Case Study on Malaysia
Malaysia is a multicultural society. Malaysia consists of three main ethnic groups, 50.4% being Malays, 23.7% Chinese, 11% indigenous people, 7.1% Indians and 7.8% other races. Due to its colonial past under the British rule, ethnicity has been an issue in Malaysia even up till this day. (Noor, 2013)
Social identity is based on the assumption that society is structured into different social groups that that will lead to different statuses and power. In Malaysia it is largely based on race and religion. It is a known fact that Malays are given priority in many matters. The Malaysian government supports a Bumiputera centric policy; Bumiputera meaning sons of the soil, with the main intention of recognizing the Malays as the original settlers of the land. (Malaysia Today, 2014).
Social categorization is when we segment our world into different groups and identify ourselves and the people around us into these different categories. Its is already mentioned above that in Malaysia, the malays are at the top.
It doesn’t help that most of Malaysia’s leaders are muslim, with many prefering to label Malaysia as a Muslim country. Refering to a journal article, The Islamisation of Malaysia: Religious Nationalism in the service of ethnonationalism, The “Islamification” of this country has been ongoing since the 1980s, when Dr Mahathir became the prime minister. Religious identity seemed to have replaced ethnicity as the national identity. Since automatic status is given to Malays/Muslims, the ethnic minority would need to conform to the majority’s social identity in order to be accepted in the Malaysian society. (Barr, 2010)
For example, the national language of Malaysia is Malay. The malaysian government tried to make this more socially acceptable to the minority groups by re-labeling the malay language as Bahasa Malaysia. With time this was accepted by the minority races in the country. This is a necessary for the minority races because to establish a social identity within any society, one first needs to be understood and with a common language, this was made possible.
Refering to Journal Article, Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore: Contesting Models, the author stated that ethnic separation has been ongoing as far back when Malaysia was under the British colonial rule. The British separated the the groups by dividing labour based on ethnic groups. The menial labour intensive jobs were mostly delegated to them while the Chinese were given more opportunities to work in the waged capitalist sector. (Noor, 2013). There was little to no interaction between the different races further separating the different cultures.
When the British rule ended, the Malaysian government sought to create a multicultural nation. As mentioned, the Malay language was chosen as the national language, reason being because the English language was associated with the British rule. The ruling party also felt that this was necessary to give the “disadvanged race”, the Malays a sense of hope that they being at the bottom class at that point of time, will rise up. (Quayum, 2003). Looking at the current situation now, the governent might have overdone it leading to racial tensions between the majority and minority groups. The non malays feared that they would be assimiliated into the Malay ethnic national identity and along the way will lose their own cultural identities.

An article by Time Magazine, Facing Malaysia’s Racial Issues, showed an example of growing discontentment among a minority race. 20,000 ethnic indian nationals marched a peaceful protest. They believe they were “ exploited by the British people for 150 years and now is left at the mercy of a Malay muslim governent”. In this article, the minority group expressed their concerns that they are not having the same social status as the majority group and their future in Malaysia looks bleak. (Kuppusamy, 2007).
The articles selcted for this case study both present a balanced view and are backed with nescessary details. Both the Journal articles and the news source leads to the same conclusion. Malaysia is trying to build a social identity that is not widely accepted among the minority groups. Understanding that social identity is how we develop a sense of group membership and belonging, Malaysia’s social identity is quite shallow with very few factors contributing to it, one example namely adopting the national language of Malay. Other than that the biasness of their bumiputera centric policies are causing unhappiness within the minority group. A nation should share a primary social identity but the situation in Malaysia is that their social categorization is decided by race and this in turn leads to two distinct social identities. The malays would categorize their race as the in-group and everyone of another race would be in their out groups.
According to the Social identity theory, people would strive for a positive self concept in order to increase their self esteem. The minority group in Malaysia compared themselves to the majority group, the malays and not being content with the place of the in-group in Malaysia’s society will attempt to change the relative position of the in group as evidenced in the news article from time magazine.
In conclusion, for a nation to be truly united, the the social identities of the different groups must be adopted equally to form one national identity. Equal rights must be given to each group and with equal rights then will then come a positive society.

References
Barr, M. D. (2010). The Islamisation of Malaysia. Religious nationalism in the service of ethnonationalism, 293-311.
Hoffstaedter, G. (2011). Modern Muslim Identities . In G. Hoffstaedter, Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia. Copenhagen: Nias.
Kuppusamy, B. (2007, November 26). Facing Malaysia's Racial Issues. Retrieved from Time: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1687973,00.html
Malaysia Today. (2014, May 5). How to Criticize Bumiputera Policies 101. Retrieved from Malaysia Today Online News: http://www.malaysia-today.net/how-to-criticize-bumiputera-policies-101/
Noor, N. L.-H. (2013). In Multiculturalism, beyond ethnocultural diversity and contestations, International Journal of Intercultural Relations . 714-726.