The Price of Malaysia's Racism
By JOHN R. MALOTT
Malaysia's national tourism agency promotes the country as "a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony." Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak echoed this view when he announced his government's theme, One Malaysia. "What makes Malaysia unique," Mr. Najib said, "is the diversity of our peoples. One Malaysia's goal is to preserve and enhance this unity in diversity, which has always been our strength and remains our best hope for the future."
If Mr. Najib is serious about achieving that goal, a long look in the mirror might be in order first. Despite the government's new catchphrase, racial and religious tensions are higher today than when Mr. Najib took office in 2009. Indeed, they are worse than at any time since 1969, when at least 200 people died in racial clashes between the majority Malay and minority Chinese communities. The recent deterioration is due to the troubling fact that the country's leadership is tolerating, and in some cases provoking, ethnic factionalism through words and actions.
For instance, when the Catholic archbishop of Kuala Lumpur invited the prime minister for a Christmas Day open house last December, Hardev Kaur, an aide to Mr. Najib, said Christian crosses would have to be removed. There could be no carols or prayers, so as not to offend the prime minister, who is Muslim. Ms. Kaur later insisted that she "had made it clear that it was a request and not an instruction," as if any Malaysian could say no to a request from the prime minister's office.
Similar examples of insensitivity abound. In September 2009, Minister of Home Affairs Hishammuddin Onn met with protesters who had carried the decapitated head of a cow, a sacred animal in the Hindu religion, to an Indian temple. Mr. Hishammuddin then held a press conference defending their actions. Two months later, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told Parliament that one reason Malaysia's armed forces are overwhelmingly Malay is that other ethnic groups have a "low spirit of patriotism." Under public pressure, he later apologized.
The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib's political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed.
This steady erosion of tolerance is more than a political challenge. It's an economic problem as well.
Once one of the developing world's stars, Malaysia's economy has underperformed for the past decade. To meet its much-vaunted goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020, Malaysia needs to grow by 8% per year during this decade. That level of growth will require major private investment from both domestic and foreign sources, upgraded human skills, and significant economic reform. Worsening racial and religious tensions stand in the way.
Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country and denied the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, whether in education, business, or government. Many of these emigrants, as well as the many Malaysian students who study overseas and never return (again, most of whom are ethnic Chinese and Indian), have the business, engineering, and scientific skills that Malaysia needs for its future. They also have the cultural and linguistic savvy to enhance Malaysia's economic ties with Asia's two biggest growing markets, China and India.
Of course, one could argue that discrimination isn't new for these Chinese and Indians. Malaysia's affirmative action policies for its Malay majority—which give them preference in everything from stock allocation to housing discounts—have been in place for decades. So what is driving the ethnic minorities away now?
First, these minorities increasingly feel that they have lost a voice in their own government. The Chinese and Indian political parties in the ruling coalition are supposed to protect the interests of their communities, but over the past few years, they have been neutered. They stand largely silent in the face of the growing racial insults hurled by their Malay political partners. Today over 90% of the civil service, police, military, university lecturers, and overseas diplomatic staff are Malay. Even TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees.
Second, economic reform and adjustments to the government's affirmative action policies are on hold. Although Mr. Najib held out the hope of change a year ago with his New Economic Model, which promised an "inclusive" affirmative action policy that would be, in Mr. Najib's words, "market friendly, merit-based, transparent and needs-based," he has failed to follow through. This is because of opposition from right-wing militant Malay groups such as Perkasa, which believe that a move towards meritocracy and transparency threatens what they call "Malay rights."
But stalling reform will mean a further loss in competitiveness and slower growth. It also means that the cronyism and no-bid contracts that favor the well-connected will continue. All this sends a discouraging signal to many young Malaysians that no matter how hard they study or work, they will have a hard time getting ahead.
Mr. Najib may not actually believe much of the rhetoric emanating from his party and his government's officers, but he tolerates it because he needs to shore up his Malay base. It's politically convenient at a time when his party faces its most serious opposition challenge in recent memory—and especially when the opposition is challenging the government on ethnic policy and its economic consequences. One young opposition leader, parliamentarian Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, has proposed a national debate on what she called the alternative visions of Malaysia's future—whether it should be a Malay nation or a Malaysian nation. For that, she earned the wrath of Perkasa; the government suggested her remark was "seditious."
Malaysia's government might find it politically expedient to stir the racial and religious pot, but its opportunism comes with an economic price tag. Its citizens will continue to vote with their feet and take their money and talents with them. And foreign investors, concerned about racial instability and the absence of meaningful economic reform, will continue to look elsewhere to do business.
Mr. Malott was the U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, 1995-1998.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Mayor Lee Leads Growing Asian-American Clout
Mayor Lee Leads Growing Asian-American Clout
Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
The Asian Law Caucus was a fledgling civil rights organization when Edwin M. Lee began there as a law clerk more than three decades ago.
Working out of two dingy rooms above a garment shop in Chinatown, Mr. Lee and a handful of lawyers defended poor immigrants whose concerns included the threat of deportation and restaurant owners who refused to pay their wages.
Now the Asian Law Caucus is putting the final touches on its new 9,000-square-foot office with floor-to-ceiling windows near the foot of the Transamerica Pyramid. Mr. Lee, the group’s most famous alumnus, is settling into a new office as well.
Mr. Lee’s rise to become the city’s first Asian-American mayor — an interim appointment last week that followed Gavin Newsom’s election as lieutenant governor — mirrors the 40-year arc of a handful of community organizations that sprang up in the 1970s to represent the Bay Area’s growing Asian population. Those groups now wield considerable political clout.
Until these organizations emerged, “the Chinese community didn’t have that engaged, political grass roots that could mobilize,” said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “It’s easy to see that all coming to fruition now.”
Today, nonprofit organizations like the Chinatown Community Development Center have set up “a pipeline of young Asian activists,” said Randy Shaw, the executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the city’s low-income housing units. “They’re trained as organizers and then they go out into the world,” he said. “This is the future.”
While some local Asian-American politicians, like State Senator Leland Yee, followed a different path, many among the current generation of elected officials started out as community organizers.
The recently elected Supervisor Jane Kim, who is of Korean descent, and David Chiu, the Chinese-American president of the Board of Supervisors, both worked at the Chinatown Community Development Center.
Another Chinese-American supervisor, Eric Mar, who like Mr. Chiu was elected in 2008, worked as a law clerk in the 1980s under Mr. Lee at the Asian Law Caucus.
In Oakland, the politics of the recently elected Mayor Jean Quan were shaped during her many years as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1982, Ms. Quan, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, planned Bay Area-wide demonstrations with Mr. Lee, then a staff lawyer at the caucus, to protest the killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese man who was beaten to death in Detroit.
“You don’t have a lot of Chinese leaders coming out of small-business backgrounds, nor are they the sons and daughters of elected officials,” said Henry Der, the former executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. “It was the activism during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s that created opportunities for appointments that opened the doors.”
A confluence of factors propelled the rise of Asian-American community organizations as a political force, according to observers.
Part of it is demographic. The local Asian population, particularly Chinese, has surged in recent years, with an influx of immigrants coming from both Hong Kong and the mainland. The immigrants have brought with them Cantonese and Mandarin dialects that have slowly swept aside the Taishanese heard in Chinatown for a century before their arrival.
By 2009, about one-third of San Francisco County’s population was Asian, including 21 percent Chinese.
These immigrants, often poor and elderly, were organized by leaders like Gordon Chin, the head of the Community Development Center, into increasingly potent forces that lobbied for health services, public safety and better housing conditions.
Organizers like Mr. Chin and Rose Pak, the influential consultant for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce who helped engineer Mr. Lee’s appointment as mayor, also forged alliances with business interests and the political establishment that would prove critical.
“People who come from activist backgrounds generally don’t have political power, and they needed money,” said Ling-Chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “But they formed fascinating coalitions.”
During the 1980s real estate boom, for instance, Chinatown leaders, many of whom were veterans of progressive social movements, became worried about commercial development encroaching from the south. They struck a deal with John L. Molinari, the former pro-business president of the Board of Supervisors and an ally of then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, guaranteeing the preservation of Grant Avenue, which has become the spine of Chinatown.
In 1989, Ms. Pak tapped into her Chinese business connections to raise significant campaign contributions for the progressive Art Agnos, who was Mr. Molinari’s opponent in the mayoral race. Mr. Agnos won and appointed Mr. Lee, by then the managing attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, to his first government job.
Over the next 20 years, Mr. Lee transformed into a career public servant, receiving appointments from Mayors Willie L. Brown Jr. and Gavin Newsom, both of whom maintained close relationships with Ms. Pak and Mr. Chin.
Mr. Lee was born in 1952 in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle, to parents who emigrated from Guangdong Province in China in the 1930s. His father served in the Korean War and died when Mr. Lee was 15. His mother raised her children while working as a seamstress.
Mr. Lee received a full scholarship to Bowdoin College and moved to the Bay Area in 1975 to enroll in law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
He began at the Asian Law Caucus in his second semester and immediately began working on housing issues that after three years led to San Francisco’s first organized rent strike in 1978.
“Decades ago, I was about as anti-establishment as one could be,” Mr. Lee said after his swearing-in Tuesday in the City Hall rotunda. “But today, like you, I’m trying to make the establishment work for all San Franciscans.”
William R. Tamayo, who worked at the Asian Law Caucus as a staff attorney and is now a lawyer for the federal government, recalled giving up part of his $600-a-month salary to support Mr. Lee, who had put off taking the bar exam to lead the rent strike even though the caucus could not afford to pay him.
People who worked with Mr. Lee said he had become known not only for his work ethic and self-sacrifice but also for an understated manner that won him the trust of immigrants throughout Chinatown.
Mr. Lee understood both Cantonese and Taishanese, the dialect spoken by many immigrants, his colleagues said.
Mr. Lee left nonprofit work in 1989, when Mayor Agnos offered him an advisory position in his administration.
In his inaugural remarks, Mr. Lee spoke not of his two decades in government but of his formative years, as he acknowledged some of the people who shaped his worldview and then elevated him to the top.
"As a Chinese-American, I am well aware of my community’s long and troubled and proud history in this city," Mr. Lee told the crowd. “The San Francisco of old was directly involved in racism and neglect. The San Francisco that I fought as an attorney began to change.”
“And now today, Rose,” he said, casting a smile at his friend Ms. Pak. “Our struggle is here, and it is succeeding.”
Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen
The Asian Law Caucus was a fledgling civil rights organization when Edwin M. Lee began there as a law clerk more than three decades ago.
Working out of two dingy rooms above a garment shop in Chinatown, Mr. Lee and a handful of lawyers defended poor immigrants whose concerns included the threat of deportation and restaurant owners who refused to pay their wages.
Now the Asian Law Caucus is putting the final touches on its new 9,000-square-foot office with floor-to-ceiling windows near the foot of the Transamerica Pyramid. Mr. Lee, the group’s most famous alumnus, is settling into a new office as well.
Mr. Lee’s rise to become the city’s first Asian-American mayor — an interim appointment last week that followed Gavin Newsom’s election as lieutenant governor — mirrors the 40-year arc of a handful of community organizations that sprang up in the 1970s to represent the Bay Area’s growing Asian population. Those groups now wield considerable political clout.
Until these organizations emerged, “the Chinese community didn’t have that engaged, political grass roots that could mobilize,” said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “It’s easy to see that all coming to fruition now.”
Today, nonprofit organizations like the Chinatown Community Development Center have set up “a pipeline of young Asian activists,” said Randy Shaw, the executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the city’s low-income housing units. “They’re trained as organizers and then they go out into the world,” he said. “This is the future.”
While some local Asian-American politicians, like State Senator Leland Yee, followed a different path, many among the current generation of elected officials started out as community organizers.
The recently elected Supervisor Jane Kim, who is of Korean descent, and David Chiu, the Chinese-American president of the Board of Supervisors, both worked at the Chinatown Community Development Center.
Another Chinese-American supervisor, Eric Mar, who like Mr. Chiu was elected in 2008, worked as a law clerk in the 1980s under Mr. Lee at the Asian Law Caucus.
In Oakland, the politics of the recently elected Mayor Jean Quan were shaped during her many years as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1982, Ms. Quan, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, planned Bay Area-wide demonstrations with Mr. Lee, then a staff lawyer at the caucus, to protest the killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese man who was beaten to death in Detroit.
“You don’t have a lot of Chinese leaders coming out of small-business backgrounds, nor are they the sons and daughters of elected officials,” said Henry Der, the former executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. “It was the activism during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s that created opportunities for appointments that opened the doors.”
A confluence of factors propelled the rise of Asian-American community organizations as a political force, according to observers.
Part of it is demographic. The local Asian population, particularly Chinese, has surged in recent years, with an influx of immigrants coming from both Hong Kong and the mainland. The immigrants have brought with them Cantonese and Mandarin dialects that have slowly swept aside the Taishanese heard in Chinatown for a century before their arrival.
By 2009, about one-third of San Francisco County’s population was Asian, including 21 percent Chinese.
These immigrants, often poor and elderly, were organized by leaders like Gordon Chin, the head of the Community Development Center, into increasingly potent forces that lobbied for health services, public safety and better housing conditions.
Organizers like Mr. Chin and Rose Pak, the influential consultant for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce who helped engineer Mr. Lee’s appointment as mayor, also forged alliances with business interests and the political establishment that would prove critical.
“People who come from activist backgrounds generally don’t have political power, and they needed money,” said Ling-Chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “But they formed fascinating coalitions.”
During the 1980s real estate boom, for instance, Chinatown leaders, many of whom were veterans of progressive social movements, became worried about commercial development encroaching from the south. They struck a deal with John L. Molinari, the former pro-business president of the Board of Supervisors and an ally of then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, guaranteeing the preservation of Grant Avenue, which has become the spine of Chinatown.
In 1989, Ms. Pak tapped into her Chinese business connections to raise significant campaign contributions for the progressive Art Agnos, who was Mr. Molinari’s opponent in the mayoral race. Mr. Agnos won and appointed Mr. Lee, by then the managing attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, to his first government job.
Over the next 20 years, Mr. Lee transformed into a career public servant, receiving appointments from Mayors Willie L. Brown Jr. and Gavin Newsom, both of whom maintained close relationships with Ms. Pak and Mr. Chin.
Mr. Lee was born in 1952 in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle, to parents who emigrated from Guangdong Province in China in the 1930s. His father served in the Korean War and died when Mr. Lee was 15. His mother raised her children while working as a seamstress.
Mr. Lee received a full scholarship to Bowdoin College and moved to the Bay Area in 1975 to enroll in law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
He began at the Asian Law Caucus in his second semester and immediately began working on housing issues that after three years led to San Francisco’s first organized rent strike in 1978.
“Decades ago, I was about as anti-establishment as one could be,” Mr. Lee said after his swearing-in Tuesday in the City Hall rotunda. “But today, like you, I’m trying to make the establishment work for all San Franciscans.”
William R. Tamayo, who worked at the Asian Law Caucus as a staff attorney and is now a lawyer for the federal government, recalled giving up part of his $600-a-month salary to support Mr. Lee, who had put off taking the bar exam to lead the rent strike even though the caucus could not afford to pay him.
People who worked with Mr. Lee said he had become known not only for his work ethic and self-sacrifice but also for an understated manner that won him the trust of immigrants throughout Chinatown.
Mr. Lee understood both Cantonese and Taishanese, the dialect spoken by many immigrants, his colleagues said.
Mr. Lee left nonprofit work in 1989, when Mayor Agnos offered him an advisory position in his administration.
In his inaugural remarks, Mr. Lee spoke not of his two decades in government but of his formative years, as he acknowledged some of the people who shaped his worldview and then elevated him to the top.
"As a Chinese-American, I am well aware of my community’s long and troubled and proud history in this city," Mr. Lee told the crowd. “The San Francisco of old was directly involved in racism and neglect. The San Francisco that I fought as an attorney began to change.”
“And now today, Rose,” he said, casting a smile at his friend Ms. Pak. “Our struggle is here, and it is succeeding.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)