Racial Slurs in Malaysia

By : Tanissha Rameswaran ( 5 Lily )

In many ways, Language reflects and perpetuates discrimination. A form of this is through racial
slurs. Racial slurs are primarily used and understood to derogate certain group members on the basis
of their descriptive attributes. Some slurs have become so common place that they are used in
everyday, casual conversations. The question is , what is the issue with this?

The main issue is that it perpetuates internalised racism. Internalised racism is when a group of
people are targeted, discriminated, oppressed and are the subject of various stereotypes, they
would start to believe and adopt the myths and information that society communicated to them
about their group.

When you see these terms constantly in everyday’s conversation, you are inherently normalising and
attributing stereotypes to these group of people which then caused internalized oppression. We see
this as a real issue in Malaysia, being a multiracial country, there tends to be a amount of harmful
stereotypes as well as racial slurs and derogatory terms that are thrown around during everyday
speech. People are often not aware of the hurt that we caused to the communities attributed to
them. Some of us are even unaware that these are racial slurs at all.

I hope to be able to shed some light on this issue and spread some awareness on the implications of
using them so that we can work together on this issue that is present all over Malaysia.

A few examples of Racial slurs are the N-Word, K*ling , jakun , and Sakai.

The N- Word : Used to describe Black people as they were being stolen from Africa and put into
slavery, chained, lynched, beaten, sit upon. So the word was created as a tool of oppression. We
can’t use it because it reinforces racism as the history of the word was originally used to distinguish
and demean a race.

K*ling : The word is derogatory to Indians. The word has its roots in a historical region in india, but
today in Malaysia it is widely considered to be the derogatory of Indian Malaysians. The K-word has
now led to a switch of meaning and thus it is not okay to use it anymore.

Jakun : Jakun people are an ethnic group of recognized as orang asli of the Malay peninsula in
Malaysia. People use this word to describe a person as Crazy or annoying which is directly insulting
the Jakun People of the Malay peninsula in Malaysia.

Sakai : Sakai is one of the tribal communities in Indonesia traditionally living in the interior of Riau,
Sumatera. The Sakai people are a people, an orang asli tribe. It is commonly used in Malaysia and
carries the meaning of retard.

To continue using these slurs should be disallowed and unacceptable in any situation besides
referring to the tribe themselves. By this, we are learning to respect and accept other ethnicity in
Malaysia.