Thoughts on Affirmative Action in M'sia

I tried sleeping but I couldn't. So, here I am, blogging, the night before my Counseling Psychology midterm. Today went by quickly, mostly because I was always on the rush. I woke up to do my IO Psych assignment, went to classes, went to the housing fair, came back to finish assignment and studied a bit, did yoga, rushed through dinner, came back, and studied again.

Oh the regrets for not managing my time better the past couple of days. Time time time. ...

On the bright side, I found a couple of cheap off-campus housings. So, that's good news.

The most prominent and valuable thing I learned today is further information on affirmative action and how it impacts me personally. Initially, I never bothered about this topic. But, after attending the leadership privilege workshop and also after stumbling upon M'sia's New Economic Plan (Dasar Economi Baru), which is one of the longest and developed affirmative action (AA) which basically contributes to the Malay/Chinese tension in Malaysia while I was browsing through Wikipedia's page on AA , I was just awestruck by the fact that this is one of the personal unresolved conflicts that I have with my country. Long story....

I realized that I dislike the idea of having racism being taught in my Freshmen Writing class as I thought it propels racism more but after going deeper into the topic, I began to acknowledge the importance of understanding how it forms and how it affects us so subtly without us realizing that.

Anyway, back to the AA in M'sia. As a solution to dissolve racial tension after the 1969 racial riot, our first Prime Minister ordered the development of NEP to give more opportunity to the Malays and Bumiputras so that they could rise and be on par with the Chinese in terms of dominance in the business fields. Despite the good intentions and effectiveness back in the days to reduce segregation of races based on jobs, time has changed and I as well as others believe this policy should be revised as it benefits none - there exists inequality in opportunity irrespective of qualifications, upsetting the Chinese and Indians, and complacency is cultivated among the Malays and Bumiputras.

This struggle I have on this issue has always been with me and I did not realize that I wanted to put that aside and move on, ignoring the "petty" problems back in my country. It was not till last Sunday when I talked to a Japanese guy who studied abroad in M'sia that i realized this problem.

Why does this affect me personally? It is because I have grown to hate my country primarily because of this reason. And, despite the deliberate teachings that we should not be racist by teachers and families, we were indirectly brought up to be racists through their constant complaints about how the other races benefit from AA and frequent associations of certain traits to certain races. Besides, I have lots of Malay friends and I feel guilty now of my actions as while befriending them, I treated and respected them as individuals but at the same time, I held stereotypes that typecasts the entire race. I was two faced without being conscious about it. Thus, instead of being ignorant, I should be aware and acknowledge my feelings and then take the best actions from here onwards (I'm still working on them).

It was funny how I imagined myself writing a book addressing this issue and I became a bestseller and I gave talks all over M'sia. I thought about ways to go about solving this problems and yatayatayata.....