Racist Malaysians

When I read Malaysiakini Furore over racist blog posting I thought to myself, f*, this is just the sort of stuff someone will seize on to divert attention from Ahmad Ismail … or the Kulim Wonder.

Another version of Namawee, so to speak, though the offending issue is different.

Mind you, not that it didn’t happen. Blogger Sammy, alas a sweetie, of Life is a Drama is certainly living up to her motto of ‘A life without a dash of conflict and colour will not be a complete one’, except she chose the theme of colour a wee too literally, and consequentially is now reaping the ugly conflict.

According to Athi Verenggan of Malaysiakini, Sammy went ballistic when two alleged Indian youths snatched her mobile phone left on a table while she was having lunch.

She did the silly thing by resorting to cynical stereotyping of Indians in the worst ways, and then made things worse for herself by posting the entire racist raving rant on her blog.

I don’t intend to repeat her words here for two reasons: (1) they are all available on Malaysiakini and (2) they have been most hurtful. I am truly disappointed by such racism and worse, sheer stupidity.

After she had ‘woken’ up from her rage she realized the enormity of what she had done and apologized, but when I read her blog this afternoon I thought she could have closed the whole issue (or at least most of it) by making an unreserved apology, instead of qualifying it by stating she apologized to ‘educated’ Indians, whatever that meant.

Much later in another post she admitted being told that her apology had been ‘grudging’.

She posted:

I realised this is getting way out of hand. I was also dubbed as 'grudgingly apologised' in my later post. Since text has no tone and emotions, I don't know how to make it sound sincere but I do hope to get this out as sincere as I can. Again, I will apologise and say sorry to those I've offended, Indian or no Indian. I hope this official apology does not sound 'grudgy' again.

I was not racist and was acting out of my anger the last few days. If i've to face the police, then yes i will to explain the whole situation. If i were to hate indians, I would not wear saree on my Indian friend's birthday party because that would be ridiculous. Whatever I said earlier, I have no intention to hurt any Malaysians. It was merely out of anger so I did not construct my sentences properly. Maybe it was my bad English

Once again, I'm sorry for what I did and I will face the consequences.

(Update): I might be constructing sentences quite badly now. I do not know what sentence is right or wrong anymore.

Here, I offer an unconditional apology to every single person out there who I've offended. I'll not be unfair to other races again and I'll learn to only get angry at those who really hurt me instead of generalising them according to race.

Well Sammy, if you apologised only to ‘educated Indians’, then one wonders whether you are saying ‘uneducated Indians’ aren’t worthy of your apology?

Then that’s not an apology. You shouldn't have tried to be a smartie cat and hold back for a bit of 'face'. You were not and should not be in any position to merit and enjoy 'face' as you did something very very evil.

But I am glad you've the commonsense to upgrade your apology to one that's unconditional. But more important than your unconditional apology, you must never ever make any racist remarks, or better still, don't entertain racist thoughts.

kaytee sees Sammy as a young (still immature) person who has not given real thoughts to what she had published in ‘black & white’, but look, there’s no excuse for venting one’s anger by badmouthing an entire ethnic group.

But should she be forgiven?

While I am glad Hindraf had raised the issue, I think we all should forgive her because she has apologized, though we shouldn’t forget the incident, as a reminder to all of us to be careful of reckless remarks against anyone’s ethnic belongings.

Unfortunately, while I believe Hindraf and Indians in general may bring themselves to forgive her, the authorities may not for the reason I stated at the very start of this post.

In the end, we need to remind ourselves too that the majority of Malaysians have prejudices because of our upbringing, cultural indoctrination and environment.

Some of us have managed to rein in those prejudices but we should not yet congratulate ourselves until we have eliminated the evil lying dormant within us.

More than 2 years ago, I posted All types of racism to show that racism lies within most of us.

Related:
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UPDATE: RS Thanenthiran of Hindraf said they would accept Sammy Chan’s apology.

“We understand now that it was a ‘spur of the moment’ outburst. We sympathise with her loss of her phone. We hope that the lesson learnt from the controversy will help her to be more careful in future."

Good on you matey.