7. How important is the concept of “race” for understanding contemporary Malaysia?
Introduction
The concept of race as defined by Rex and Mason is “an essentially biological concept based on distinctive sets of hereditary phenotypical features that distinguish varieties of mankind” (1986, p. 189). In Malaysia however, race is oftentimes used to mean ‘ethnicity’, which is incorrect as ethnic groups are sub-divisions of a particular racial stock differentiated by history and cultural practices (Rex and Mason, 1986, p. 189). Nevertheless, the concept of race is an important one in understanding how it has shaped the politics and society of Malaysia. In this essay I will explain how Malaysia’s colonial past and affirmative action policies has contributed to the formation of a society divided along racial lines and how that has created racial tensions among the ethnic groups of Malaysia.
Malaysia which touts itself as a ‘plural society’ is a country constituted by different race/ethnic groups, the three largest being the Malay, Chinese and Indian groups. As of 2010, the Malaysian population consists of 28.3 million people, with 91.8% Malaysian citizens. The Malaysian citizens are made up of 67.4% bumiputera (translated as ‘son of the soil’, a group composed of predominantly ethnic Malays along with various other indigenous tribes and native groups), 24.6% Chinese, 7.3% Indians and 0.7% Others (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2010). With so many different ethnic groups within a country, chances are that tensions are bound to arise a one point or another.
Malaysia’s Colonial Past Malaysia’s colonial history is an important one as the colonial knowledge is the basis from which the Malay and Malaysian history is formed. Group boundaries that have been formed among races in Malaysia were largely a byproduct of British rule of the late nineteenth and early twentieth