08/06/2020
Whiteness carries with it a certain privilege that being brown and black doesn’t, and this is often called “white privilege”. In Malaysia, partly due to post-colonialist attitudes, “white privilege” is taken one step further and manifests itself in the form of “white worshipping”. Nandini from SAYS defines white worshipping as “looking up to or glorifying people of mainly European descent with light skin, for no other reason than the fact that they’re white.”
It’s no secret that Malaysians love white people. Particularly if they are from the land that colonised us not too long ago: Great Britain. We’ve all seen the special treatment accorded to white people in Malaysia, and it’s even evident in the way that we as Malaysians refer to white foreigners as “expatriates” rather than “migrants” or “foreigners” like we would use to refer to those who are non-white like the Bangladeshis, Nepalese or Myanmarese. Malaysia’s anti-black and white-worshipping mentality runs deep in our society and has resulted in overt and systemic racism.
Often we hear from Caucasians living and working in Malaysia that they love our country, and even prefer it to their own countries. This is partly due to the fact that they often receive preferential treatment over Malaysians and non-white foreigners. Malaysians place whiteness on a pedestal and deem those who embody or represent whiteness, whether Eurasian Malaysians or white expatriates, as superior to people of their own kind. In continuing on with this trend of white worshipping, we are being complicit in white privilege and anti-blackness, and we are letting ourselves remain in colonial shackles.
