Below is a comment made on a website called: Present Tense Media on the post Racism In Malaysia
" I grew up with so much racism that by the time I was a teenager I was certain about one thing: that I had to leave this country. Being half Indian & half Malay (Javanese) I did not belong anywhere. I spoke Malyalam so wasn’t accepted in the Tamil-speaking Indian clique. I was always dismissed as Indian from the way I look by the Malays but then I’d be in Agama class so all sorts of questions start – most common one, “so, your father’s a convert or your mother?” Used to piss me off to no end. Which prompted me to dig into history, my family’s, my country’s so that I have a perfect comeback – that by the time these arrogant idiots ancestors discovered Islam, my dad’s Indian ancestors were already Muslims for a few generations! Knowledge, I learnt, is power.
The worst experience I had was when I was 12, attending a Qur’an class, which my parents paid for, with my brothers. The Ustazah, a bleeding bigoted racist bitch, called one of my brothers “keling” for not able to memorize a Surah! I walked up to her and asked her what kind of person would call a child keling but has no issue taking the same keling’s money and dragged my brothers out and never went back.
I married a Cina boy from Malacca who went to a public uni and was ostracized by the Chinese there because he spoke good English. And excellent Malay. And very bad Cantonese. And did not read or write in Chinese!
Being in HR consultancy for more thn 15 years, working with various MNCs in Malaysia, I learnt that racism at workplace is usually topdown. If the manager is of certain race, he/she would hire only people of the same race – this applies to all the races. Because there are predominantly more Chinese in the private sector, so would the hiring requirement skew towards that one race. Salary discrimination – don’t even get me started! I have at many instances, come across people being hired for the same level job, doing the same bloody thing, similar background, same qualification, same level of experience, the Chinese one paid TWICE as much ad the non-Chinese. I also learnt that nothing ever happens when you highlight such things because the HR Director, MDs, were all Chinese too. Someone need to inform these MNCs pledging equal employment that those words are just mere words to their local managers, it means jack shit in the real world where racism is rife.
This is the sad fact.
Now that my not-Cina-enough his and I are raising 2 multiracial kids, we decided to leave the country. Tanahairku sudah tidak sesuai untuk anak-anakku. Unfortunately."
