Comment on /c/café daily chat thread for 17 August 2023
cendawanita@monyet.cc 1 year agoOh yeah that social pact where they’re benefiting is extremely clear, and your comment is very much about the kind of people I’ve been sideeyeing for decades now. If anything, just fly. In the meantime the poor non-Malays can suffer sorang. The Malays, no need to say la. To quote their favourite politicians: melayu malas and mudah lupa mah. We’ll just keep scamming anyone who’s open to be scammed.
dukeGR4@monyet.cc 1 year ago
tbf this is the job of the government, i don’t think it’s any private citizen’s burden (regardless of race) to uplift poor individuals from poverty. by right, if you pay your taxes you have already done your part.
that said, if you haven’t noticed, Chinese have a lot of Clans and Associations, and they are usually funded by rich Chinese businessmen also. they don’t exactly issue cash handouts to poorer Chinese, but there’s definitely money in it (scholarships, contracts, employment, networking, trade etc). It’s also a Neo-Confucius tradition to encourage education and many Chinese businessmen donated loads of money back to their former schools. My SJK© was almost entirely sponsored by a few Datuk Seri and a Tan Sri for example.
This guy is internally racist. there are many Malays out there that have it hard as they represent a vast majority of the B40 cohort. But what they really should be fighting of is decentralisation of the Government and give local councils and states more autonomy and the ability to raise revenue to fund public infrastructures for the local people. This is the only way to uplift poverty and improve social mobility. that and combined with good healthcare system.
Campaigning for a more racist government does not achieve anything, it’s fucking expensive to oppress citizens. and yes, there is a cost of not empowering your citizens. I know firsthand through work that gender pay gap alone (due to systematic oppression) cost billions lol due to unrealised productivity.
cendawanita@monyet.cc 1 year ago
I absolutely agree on the obligations of the state and the purposes of taxation, and I’m noting even yourself complicated the opening position that it’s not any private citizen’s burden with your following paras. BUT-- while economic class is absolutely a complicating factor here, my main argument is on racism (both bilaterally between the main majorities but also unilaterally from those with institutional power). Weath has managed to shield to a certain extent the effects of these encroachments (to keep within the Muslim-Malay world; how can certain royals can have wine in KL hotels and some random people will get arrested for drinking beer in Setapak? and of course, no one bothered that Malays are being arrested by the religious police, until these moral vanguards decide to make it everyone’s problem by bullying your 7-11s and Famimas to change their cold drinks inventory).
Part of the valid reasons for affirmative action was because European/Asian colonialism (Britain and Japan to a large part of the country; Dutch and Siamese in certain territories) left native & indigenous groups poor while the migrant populations were oppressed and dikerah tenaga in a different way and they’re told to be satisfied that they’re serving an extractive economy because at least “we work hard, not like those natives who live in the kampungs”. I can see you also agree how racist and divisive this is. I bring this up, because the Chinese-community charitable works are great and no reason to discontinue them (and not to mention, in the absence of institutional support that’s where charity comes in, but it shouldn’t be pervasive and neither should it replace institutional support). But (small but) that ability to economically empower ourselves has been uneven (and note in this exchange I’m not even touching the situations of the Indian and OA communities respectively who have even less communal wealth to go around), and this unevenness arguablty contributed to the lack of solidarity and the don’t-bother/tidak-apa attitude.
my big thing is basically this: i love that we have a very mixed, diverse, and heterogenous society, that is still, just like other post-colonial states, is trying to make its way forward. But does that fact hinders solidarity? I don’t think it should and it’s not like the 1960s & 70s didn’t exist (and if it stopped existing, it required a lot of uh, state action). How is it PAS boleh naik minyak complaining about Pesta Songkran when it shouldn’t be their business to complain? Well, because they had practice - and that supposed almost 60% of bumiputera population also includes… Borneans, so it wasn’t much of a demographic majority either, what more an economic one, because mana Melayu at the time between 1970s to the 1990s that was wealthy enough to seed the schools, the papers, the magazines, the theatres, the cultural troupes to push back? So kena telan, kena tahan, and then nowadays kena kecam, for not trying hard enough at being moderate.
cendawanita@monyet.cc 1 year ago
TLDR in meme
Image