Monday, November 20, 2006

What is a typical Malay?

I have heard of (and also guilty of using) the phrase 'typical Malay' often enough.

What does being a 'typical Malay' mean? Saying to someone that he/she is acting like a typical Malay is akin to accusing him/her of being lazy, narrow-minded, short-sighted, too complacent, easily swindled, prone to petty jealousies....etc...

I was reading Nik Nazmi's thoughts about our Malaysian astronaut playing children's games in space, and someone accused him of (and I quote) "perasaan hasad dengki dan iri hati orang melayu kepada org melayu yang ingin mencapai kejayaan..Another ol typical malay!!!!"

Sadly enough, when someone uses that 'typical Malay' phrase others know exactly what he/she means.

The question is : how long are we going to stay 'typical'? The negative traits mentioned above (and more) are pathognomonic (using a medical term here, meaning diagnostic for a particular disease) for being Malay.

Doesn't anyone else think it is getting old? Malays acting 'typical' and other people accusing us of being so. Somehow it sounds worse than Chinese or Indian people being called 'typical Chinese/Indian' (whatever they mean).

As you can see, I rant a lot nowadays. Pre-exam fever has kicked in. Oh yeah.

9 comments:

Dr. Aneesa said...

typical pre exam sitting in front of laptop fever. i kno2.

i cant blame people for the 'branding' of the malays. i have to say that.

it IS like that.

i guess u just have to do ur part to prove them wrong.

someone once told me "typical MUSLIM not MALAYs"-heck thats even worse.

vagus said...

when a society segregates its people according to race, when one is graded on race alone, then it is only natural (not necessarily right) that people begin to stereotype.

Hani Izhar said...

niesa : 'typical Muslim'? did u ask what he/she meant? What IS a typical Muslim? The ones who love to blow up themselves and other people? How typically ignorant. There are several million more muslims who are NOT like that.

vagus : sterotyping is always going to be around, and it's everywhere. Here, people are stereotyped for being pakistani, welsh, scottish, irish etc. When spoken in jest it's palatable if not acceptable (I'm sure we have all made fun of our friends of different races and we've all had our fair share of being made fun of), but when people start saying in an accusatory manner things become more unpleasant. A fine line to draw, I am sure, but that's how it is

Hani Izhar said...

not even sure I can make sense of what I said previously. What I'm trying to get at is that I'm tired of hearing people branding us 'typical', and even more disheartened when some of us actually deserve to be called so (more often than not)

Dr. Aneesa said...

typical muslim TIME. always late. i have to say, must agree with him.

yeah.sometimes we deserve it. thats the worst part.

Hani Izhar said...

Typical muslim time? *frowns* hmmm that's new to me...isnt that typical 'Malaysian time' ke?

Dr. Aneesa said...

hmm..dunno, organising events the last few years, kinda have to agree.be it hours, days, weeks...

Anonymous said...

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Nizam Zain said...

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