Multi-racial Malaysia... unique with a price

Read Tun Dr. Mahathir's blog on 'Multi-racial Malaysia'. I agree with what is said in there. Malaysia is unique as it practice 'multi-racial' where each races talks and schooled in their ancestral language. If we look at our neighbouring countries... Indonesia... Thailand... the minority races adopts the indigenous people's language and culture. That is what makes Malaysia 'unique'. But this uniqueness comes with a price... race division instead of assimilation.

My opinion... if you read carefully what Tun has written... its all about assimilation... language and culture. We want Bangsa Malaysia? Then... lets have one language... one school... heck... if we can... one culture. Else... we are going to have affirmative action of the NEP for a looong time... like it or not. Just like Tun said and I quote:

I feel sure that if we can reduce economic disparities between Malaysians they would not be too conscious or too insistent on being identified by their racial origins. They would still be Malays, Chinese, Indians, Muruts, Bajaus, Dayaks etc. but they would be less hostile and critical of each other.

Malaysian races are symbiotic and they really complement each other. Even though multi-racial Malaysia will still be ethnically multi-racial, Malaysia would remain relatively peaceful, capable of good economic growth and exhibit relative harmony between races if the leadership of the country understands this problem and knows how to manage.

That is as much as we can hope for since we are opposed to the adoption of a single mother tongue and culture and to dropping the identification with the countries our ancestors came from.

Look... if people of Kelantan can do it (why look at Thailand and Indonesia... duhh)... serious... I know lots of Chinese and Indian talk in 'loghat Kelate'... why can't the whole of Malaysia (have one language... not necessarily loghat Kelate ;) )? I always feel if we have one language... we can speak with one 'voice' and we can understand each other better and hopefully that will lead us to have one culture. Then all this affirmative action of NEP will simply 'slide' away as we are Bangsa Malaysia. The question is.. are we up to it?

On a lighter note, Tun also said and I quote:

The other leg of the NEP is to eradicate poverty irrespective of race. From surveys it is clear that there is more poverty among the indigenous people than among the Chinese. It is therefore more likely for poverty among the Chinese to be self- eradicated than among the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak. Unfortunately the Indian leaders did not address the problem of Indian poverty.

What say you... Samy Vellu? Jeng... jeng... jeng ;)