural reaction following the Cold War.

According to Ricklefs, Schlesinger displayed inverted logic. "The natural reaction is not racial antagonism, but the depiction of enemies as a different ethnic group."

Alas, Ricklefs said, the concept that a race has unique ideas could also be found in Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf.

As a historian, Ricklefs contents these people have a distorted view of history.

"Their views (on racial relations) are very shallow. The definition of an ethnic group is always changing, depending on social conditions. There are numerous examples of excellent interracial relations," Ricklefs said.

He cited two reasons why these racist views were flawed. One is that a community of man -- with their different religions, beliefs and habits -- is never static, but always changing. Second is that a culture can never be isolated, but always interacts with other cultures.

Citing an example from the history of Java, he said the term wong Jawa (Javanese) was a relatively new one which was first introduced in the 17th century. Prior to that there were only wong Mataram or wong Pajang or wong Tuban.

The identity of an ethnic group is fluid and depends on social conditions, he said.

"The important differences are those defined by men themselves within given social conditions," Ricklefs said.

During the War of Surabaya in the early 18th century, when Surabaya aristocrats rebelled against the Central Java-based Susuhunan Pakubuwana I, who was an ally of the Dutch colonial power, the Javanese ethnic identity was just beginning to be associated with Islam.

There was a group in the Surabaya camp which only recognized Muslims, including Chinese Muslims, as members of their group. They rejected Balinese, who were Hindu.

Ricklefs acknowledged there were ideas and questions related to racial issue which were still being debated.

Experts still differ on questions such as why certain races, like the Japanese and Europeans, are more productive compared to other races.

"What is clear is that we are all influenced by our genes, but differences among individuals are a great deal bigger than differences among groups," he said.

When asked how people can accept each other's differences and live together peacefully, Ricklefs said: "Leadership has an important role to play .... we have to learn to appreciate others as an individual and not as an ethnic group. But this is an extremely difficult thing to do."

What to do if these differences have resulted in bloody conflicts, as in the case of Christians and Muslims in Ambon, and an aspiration to secede, as in Aceh and Irian Jaya?

One has to identify which social elements, including politics, economics, religion and language, have fueled conflicts in a given place at a given time, and replace those elements with cooperation, he said.

In a bloody conflict, do not hastily conclude it is people's nature to kill each other, Ricklefs said.

"Rather look at history. Wherever and whenever it is, differences exist among people," he said.