My younger sister was kind enough to scrounge around for me and found me The Sun to read while waiting for the plane at the airport (My dad had to go to work, so he chuck me at the airport 1 1/2 hours earlier than the departure time!!!)

I found this article by a young Kadazan-Chinese girl particularly interesting.

Spare Me The Racist Statements
by Petra Gimbad

After spending a good portion of my life in East Malaysia, moving to Kuala Lumpur and being exposed to a different brand of racism was mystifying.

First, the jokes. "You are from Sabah. You live in trees. This is how you buy meat in the supermarket: you spear them." My classmate acted the scenario in front of friends who laughed and congratulated each other on their oh-so-fine wit.

To this day, it is still difficult to explain to West Malaysian friends how insulting and humiliating it is to hear jokes that you live in trees. Not that East Malaysians have anything against tree dwellers. Simply, such jokes imply we are lesser than the human beings we are.

I was so tired of school. Being dumped with chalk and finding fire ants in your pencil box may be funny to some. However, this was traumatic to my frightened and confused fifteen-year-old self.

Weary of the pranks and teasing, I told them to leave me alone or I would hex them, earning me a bomoh reputation. A boy told a teacher, loudly and clearly,"She is a witch. Teacher, let us burn her at the stake. Let us burn her to death."

Ironically, an assistant monitor advised,"You are in KL now. Is it time for you to leave behind your jakun baheviour. Time to learn some civilised behaviour."

It is not untruthful to say that I cried every night for six months wishing I was home-schooled. All the adults I knew told me that it was common to be bullied as a new student. It was only after I left secondary school when I realised this was wrong.

Growing up with my feet in two worlds was bewildering. My father, a bumiputra East Malaysian, married my mother, a Chinese West Malaysian. We were shuttled back and forth as a family between the two places. I grew to hate Malaysian Airlines and the South China Sea.

All this transplanting has left me with a lack of taste for travel, and the lingering desire to find a home I can glue myself to for life.

Since I view myself as equal parts bumiputra and Chinese, and East and West Malaysian, this created a fragmented identity. I love the best of my two cultures, but I feared what they contained. I hated myself for what I thought I was or would come to be.

In his speech at Melbourne University, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said,"If we see race as a watertight category, then you either of race X or not, and everything else: our habits, thought-patterns, loyalties and politics must all follow from that. Then race becomes destiny."

I shivered when I read this. I spoke to a Malay friend recently about how I feared "turning Kadazan". "We have a reputation for being lazy," I explained.

"Really? I thought that was just us Malays!"

"No no. If you come to Sabah, us Kadazans can tanding (compete)."

As a result, there were times when I worked and drove myself to exhaustion and ill-health. I was terrified of ending up a lazy bumiputra.

Fixated on what others said about that part of me, I was unable to see that my Kadazan father was the hardest-working person I new. I owe the books I read and my fine education to the money he earned.

I was also terrified of inheriting my materialistic Chinese heritage. It made for a disgruntling ethic. I must work hard, but I cannot enjoy tangible wealth.

This probably explains my tendency towards idiot generosity - once earned, money flows through my hands like water to everyone but myself.

To this day, I am pained when I hear racist statements. It is time for us to start looking at ourselves in addition to holding our leaders accountable whenever racist sentiments are expressed. Sometimes, right now and here is the best place to start. What "here" means tends to start with us.

-end-

Different people suffer from different identity crisis huh.