“One day the world will be beige” exclaimed my friend. We are heading in that direction I suppose. Though I’m quite sure, when ‘that day’ comes, beige would not be an all-encompassing colour- we’d be debating the exact hue one is. I imagine it making quite entertaining conversation.
She’s more a mocha chocolate. Hmm no, no, perhaps more a milky Milo colour, one might say. What about him, he’s more the colour of condensed milk or a pale durian hue.
I love all those foods so I wouldn’t really take offence if I’m lumped into the same category as my indulgences. But we’re so consumed with skin colour that we would definitely have a colour chart, like the ones they have in the paint shop.
In South African back in the day, one was classified by the comb test. If you couldn’t run the comb through your hair- off you went to the chocolate side of the race list. Yes the race list, all part of the Race Classification Act. There was also the pencil test – if a pencil placed in your hair did not fall out- it didn’t mean you needed to head to the hairdressers for an intense moisturising hair treatment. It meant that your hair was too curly to fit in to the cotton group.
Makes me wonder about those shampoo-conditioner adverts where the model with chopsticks in her hair yanks it away to smooth, shiny, lovely hair that gets the guy’s attention. I bet she’d be shocked knowing that the chopsticks holding her hair in place meant a whole different thing back in the day and got unwanted attention instead.
I’m stressing the phrase “back in the day” because it seems more acceptable that these things happened back in the day and not today. After all, back in the day people were rather clueless. Sure stuff was written on tablets way before Apple came up with its very own version, but those people back in the day were pretty uncouth it seems.
What about interracial marriages? O golly gosh me.
Even America had anti-miscegenation laws up till 1967. Seriously? Yup, they even had a statute entitled “An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity” of 1924. As crazy as it sounds, perhaps we can’t hold them too accountable to such an absurd law anymore since it was back in the day and their President if of mixed parentage.
Shocked? I know I was when I read this. Perhaps you might think it absurd that people would go that far to discriminate and make life so difficult just because a person looked different, even in their own country.
Malaysia decided to build its identity based on race instead of nationalism. So here we are today, constantly debating and fighting for our own race, forming race-based political groups, race-based economic policies and enabling racial discriminatory laws to rule.
Shocked? I know I was when I read this. Perhaps you might think it absurd that people would go that far to discriminate and make life so difficult just because a person looked different, even in their own country.
Malaysia decided to build its identity based on race instead of nationalism. So here we are today, constantly debating and fighting for our own race, forming race-based political groups, race-based economic policies and enabling racial discriminatory laws to rule.
We’re doing this, thinking we’re preserving race when all we’re doing is going back to what it was back in the day. Instead of moving forward, we’re really running back to the past.
We’re so divided because our whole identity seems to be founded on where we fit on the colour chart instead of being patriotic. Ironically two weeks ago while overseas, I found myself in a conversation with people from different parts of the world and there I was explaining that I was Malaysian first and only then would I explain my chocolate ancestry. Much to my disappointment that is not how a lot of people feel even in Malaysia.
I must say preservation of race is a really odd term in the vocabulary of a multiracial multicultural country. The ironic thing is I remember a time back in the day, when my Malaysian passport forbade me from going to South African because Malaysia did not approve of their race-relations methods.
Natalie is a fan of the colour beige but not a fan of whitening creams.
Comments: letter@thesundaily.com
We’re so divided because our whole identity seems to be founded on where we fit on the colour chart instead of being patriotic. Ironically two weeks ago while overseas, I found myself in a conversation with people from different parts of the world and there I was explaining that I was Malaysian first and only then would I explain my chocolate ancestry. Much to my disappointment that is not how a lot of people feel even in Malaysia.
I must say preservation of race is a really odd term in the vocabulary of a multiracial multicultural country. The ironic thing is I remember a time back in the day, when my Malaysian passport forbade me from going to South African because Malaysia did not approve of their race-relations methods.
Natalie is a fan of the colour beige but not a fan of whitening creams.
