Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Evlyone's a Ritter bit Lacist

What I want to write about right now would sound like this if I was more eloquent.

Najib, the UMNO Deputy President said that future general assemblies might not be featured on live TV anymore. This reaction was apparently caused by the amount of ruckus caused by the racist vitriol spewed forth by some of their apparently "inexperienced" delegates.

That's their solution to people's justified concerns about the things that UMNO people talk about. They could've promised to just stop being racist but no, we'll be racist indoors and hide it from the public. Party leaders could've given those "inexperienced" delegates a bollocking for being racist. But no.

Sure sure at the end of the day the PM said one or two things about the need for unity and such things. But will anything real be done to change the mindset of racist Malaysians? Talk is cheap after all. Even from Pak Lah unfortunately.

I often read that people who speak like racial chauvinists are "playing to the gallery". I want to know who are these people who are in this "gallery" who NEED to hear racist bullshit to feel good about themselves.

I guess it's just too hard NOT to be racist. Especially for some UMNO people. I sometimes feel that party leaders won't crack down on this kind of behaviour because there are afraid that their more radical supporters might accuse them of not defending "the Malay cause" as it were. And losing support is bad, very bad. Much worse than being racist.

There you go ladies and gents, the screwed up priorities of local politicians.

Many other political parties in this country are exactly the same. Including the opposition. So no, I'm not a supporter to any of political party. None. I know sometimes from what I write, people may feel that I'm a left leaning, socialist type DAP supporter perhaps.

Nope. DAP does and say stupid shit too. DAP people also do that whole political doublespeak thing. Also I hate how they like to argue and debate just because they can and how sometimes they blow tiny little things that don't matter out of proportion. It's all about vote fishing, not service.

Ok, now I sound a little like an anarchist. Perhaps I am, sort of. At least I'm not racist.

Or am I?

Actually, I believe all of us have some sort of biased, somewhat racist tendencies to varying degrees.

We pick it up as kids. Sometimes we hear our older relatives saying things like,"Don't hang out with those people. They are [insert race here] and they are [insert racial stereotype here]" or things like "Of course they act like that. They are [insert race here] and they're always [insert racial stereotype here]".

Then we go to school, get jobs and live in the real world. Some people can never get past what they've picked up, always seeing other people with suspicion and prejudice which is really sad and probably means that the person isn't very good in the IQ to begin with. Some others begin to see that those things that we've heard aren't all that true. We end up being friends of "those people" and find out that lo and behold, we like the same things and have similar problems.

When I took my current job, I remember at least 2 people who warned me that I would suffer and not prosper. They warned me that since I'm my "kind" and they are their "kind" they wouldn't take kindly to me and will make things hard for me. At first, I was kind of worried too. I've heard this kind of talk before. Very common when it involves a person of my "persuasion" working with people of a certain other "persuasion".

But 4 years down the line, I can say with certainty that with my colleagues at least, all that talk is horseshit.

Racist tendencies can be unlearned slowly just like they can be picked up. The important thing is to not let any of those learned tendencies manifest itself. They can be controlled if one has good sense, unlike some of our more public figures.

In other news, I have more stuff to write about actually. I want to mention that I got Medieval 2. It's gorgeous!

But I'm saving all of that for the next post.

PS: The post title is a line from a song from Avenue Q.

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