Bigotry is holding an unchallenged worldview and applying one’s personal set of assumptions about the world; to judge others outside that specific worldview and assumptions. But then, the bigot forgets that the other actually subscribes to a different worldview. So, such jumping to the wrong conclusions without true knowledge is real bigotry.
Yes, I am talking about bigotry as a classic mind-set of racism developed within an unintegrated worldview set of assumptions. Therefore, racism of the Donald Trump kind, in real terms, is more dangerous than Islamic extremism. Why?
Chinese bigotry appreciated
Two weeks ago, I overheard an elder member of the Chinese community in Malaysia speak definitively about the Lim Chong Wei-Lin Dan match and concluded: ‘CW was lucky to win!’ My first reaction, since I overheard the conversation in a public park was, ‘CW won by hard work and determination and excellent skills.’
I then reflected about all this and concluded: unless one is a sportsperson at a global competitive level, one cannot understand what I was saying. I actually qualified and then failed to play rugby for Malaysia in Hong Kong in the year 1972; as 5 under-23s selected to play for the national team.
Bigotry as generalized by the skin-colour-type, or what I call “kulitfication” in Malaysia, is only skin deep usually for both: spokesperson and a willing and listening recipient. In Malaysia of the 70s, it was normal to call one another Melayu, Cina or India. No one was really offended because everyone knew that it was only a skin-deep description of the other person.
More serious bigotry of the Trump-like generalisations about “others,” which he believes and now dares to articulate for the whole world to hear; all come under their rubric of freedom of speech. That same standard of due regard he fails to grant all others around him, but simply seeks to buy them out, or move them out if money cannot do it!
Why else, would he switch his team members as he did his wives. He simply pays them and buys all them out for personal loyalty. And, in America: ‘In God they do trust!’ Pun intended.
True Bigotry
Bigotry is a more viscous form often institutionalized as a ‘mindset’, and is usually unbeknown to the abusers of such ideas and ideals. Knowing oneself therefore should also include knowing one’s weaknesses and limits of knowledge about the complexities of all of life; and especially life outside there. But, ask any trainer or human resource consultant and they will tell you that mind-set change is a most challenging task at workplaces.
Too often bigots (those with a bigots’ mindset) do not understand and appreciate serious flaws in their underlying assumptions they make about life and reality. They do not know and understand their real worldview positions and the assumptions about the external world as projected by their inherited, unknown, and misunderstood assumptions about reality.
Let me summarize this complex set of ideas which I now call worldviews. Firstly, in my research experience in the 1980s, this concept was rejected as a compound word by almost all dictionaries (including electronic ones) when I first started writing about them. Today, they are almost universally accepted. Maybe the time has come; for worldviews as a composite idea which we all hold within assumptions about life and reality out there!
Therefore, I now choose to explain this concept from my original thesis found in my doctoral dissertation. I have since published some of these sets of descriptors and assumptions we all make about life and reality. It can be found in my first publication called, “Alamak: All in God’s Name!”
The Alamak Series
The book is part and parcel of my retort about everything and nothing Malaysian, or what I now call, “Melayusian.” That is a Malaysian mind-set usually abused by a non-rational Malay mind-set! Therefore, there are two categories of Malays in Malaysia; the non-rational and the reasonable ones!
‘Alamak’ is therefore my Malaysianised exclamation which can be equated to the American localised lingo, OMG! But, I use mine explicitly to mock the Federal Court Judges who could not use logic systems of a rational mind before they concurred with the argument that, “Allah is now a Melayu word!”
Therefore, on paper, I am disallowed from using it because I am non-Melayu: Alamak!!! Why can’t I speak Malay? Is it reserved only for Melayus? My real rational retort is therefore in the second part of my first book title, after the cultural reactionary words: All in God’s Name.
David Yallop, an investigative writer, wrote In God’s Name and it declared and argued against the mindset of decadence and corruption which creeps into any form of bureaucracy; and therefore also the ‘Roman Catholic Church’ was not exempted either. Wikipedia clarifies:
Over three years continual and exhaustive research, David Yallop uncovered a chain of corruption that linked leading figures in financial, political, criminal and clerical circles around the world in a conspiracy of awesome proportions. To this day the central questions raised “In God’s Name” remain unanswered.
KJ John was director of Industrial Policy with MITI until 1996 before he moved to the NITC at Mimos Berhad to develop the National IT Agenda.
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