Tolerance, a form of aversion? – Muhammad Nazirul Imram

Tolerance, as defined by the United Nations (UN), is “neither indulgence nor indifference”: it is accepting that people are naturally diverse, and respecting the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others.

As stated by the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon to mark this Day, “Our practice of tolerance must mean more than peaceful coexistence, crucial as that is. It must be an active understanding fostered through dialogue and positive engagement with others.”

Recent public incidents of racism and xenophobia have triggered much public soul-searching. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Naijb Razak even expressed his concerns.

Many rushed to defend the image of Malaysia as a multi-racial, multi-religious society where racism and disparagement of diverse religions and cultures are not tolerated and largely problems of the past.

In the aftermath, it became clear that some think that only outright hatred for people of other races is considered racism. However, racism in today’s Malaysia is more likely to be casual and structural, embedded in our attitudes, everyday behaviour and remarks, and our institutions.

Malaysiam society’s approach to fighting racism has hinged on promoting the concepts of tolerance and racial harmony. But “racial harmony” pre-supposes that tensions arise from fundamental cultural differences that cause clashes which disturb the peace, and the logic of “tolerance” still uses the “us against them” framework that reinforces cultural differences.

As with today, pre-Merdeka Malaya was an immigrant society of different cultures and languages, which were reduced by the British classification system to four ethnic categories: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (the fourth being a negatively defined catch-all category).

State policies reflect this ethnic division. Each ethnic group also has its own "self-help group" – dedicated to the Malay, Chinese, Indian and European community, respectively.

The assignment of Malaysians into these categories carries the risk of having racial stereotypes applied to large sectors of the population. It also implies that culture is homogenous, ignoring the diversity within.

Academic Wendy Brown argued that tolerance is a mode of managing difference and dissent.

With these stereotypes and myths of homogeneity in mind, we are told to be tolerant towards certain practices of certain cultures. By tying those practices to those cultures, the logic of tolerance becomes racialised.

But this logic must lead us to question: are racial tensions really due to cultural differences? How much have these tensions been historically exacerbated due to politics and economic and social stratification?

Some critics frame intolerance as a trait of certain cultures.

For example, certain cultures are seen to have essential misogynist or homophobic qualities which justify intervention and negative representation. Dropping bombs on a foreign nation in the name of liberating its oppressed women while glossing over the devastating consequences on those women (whose status as inhabitants of that nation cannot be separated from their status as women) is an irony that does not translate well in mainstream discourse.

Other commentators may resist movements toward equality with arguments of cultural incompatibility or unreadiness.

The Malaysian government has stated reservations on the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) due to religious and cultural practices of the local Malay/Muslim community.

But as Kumaralingam Amirthalingam, a professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, said, “It is important to look beyond the cultural context and identify causal factors”. Cultural differences should not be used to justify forcible intervention from without or social change from within a society.

Tolerance is a form of aversion. We accept people and things that we respect, but only tolerate those we find distasteful and wish to avoid.

Tolerance has an inherent quality of disengagement that doesn't sustain a collective civic virtue. It is magnanimously enacted by those who are higher up in social hierarchies upon those who are below them. The logic of tolerance also implies that there is a limit, but how do we define the limit?

One argument frequently used to counter xenophobic speech alludes to the economic necessity of accommodating migrants in Malaysia. This argument itself is not immune to xenophobia, as it leads some of us to begrudge rest days, access to public spaces and free association to even those migrants who contribute hugely to our economy in cooking, cleaning, caretaking and construction.

But the economic argument for tolerating the presence of certain people is troubling, because it begs the question of how that feeds into how we value each other as members of this society.

In a similar vein, the promotion of “racial harmony” is enacted through encouraging the consumption of cultures through the extravaganza of food and traditional dress that schools celebrate on Racial Harmony Day.

But how does this accord with what happens on all the other days of the year, when schoolchildren can be called names and socially excluded because of their race or nationality?

Or when hiring processes can blatantly, if informally, exclude applicants of certain backgrounds in the absence of strong anti-discrimination culture and laws?

In the absence of robust dialogue and positive engagement, we will not even begin to formulate solutions to these silenced problems.

The logic of tolerance is limited when faced with issues of justice and equality. The difficulty in prescribing what action we can take lies in the pervasive and social nature of the problem. The discussion of racialism in our formal institutions and policies is out of bounds.

A human rights perspective goes beyond discourse and seeks to encode protections against discrimination and violence experienced by marginalised groups.

Malaysia is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as other international human rights conventions. As such it acknowledges the inherent rights that all human beings are entitled to.

Lifting the state reservations on Cedaw would bring us one step closer to achieving more robust protections.

Cultural impositions of the role of men and women are neither realistic nor fair, given the aspirations and talents of our well-educated women and men. What is needed are policies that are truly reflective of an equal and inclusive society.

Individual action is not the final resource in fighting racism. It isn't a foolproof guarantee in the face of structural issues. Tolerance is an attractive concept but we must go beyond it. – January 29, 2016.

* Muhammad Nazirul Imram reads The Malaysian Insider.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.