Tuesday, September 11, 2012

On Racial Prejudice 4

Now that I have a rough sketch of my family tree; where my grand parents originated from and so my parents, where do I fit in in the so much bragged about multi-racial society of Malaysia? Am I a Malay? depending on who I ask I will get a different answer; a Chinese would not have the same a  Malay or an Indian  as each would look at me from their own racial and religious make up with a touch of social political implications added to suit their own national self interest. My children will have steeper hill to climb and I hope by the time they are forced to make a stand in the interest of the country they will stand up and safely claim,   " I am a true Malaysian!"; I am not Malay, Chinese or Indian, I represent all of the above and then some. Our father was born and raised in this country they can claim and that makes us Malaysians.
Needless to say but say I must, I am a proud Malaysian who had turned down an offer to become an American citizen by the then Asst. Director of the Chicago Department of Immigration who I met in 1980? and appeared together on a  TV program in Green Bay, Wisconsin.The program was about Apartheid and along with the two of us was an African National Congress member from South Africa.I was invited to be one of the panel members on account of my background as a Malaysian. Perhaps on account of my comments on the air I was later later investigated by the FBI who came to the University and questioned a few of my Instructors and friends. I was given a clean bill of health so they never approached me personally.

"The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." Wikipedia
.On 30 November 1973, the United Nations General Assembly opened for signature and ratification the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.[1] It defined the crime of apartheid as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."


"As such, apartheid was declared to be a crime against humanity, with a scope that went far beyond South Africa. While the crime of apartheid is most often associated with the racist policies of South Africa after 1948, the term more generally refers to racially based policies in any state."[4]



Definition of racial discrimination

According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.[12]


Racial prejudice or discrimination is born out of Ignorance and Fear and Nationalism is just one way of disguising this human defect; we fear for our self preservation, the survival of our tribe, our race our creed; that which we think is  who we are. We are creatures born out of our 'thinking mind' and our racial or tribal, societal or nationalistic tendencies are the product of our collective thoughts conditioned from the day we were born by these products of the thinking mind. From our our parents and grand parents we were taught to have certain belief system and from our relatives and friends we further enforce these systems and later on in life we are being further conditioned by our educational system, our teachers and our peers; these conditioning last with us throughout our lives. Our motivations towards making any significant changes in our lives or in that of our society or our country is based on these conditioning. Rarely do we find changes that are made free from our own self centered conditioning; which is always limiting.
"What is the relationship between yourself and the misery, the confusion, in and around you? Surely this confusion, this misery, did not come into being by itself. You and I have created it, not a capitalist or a communist nor a fascist society, but you and I have created it in our relationship with each

other. What you are within has been projected without, on to the world; what you are, what you
think and what you feel, what you do in your everyday existence, is projected outwardly, and that
constitutes the world. If we are miserable, confused, chaotic within, by projection that becomes the
world, that becomes society, because the relationship between yourself and myself between myself
and another is society - society is the product of our relationship - and if our relationship is confused,
egocentric, narrow, limited, national, we project that and bring chaos into the world."
                                                                                                                               J.K.
In a society like ours where peace is hinged upon racial harmony; the unity of all the different racial groups and the merging of all differences is of paramount importance, the sooner we come to this realization the better it would be for our nation and her future. The human mind has evolved and is continuing to evolve towards finding a viable solution whereby a blueprint of peaceful coexistence can be manifested if followed very closely and this blueprint is today being laid out by various school of thoughts and those whose life were spent towards finding the answers to our very existence. With the help of the Internet it is not an impossibility to re-educate ourselves and those of our future generations such that we can afford changes that are realistic and everlasting for the benefit of all. The freedom to think and act as individuals with clear and unconditioned mind, a mind free from prejudices, or Greed, Hate and Ignorance can only happen if we come to know and understand who we are; not who our ancestors were or how our forefathers dealt with their society and country in the past. We are facing our own issues now and Now is the time for us to make the changes that is required if we are to attain a brighter and more creative and productive future.
The term 'changing our mind set has far more deeper significance than meets the eyes; we have to dig deep into our own individual being of who we are and how we can change for the benefit of our whole as a society, a country. Only through the understanding of who we are and where we stand in relationship to others in our society can we make any significant impact in making changes for the better. For so long as we address ourselves as Malays, Chinese and Indians, or the rest of other minority groups we will remain in this racial gridlock that can only further divide and diminish our strength as a whole. We will forever at the mercy of being a splintered nation existing like a time bomb ever ready to explode with the slightest misunderstanding or wrong perception and easily being exploited by those who have their own personal vested interest.
 "Why is society crumbling, collapsing, as it surely is ? One of the fundamental reasons is that the
individual, you, has ceased to be creative. I will explain what I mean. You and I have become
imitative, we are copying, outwardly and inwardly. Outwardly, when learning a technique, when
communicating with each other on the verbal level, naturally there must be some imitation, copy. I
copy words. To become an engineer, I must first learn the technique, then use the technique to build
a bridge. There must be a certain amount of imitation, copying, in outward technique, but when
there is inward, psychological imitation surely we cease to be creative. Our education, our social
structure, our so-called religious life, are all based on imitation; that is I fit into a particular social
or religious formula. I have ceased to be a real individual; psychologically, I have become a mere
repetitive machine with certain conditioned responses, whether those of the Hindu, the Christian, the
Buddhist, the Muslims or the Free Thinker. Our responses are conditioned according to the pattern
of society, whether it is eastern or western, religious or materialistic. So one of the fundamental
causes of the disintegration of society is imitation, and one of the disintegrating factors is the leader,
whose very essence is imitation."
                                                J.K.
Putra Jaya is the icon to be championed for in our modern day politics in Malaysia; who get to sit in the ivory tower of this seat of power in the nation's capital. Anything and everything is being done in order to for one group to wrest this seat from the other; never has Malaysia seen a more rampant decay in her politics than we are facing today. It is not to far fetched to say that we are on the brink of another Racial riot if things gets any worse which will in turn set us back a few decades in our own developmental history; not to mention all the unnecessary loss of lives and property and the further harbor of racial hatred among the people; Do we wait for this wake up call to happen and then make reparation to it or do we make all necessary preparations to divert this from happening?
Who would be brave and farsighted enough to make the Clarion Call? is there among those who walk the corridors of power today wise and mighty enough to take upon this challenge for a significant change that the country needs and not let her fall time and again into the hands of those who are merely imitators and exploiters whose main concern is to be in Putra Jaya by hook or by crook.


"In order to understand the nature of disintegrating society is it not important to inquire whether
you and I, the individual, can be creative? We can see that when there is imitation there must
be disintegration; when there is authority there must be copying. And since our whole mental,
psychological make-up is based on authority, there must be freedom from authority, to be creative.
Have you not noticed that in moments of creativeness, those rather happy moments of vital interest,
there is no sense of repetition, no sense of copying? Such moments are always new, fresh, creative,
happy. So we see that one of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying,
which is the worship of authority."
                                       J.K.

 
                                                 






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