Melayu 2020

I was briefly reading an article entitled The Malay Underclass.

Well, it was a fair article written by a group of local undergraduate students. While I would say that their write up was steered towards highlighting facts, but not necessarily the truths.

You know the saying that peas from the same pod always turn out to the same? I choose not to live by that thought.

I grow up in a Malay community, and as much as I love my community, I tend to slant my opinions towards our non-malay counterparts. They have a fair share of their stereotypes of the malays.

I would love to shower my love towards my community but there are negative juxtapositions that reclines me from beating my chest and scream to you that I am a proud malay.

I was born and bred a true Malay. You can say I have a fair Pan-Asian blood mix type. I know how crazy boys are when they know a girl is mixed blood. But for me, I have a simple blood chemistry of Malay-Javanese. But weirdly, sometimes I do not consider myself malay enough.

My love for the chinese culture was not a a faux-pisode and neither was it a love/hate relationship. At 8 years old, my first best friend was a Chinese girl who shared the same birth date with me. I was minutely close to joining the school's chinese orchestra because I was awed by how beautiful the Er Hu sounded and it was childhood dream to play in an orchestra. But I shook the thoughts off, because friends told me the notes are written in chinese.

In secondary school I lived my dreams of being in a band. Then on, I grow to have more chinese friends, not because I choose them, but coincidentally I get to work with them more when we are interacting in the band.

Maybe I started my friendships at a wrong foot, but trust my luck, whenever I come across a Malay friend, acquaintance, I have a tough time rolling with their thoughts because I find them rather crude at times. I won't say I am an atas person, but I prefer to be gentle (no vulgarities like Buto or puki or ki mak what ever that means) when I converse with someone. But again, it must be my luck that when I was growing up, I hear / see much of these that makes me uncomfortable when people associate ME with THEM just because we use Binte's or Bin's in our names.

When I stepped into JC, ironically I was thrusted into a Malay-dominated college. I thought I was not going to survive. I stuck close to my 2 good friends -yes, non-malays-.

Trust my luck (again) that god given me a boyfriend, who learns, speaks Chinese...and is a Malay.

You may think I sound like a snobbish Chinese-wannabe. You may be wrong because I loved the Malay language, so much so that I was the top student in Malay language for 2 consecutive years, and the top 1% of the PSLE cohort that scored well for Malay.

But you see, I learnt that being a Malay is not easy. I learnt that if you want to be someone out there, you have got to change how you (as a Malay) do things. I won't say you have to act out of your realms.

There are so many stereotypes out there for the Malays, which includes why the Malays always ended up in the SCDF?

Well, my only reason is because Malays are born to be sympathetic and civil minded. They tend to have a soft spot for everything hence what better ways then to use these by making the Malay boys join the SCDF?

But you can see Malays climbing up the social ladder (surprisingly without the help of the Malay ministers who, interestingly enough did not stand up for the rights of the Malays, yet alone, equality for the Malays!) Maybe it will take another 50 years in order for the Malays to be There.

But we will get there. How about this : Majulah Melayu!



Click for The Malay Underclass