Racism

When you get people from other races discriminating against you, you come to a crossroads – you can either make your future as chicken shit or chicken salad. I can feel this is a bad thing, I will never behave this way. But most people choose vengeance. I choose to make chicken salad – Yasmin Ahmad.

I first experience a racism remark when I was in Standard One. In my primary school where the Chinese dominates, a Chinese male teacher said "Melayu bodoh, Hindu pun sama" in a conversation in front of the class. "Orang Cina pandai matematik"

(In many (I'm not generalizing) northern states, the Indians are called Hindu in northern Malay dialects, not India. It's politically and religiously wrong but that's the fact)

Given the chance now, I would definitely tell him off immediately, but at seven years old, you would only listen but somehow the words stucked in my head. I remembered going home and telling it to my mom.

Any mother now would call the headmaster, hold a press conference and turn it into political/racial fiasco, but my mom in 1982 told me differently.

"You need to study hard and prove him wrong." Was the only thing she said.

I remembered studying hard, not only because I need to prove him wrong but I needed a Nintendo's Game and Watch that was so the in-thing toy kids those days played, and only getting the 1^st place would guarantee my mom buying it.

After the second term exam, I had the 1^st place sharing it with Mohd Akram, another Malay kid. Jivahenthiran was 3^rd in the class.

God created us equally; it is not because of race that guarantees your intelligence.

It is bad to make a racist slur or to brag on racial supremacy. Best of all, it pays to choose chicken salad.