Racial Discrimination in Employment Between Malays and Non-Malays
Racial discrimination in employment between Malays and non-Malays
Previous History of Discrimination
Bahasa, raja dan agama (language, ruler and religion) are what people call the three pillars of Malayness in an attempt to preserve and classify who are the real “people” in a country like Malaysia where generations of other ethnicities have been living. Opportunities for employment and living are amass at Malaysia as it is one of the rising nations in Southeast Asia, however, the country is not as friendly to the “non-Malays” as they seem.
The first major laws made for Malay opportunity preservation was the Malay Reservation Enactment way back in 1913 which allowed the Malay to declare certain areas as “Malay Reservations” which prohibited non-Malays for owning or even leasing the said land. This law has undergone several revisions to allow certain circumstances or people who are non-Malay to have access but the sense of putting the Malay first is still present. In 1971, Malaysia’s second Prime Minister Abdul Razak enacted the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was later replaced by Mahathir Mohammad’s New Development Policy (NDP) which embodied the ideals which was in his famous book, “Malay Dilemma”. Mahathir Mohamad had even coined the term ‘affirmative action’ which represented the favoring for Malays for the welfare of the country.
(Quah, 2010, April 14) Last March 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak was under fire for trying to change the NDP into the New Economic Model (NEM) which aimed to lessen the pro-Malay economic policies that were currently in effect to favor more private-public partnerships. With the proposed change on such a long-standing policy, it should be observed as to whether these policies present really are too much that they are already discriminatory to the other non-Malay citizens of Malaysia who has also helped with the country’s economy.
Ketuanan Malayu or translated as Malay Domination is the key concept that most
Previous History of Discrimination
Bahasa, raja dan agama (language, ruler and religion) are what people call the three pillars of Malayness in an attempt to preserve and classify who are the real “people” in a country like Malaysia where generations of other ethnicities have been living. Opportunities for employment and living are amass at Malaysia as it is one of the rising nations in Southeast Asia, however, the country is not as friendly to the “non-Malays” as they seem.
The first major laws made for Malay opportunity preservation was the Malay Reservation Enactment way back in 1913 which allowed the Malay to declare certain areas as “Malay Reservations” which prohibited non-Malays for owning or even leasing the said land. This law has undergone several revisions to allow certain circumstances or people who are non-Malay to have access but the sense of putting the Malay first is still present. In 1971, Malaysia’s second Prime Minister Abdul Razak enacted the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was later replaced by Mahathir Mohammad’s New Development Policy (NDP) which embodied the ideals which was in his famous book, “Malay Dilemma”. Mahathir Mohamad had even coined the term ‘affirmative action’ which represented the favoring for Malays for the welfare of the country.
(Quah, 2010, April 14) Last March 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak was under fire for trying to change the NDP into the New Economic Model (NEM) which aimed to lessen the pro-Malay economic policies that were currently in effect to favor more private-public partnerships. With the proposed change on such a long-standing policy, it should be observed as to whether these policies present really are too much that they are already discriminatory to the other non-Malay citizens of Malaysia who has also helped with the country’s economy.
Ketuanan Malayu or translated as Malay Domination is the key concept that most
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