masterwordsmith-unplugged

Recently, I attended a forum on Media and Ethnicity - Overcoming the Challenges. Actually, I have not attended forums for over a year because of poor night vision. Anyway, I thought it would be a good forum and went with another friend. Sighs. Despite the wide publicity, only about 40 were there, including the organisers! Apart from a very interesting discourse from a local seasoned journalist from an English MSM, it was a MOST disappointing outing for a few reasons.


Firstly, the title itself is a misnomer. The organisers/speakers looked at the issue from the wrong racial viewpoint and classification of Malay, Chinese and Indian. My learned friend who was with me argued that there are five main ethnic groups namely Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Dravidoid and Austronesoid.They would have been better off if the forum had been titled "How to avoid divisive racial stereotyping".

Secondly, the forum contradicted the paradigm of the free press when they asked for Utusan Malaysia to be closed down. You can read more HERE. It is better that Utusan Malaysia continues to fulfil its agenda so that the rakyat to choose which party to vote for!

A speaker questioned which vernacular press in Malaysia does not have a racial slant and said that each newspaper has a community to serve. The basic premise of that speaker was that the MSM shows symptoms of an ethnic stucture that reflects our society and asked "When we have something that is racial, how do we move beyond it?" That speaker also made references to a certain vernacular press that highlights the race of crime offenders. There was an unnecessary negative portrayal of the vernacular press, especially the Chinese and Tamil press. Disparaging remarks at the poor interviewing styles of Chinese reporters (due to weaknesses in BM and English) did not help at all in sticking to the topic! NO SUGGESTIONS were offered by that speaker to overcome the problems highlighted!

Whilst that speaker advocated ONE common language to overcome such problems, no reference to which language was made. A far-fetched idealistic notion, at least to me. If there are good people, they will want to co-exist in harmony and diversity. Why does it have to be ONE language? Other plural societies have existed in harmony as well without using only one language.

Do such generalizations show lack of depth of knowledge  and experience from the outside world?

I was actually shocked that despite the lack of fluency, one of the speakers continued to struggle in English instead of switching to another language.

Most glaringly, the forum showed the deplorable standard in the level of English proficiency when younger members from the floor could not speak fluently with correct pronunciation. One (who works for a political leader) even spoke confidently about 'PLESS" conferences. :-(

The whole talk skimmed the surface of issues. Some of the questions I asked were not answered at all. It was, at best, a trivial discussion and I truly regretted wasting my time there! What was the objective of the forum? Did anyone leave with ideas as to how those challenges could be overcome? I wonder!