National Day fun

Xing, another one of my cousins who studied in the US, came up from Seremban for Merdeka Day and since Jerng (the KL native) was working, Xing and I went apartment-hunting. Somehow all the flats we found in the vicinity of the Universiti LRT station were Malay-dominated. At one point, we talked to a security guard who knew of a vacant unit in his block, so he took us upstairs to get the keys from the unit's owner so we could see it, but then this happened:

Owner's wife: Melayu kah Cina? (Malay or Chinese?)
Jaga: Kamu Melayu kah Cina?
Us: Cina.
Owner's wife [suspiciously]: Kristian kah?
me: Ah...
Xing: Er...
Owner's wife: Tak boleh, mau Melayu. (Cannot, we want Malays.)

So...first ever personal, face-to-face experience of racial discrimination. I wasn't terribly bothered. What was really funny was the [Javanese] security guard's astonished, "Kamu bukan Melayu kah? Saya ingat kamu budak Kelantan!" (You're not Malays? I thought you were Kelantan kids!)

I've been mistaken for everything from Chindian (Chinese-Indian biracial) to Filipina, but Kelantanese Malay is new...

Jerng bought me Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate (which is about dispelling the myth that the human mind is a blank slate upon which biology has no influence) but I can't read it yet because I'm on Donald Horowitz's The Deadly Ethnic Riot. It's damn embarrassing how often Malaysia/Malaya pops up in that, along with the likes of Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, and the countries of the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka).

From the chapter on Target-Group Characteristics, page 176:

It would be correct, but not wholly adequate, to say simply that ethnic groups whose domestic political strength appears to be augmented by their extraterritorial ethnic affinities are more likely targets than are groups whose strength is not so augmented. What needs to be added is the element of displacement* present in many, though not all, of these attacks. The local targets can be proxies for their inaccessible but powerful cousins across the borders of the sea.

*displacement in the psychological sense - my note

Malaysia ini negara Islam. You tak suka, you keluar dari Malaysia!
(Malaysia is an Islamic state. You don’t like it, you get out of Malaysia!)

- Jerai MP, shouting down Lim Kit Siang (Ipoh Timur MP) during a Dewan Rakyat session [YouTube]

MALAYSIAN CHINESE ARE MALAYSIANS. We're Malaysians, you racist parochial cretin >D

Happy Merdeka Day!

Hmm...Deadly Ethnic Riot no Amazon reviews yet. Maybe I'll make it to being the first.