Racism in Indonesia
A complaint by Indonesian Chinese. Blogger Indcoup (Jakarta).
Nov 15, 2005

Cyberspace is a wonderful thing.

By guaranteeing anonymity it allows writers to express themselves freely without fear of having the proverbial front door kicked in by the powers that be.

And by concealing our ethnicity, skin colour, religion (if we have one!), class and age, we become truly equal. The only thing that matters is what we write. Just that. Fantastic, huh?

But in the real world things aren't so fair. Because the disease of racial discrimination is still very much with us, blighting the lives of so many people across the globe.

Here in Indonesia, this terrible disease has also taken a foothold. You only have to ask the Indonesian Chinese about that.

Now I'm not saying all Indonesians are racist, but what I am saying is that many Indonesians do hold racist views, mostly I believe as a result of indoctrination by a state apparatus that unashamedly condones racism.

There is even a word in the Indonesian language that shows how deeply racism is engrained in the Indonesian psyche.

And that word is pribumi. Its meaning? To describe someone who is "indigenously" or "pure" Indonesian.

Like under South Africa's abhorrent apartheid doctrine though, this notion throws up many absurdities. Is, for example, an Indonesian who has mixed parentage - ie with only one pribumi parent - pribumi or not?

On message boards discussing hot Indonesian babes, for example, some Indonesian posters do not consider a model from this country who is not pribumi to even be Indonesian.

Frightening indeed.

Moreover, if you happen to have black skin and want to teach English in Indonesia you might want to think again.

Many students will complain to the school as they will not consider you to be a "native" English speaker however good your English may be.

Black is not exactly the most sought after skin color in Indonesia: every young girl here longs for a whiter complexion like, ironically, the Chinese!

And these unfortunate dudes have had it tough for many years now:

Even those whose families have lived in the country for centuries, have always been treated as second-class citizens.

Ethnic Chinese are still required to pay large sums of money for a citizenship certificate needed to obtain an ID card which is, in turn, essential for everything from job interviews to drivers licenses.

The ID card still indicates, indirectly, the racial origins of the bearer. It is just one of a number of discriminatory measures against ethnic Chinese established both under Suharto, and also the first president Sukarno.

Even a "national hero" like former world badminton champion Hendrawan (pictured above) is not really recognised as being truly Indonesian even though he has brought honor to his country.

It was only after the intervention of former President Megawati Soekarnoputri that he managed to obtain his Indonesian citizenship after she ordered the relevant bureaucrats to approve his application.

The irony of the situation is that the racial discrimination in Indonesia today very much mirrors the racist ways of the nation's former colonial rulers who the Indonesians struggled so hard to defeat.

Wouldn't it be great if no one cared about skin colour? After all, it shouldn't matter at all, should it?
posted by IndCoup

Comments:
outraged of Hemel Hempstead said...
Oh yes - screamingly racist... but as much within the country as outside...
Non-muslim Indonesians get it real bad...
And if you are black, and in Indonesia, of course you don't go and teach, you just go dealing and pimping in Tanah Abang...

enda said...
The soeharto's regime is closer with what your align of thinking that race shouldn't matter.
The result? indonesian chinese has to indonesianized their names, chinese newspaper and festivals/cultures was forbidden, and there's no way they can enter political arena.
thanks to that policy, the silent intensity between the groups didn't dissapear but escalate.
IMHO, race *should* matter, is who we are, is a part of our identity no matter hard we are trying to forget about it.
RealiSing and acknowlodging differences is the key to harmony, not the other way around.

smoong said...
Racism is everywhere. some say it has something to do with education, and some others say it doesn't. I once saw a us immigration officer detained a person he thought to be an illegal immigrant while she actually is a permanent resident just because he has brown skin and below the average english skill, while another day another officer didn't expect a very fluent english speaking guy being caught in the airport for fraud documents.
But to make it related, Indonesia I admit has hug problem of racism. Poor its people. Instead of looking at legal matters, they only perceive it by skin coloUrs.

http://indcoup.blogspot.com/2005/11/racism-in-indonesia.html