Sejauh Aku Mampu: Will It Always Last ?

Prejudice and stereotype are two things which will potentially happen when two cultures meet. Those two “hot” thoughts can create many practices on abuses like verbal abuse or even physical abuses. The verbal abuse includes profanity or the usage of bad word to insult another group of people. Stereotypes are ideas held about members of particular groups, based primarily on membership in that group. They may be positive or negative prejudicial, and may be used to justify certain discriminatory behaviours. Some people consider all stereotypes to be negative. In Indonesia, I think that the history of many forms of segregations is caused by these thoughts, especially between native Indonesians and Indonesian Chinese. I still don’t know whether this is a kind of consequence because two cultures meet or because of the lack of communication between two cultures.

Talking about consequence, my neighbor and I discussed about this matter. I insisted that this is really a consequence. I was thinking like that because many evidences show how if a group of people migrate to another region, that group will get the kind of offence. The example is the Jews in Germany in Hitler’s era, or when the great African migration to United States from 1914 to 1950. For the case of Chinese people, what happens in Malaysia is the example. My Malaysian-Chinese friend told me about the reason why they came to Singapore to study here. They said that the discrimination really surrounded them. They said that it was so difficult for them to enter the national university there, like University of Malaya. Then, when I read more about humanitarianism which told about the view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such, I think discrimination can’t be regarded as a kind of consequence. We are created to be different but the respect of the differences is what the human should really reach when they live in this earth.

Racism is in everyone’s mind, even when we think that somebody doesn’t have a racist mindset, I’m sure that prejudices and stereotypes will always be created automatically in our mind. But, one important thing is our effort to understand others especially how to create mindset that everyone is equal, there isn’t superior or inferior group of people in this world. Seeing how beautiful it is when the differences united us all. Let’s also imagine if everyone can manage the prejudices and stereotypes in their mind. The next question is will racism always last ?