Community Board: A Matter of Identity

Discovering that other people don't see you as you see yourself is like hearing your recorded voice played back to you for the very first time - it's shocking, ugly and totally unfamiliar. It’s amazing how powerful a self-constructed image is. If only self-image was impenetrable. If only one could merge the idea of image into one that is satisfying to both yourself and to the outside world looking at you. Which begs the questions: is how others see you just as or more important as how you imagine yourself? If so, how do you even construct an image of yourself, or in fact, an identity?

I have always struggled with my identity, as we all do, but in a manner that I think most people rarely question. Coming from a mixed background, nothing has been more important to me than my own sense of cultural identity. Having parents from opposite sides of the world has, of course, confused matters, creating in me (to use a term I admit sounds odious but gets bandied around in certain circles and finds some meaning there) a third culture identity. But that in itself is not the sole cause of my schizophrenia.  I have traveled more than most owing to the fact that my father is an ambitious engineer working in an industry that, for good or for bad, has respected very little, geographical and political borders.  We all need oil and gas. I’m not an apologist for the industry. I’m just stating a fact. Just look at the recent response to the fuel price hike here.

Moving around can take its toll. But it also has developed in me a sense of a woman without a country, an eternal tourist mentality, a longing for an impossibly borderless world, which obviously suits my sense of feeling both free and lost at the same time. It’s a tension I have never been able to resolve. Consequently I don’t respect borders nor do I care for the extremely limiting definitions of nationhood or for citizenship. In fact I have tried to shake any ideas (baggage) of belonging to a fixed place, land or country. 

Who would have guessed that all this renouncing would actually amount to a search for a place I can actually belong to, and then to pin hopes onto a nation more confused of its own identity than me. In a very weird and unexpected way, I totally identify with Malaysia and being Malaysian, which is so ironic because Malaysians are perpetually at odds with their own ideas of race versus a national identity. Malaysians don’t even know what it means to be Malaysian.

My previous experience of Malaysia was from an East Malaysian perspective, where Malaysia is somewhat more of a united country of various races sharing a collective consciousness, a history and a language that all were proud of.  Beautiful idea, no? Of course I understood that Malaysia was not perfect but it was united nonetheless.

The consequence if this though, was my shock in discovering how racist people in KL appear to be. It was like being in the Scottish-English hell all over again. I see the two struggles as extremely similar, both fighting for independence from a colonial, imperialist legacy and only identifying reactively as nothing, anything but not “them”; not English, nor Scottish and certainly not British. It’s a theory I often use to further justify my own hate of the idea of nationalism.

It’s a funny thing that as wars ravage our identities globally, severing us further from our humanity, all in the name of religion or race – imperialist ideas of the worst kind – Malaysia could actually benefit from being more patriotic or nationalistic, concepts I have always believed bred racial hatred and bigotry.  

And if anybody is a product of the so-called multi-cultural Malaysia we love to promote to the outside world, it’s me. Hate me or love me, be bitter or insulted, harangue me for my connection to a colonial past, that I can’t speak BM, that I don’t know Malaysian history, whatever, the question remains: does that make me any less Malaysian than you?

Recently I was telling someone that I was from Sabah and a friend, who is very astute, said, “You’re not Sabahan, Elaine.” I was taken aback. It hurts me when people dismiss the possibility that I could be Malaysian. But she punctuated it with, “You are a true KL-ite.” You cannot imagine the validation I felt in that moment. After five years of questioning myself, questioning others, someone finally could see me as I wanted to be seen.  It’s obvious that Malaysians are a mixed people and who are different from each other. This you can never deny or try to suppress. But if a half-white girl with some “Malaysian” blood can appear to someone else as to embody at least one version of a Malaysian identity, then there must be hope for the rest of Malaysia. There must be.

Text Elaine Foster

Elaine is happy to contribute to society in any way she can.  To send her tax advice, please email CitizenPaye@ifonlyiknewhow.com