What are you — black or white?
New Straits Times (Columns)
2 Sep 2007
Kalimullah Hassan 

ALMOST 15 years ago, while on holiday in South Africa, an old friend, then Singapore’s ambassador to South Africa, invited me to dinner at his home in Pretoria.
His wife, a Malaysian from Klang, cooks a good curry and their children, Ian and Bianca, studied at an international school nearby.

Ian is now a doctor but in 1993, he was just a chubby little boy who could not understand why his classmates asked him whether he was white or black.

In a South Africa which was only just dismantling apartheid, people, especially children, were still grappling with a long nurtured world view of seeing humans as black or white.

It was revealing for me because growing up in post-independent Malaya, we were not taught to look at people as black, brown or yellow.
I learned that in that South Africa, you were either black or white; and if you were a Cape Malay or an Indian from Durban, you were brown, one category above the blacks.

If you were Taiwanese, you could be treated as an equal by the whites because Taiwan, itself isolated, was one of the few countries which did business with and recognised the racist apartheid regime.

Therefore, the kids — black, brown or white — in Ian’s school did not know what to make of him. He was not white, neither was he black; if he was brown, he spoke English unlike the browns the kids knew.

So he asked his parents, Verghese and Anmujam, "What am I? Black or white?"

Verghese told him: "You are neither black nor white. You are a Singaporean and you tell your friends that."

Verghese was proud to be Singaporean, though he was known to be equally critical of the island republic’s deficiencies and inequalities. Just the way many of us are so proud to be Malaysians, despite the shortcomings our country has.

And that’s what we have tried to teach our kids — that they are Malaysians, first and always, and there can be no greater pride than to wear our country’s flag on our sleeve, wherever we are.

Whether it is in London or Melbourne, where the three elder kids study, they fly the flag on Merdeka day, and in their hearts, every day.

I had almost forgotten that conversation in Pretoria until a few days ago when I asked my youngest daughter, 16-year-old Leia, the only one of our four kids still staying with us, what Merdeka meant to her.

She said she would write it down for me and on Merdeka eve, she left a purple envelope addressed to "Papa" by her bed.

In it was a one-page note which I produce here, un-edited, titled "Who are we, really?"

On August 31st 1957, all the races gathered to watch Malaya gain independence.

When chanting "Merdeka", nobody cared if they were Malay, Indian, Chinese, etc. They only cared about becoming Malaysians. Our own nation, no one else’s.

Merdeka is what ties all the races together. Every year, we prepare for this day to come and we celebrate together.

This year, Malaysia celebrates its 50th birthday and everyone is prepared to attend the party.

As Merdeka day is getting closer, we all stand together hand in hand, to watch Malaysia grow, as it has watched us grow.

Merdeka is about love, being here for each other. And we are here for Malaysia. We’ve been here for 50 years already, and we plan on sticking around to watch it grow older.

Who are we? WE are Malaysians.

(P.S.) Sorry Papa! I not roiter (writer) like you, so this was the best I could do. Love u.

My wife and I are very proud of Leia and her siblings because they do not seem to have the prejudices and bias that routinely surface among Kuala Lumpur’s chattering class, and they are very proud of being Malaysian.

Perhaps it is because they have so much different blood in their veins — Sinhalese, Gujarati, Malay and Pathan; perhaps because their aunts, uncles and cousins include Malays, Chinese, Indians and Dusuns.

Perhaps because race has never been a major consideration in our family; perhaps because they are what a Malaysia, 50 years into independence, and after centuries of rich history, should be.

And if they are ever asked "What are you, black or white?" they will proudly say: "We are Malaysian".

We hope they will always be like that, even after they start working and are exposed to the real-life prejudices we see around us.

In the days creeping up to Aug 31, 2007, I had engaged in many discussions about our country.

Earlier this month, a primary school classmate, Anwar, organised a reunion dinner for our schoolmates. There were many of us who made it, including a few from Penang, where I went to school after leaving my home town of Kroh (now Pengkalan Hulu) in Perak.

Quite a few came, Zainal Ariffin Khalid, Nahar Nordin, Leong Hong Chee, Chew Why Hoong, Soh Yew Aun, Teoh Teng Hooi, Md Adnan Zain, Azmi Pawanteh, H’ng Ah Lep, Lee Kean Nung, Leong Kok Meng and a few more.

Raveendran Vasudevan, now Rafiq Abdullah, sent apologies as he could not get leave, and we could not get in touch with others like Muthu Karippen and Bhag Singh.

Others like Keow Hock Lye, Ch’ng Chin Hon and Poh Soon Yun were overseas and were all planning to return for a reunion, perhaps by the year’s end.

But those absent were all remembered as each of us recounted the mischief we got into and the pranks we played on our teachers and other schoolmates.

At the end of the dinner, an unusually emotional Anwar, pointing to us, lamented:

"This is what our country is all about. My biggest fear is that our children may not sit together like we do. And we have only ourselves to blame because we did not speak up."

It is a fear that I, too, have sometimes.

But perhaps, we should give our children more credit and believe that they will grow up without prejudices as well, despite the many mistakes we have made in pulling them towards the other direction.

On Merdeka eve, as it has become the custom for my friends and I, we got together for dinner.

This year, I brought copies of The Straits Times pre- and post-Merdeka editions reproduced by the New Straits Times and distributed free (courtesy of Sime Darby Berhad) for every guest.

We were either not born or too young to have read these old editions, except perhaps Datuk Roger Tan who became rheumy-eyed with nostalgia.

And it was a revelation what our founding fathers envisaged for us.

It was a fun night because we were a microcosm of Malaysia, from all spectrums of Malaysian society, and from an era which speaks at least two languages fluently — English and Bahasa Malaysia.

Most also speak a third and fourth language — Tamil, Malayalam, a Chinese dialect or two, Kadazan, Urdu or even passable Thai. And as midnight approached, we made a wish.

We acknowledged that the Malaya and Malaysia we grew up in was inexorably changing, maybe too fast for some of us. But it is a Malaysia which has been blessed with 50 fairly good years, despite the mistakes we have made.

We acknowledged that those who make and those who shape public opinion — the politicians and the old and new media — had become inward looking, pronouncing ethnicity rather than unity, more prone to promoting differences rather than similarities.

We acknowledged that as we grew and became a wealthier nation, we had seen the ugly characteristics which history has repeatedly shown destroys nations and empires — corruption, tainted national institutions, bigotry, discrimination, narrow-mindedness — taking root in our society.

We acknowledged that it was not going to be easy to change mindsets shaped over a prolonged period but we hoped and prayed that those who lead our country would strengthen their resolve to change the country.

We hoped that ordinary Malaysians would not contribute to destroying our country with bigotry, greed, hatred and personal agendas.

We were encouraged by the emergent voices of Raja Nazrin Shah and the Sultan of Selangor and we took comfort in the echoing sentiments expressed by the prime minister and his deputy.

Yet, we were deeply concerned by the cacophonous choir within the ruling coalition, and from an alarmist opposition which is submerged with racial and religious prejudices, and we were concerned by a lawless cyberspace.

In the end, as we toasted our country’s well-being, we decided to put aside our fears, for the day at least, and acknowledge that all said and done, we have accomplished a lot as a nation.

Our wish for our country was that when the centennial celebrations take place, which most, if not all, of us would not be around to witness, our children would toast a Malaysia that had checked the slide and emerged as a nation among nations.

And our children would be proud citizens of a Malaysia that espoused the highest universal values.

We wished that in our lifetime, and our children and grandchildren in their lifetime, would never have to cry over Malaysia. And that they will not look at each other as black or white but as proud Malaysians. Amen.

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