Thursday, February 08, 2007

Another reason to leave

The Information Ministry recently announced reviving a ban on multi-racial or Pan-Asian faces in the advertising industry to give priority to "local" faces.

What is a "local" look and what is not? How are Pan-Asian faces different from Chinese, Indian, Malay, Portuguese, Dayak, Iban, and the many other faces found in Malaysia? After all, we are ALL Malaysian.

So if my mother happens to be Chinese but she married an Indian, and my grandmother is Portuguese and I look like a motley cross between all, thus I have a multiracial look (meaning, I don't look like a Chinese, Malay or Indian), that means I am not local? Or I don't have a local look?

Can somebody explain the logic of this to me? As far as I'm concerned, being Malaysian does not have anything to do with what one looks like. Can somebody please explain to the goofs in the government that Malaysia is a MULTIRACIAL, read, MULTIETHINIC country and that being multiracial it means we don't necessarily look like one particular race but a mix of a few, if not many? By multiracial, does the government mean Malay? If it does, then they are so stuck in that white castle of theirs so plainly in denial and full of their own shit that they can't see the forest for the trees.

So, which part of this slogan, "Malaysia, truly Asia" (our Tourism Minstry's slogan for a few year) holds true then? How do we go about announcing proudly to the world at large that we are a multiracial country and then turn around and ban multiracial faces from appearing on the media? Those people in the government (I'm tempted to call them swine but that would be demeaning the porcine species, as my sis would say) sure can be blatant hypocrites. But that's an open secret, isn't it? To cement the fact openly is not beyond or beneath their means, in fact, it should only be expected of them.

In this case, it's clearly a case of "looks matter". I suppose to them idiots there, looking Malaysian (read, Malay) is more important than feeling Malaysian, or thinking like a Malaysian.

When will they ever realise that Malaysia is not just one race, and specifically, not just Malay?

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