On March 24 this year an event in the most powerful nation on this little planet was flashed across the world for its drama, colour and entertainment, for global consumption. Two fine black Afro-American actors walked away with the greatest gift their acting career could offer them.

What was so special about the event this year? Well, suddenly, after 74 years, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences woke up to the fact that its recognition and evaluation of acting ability had been deeply coloured. All this while, good actors who deserved the Academy Award of Merit, the Oscar, were taken, as a matter of practice, to be necessarily whites. So, what are the lessons for us from this event?

Firstly, the practice of racism is not necessarily always a conscious activity. Having become a part of a norm, the choice of white actors and the act to honour them with the Oscar looked and felt normal. The practice of racism had become an act outside the boundaries of a conscious mind embedded in the complex American social history. It is rather a part of a complex configuration of unconscious institutionalised practices. That is what institutions are supposed to do: Remove the cognitive load, along with our critical faculty, from social practices through repetition and patterning.

The normal is therefore the routine, largely submerged deep enough to remain out of the reach of critical attention. Thus, the award of the Oscar to predominantly whites professionals was never taken to be a racist practice or, a racially biased one. Yet somehow, everyone knew that something was not right and that race and ethnicity were implicated in the award of the Oscar. Though not necessarily conscious, entertainment and professional recognition were fleshed out most dramatically and publicly through (hidden) racial discrimination.

Recognition of reality

Secondly, in relation to the above observation, there is another: The outcomes or consequences of an intended action are not always clear. The award of the Oscar had an intended component — recognition of and an award for acting competency/superior performance (in addition, of course, to other competencies related to cinema and film-making). This highly professional activity followed stringent norms, all part of intentional activities.

However, there were unintended consequences of the award ritual — the definite re-production of unequal race relations and sustenance of racism in one of the most popular and colourful institutions in the American society, even as it was being re-produced in other institutional settings. The professionalism of the academys activities also at the same time fleshed out racism, or racially-biased decisions. Does that make the academy less racist in its actual practice?

Thirdly, the recognition of a reality, or an aspect of it, and then endowing it with institutional objectivity (by associating it with a meaningful word, i.e., by naming it, locating its existential sites, developing its institutional support mechanisms, sustaining inter-generational behavioural characteristic, etc.) are critical in addressing it collectively. Such recognition is also important for organising its recovery if and when it becomes part of the unconscious and is lost to individual/collective memory.

Consider this. Whatever criticism we may have of the American administration or however intensely we disagree with its present unreasonable adolescent rampage threatening to take on the world by defining a nation here and a nation there as rogue or as part of the axis of evil, it has worked out a number of comprehensive legislation and institutions on race relations. That provides the tools to constantly, or opportunities to, interpret and recognise realities that sometimes go not articulated, unrecognised and/or unattended.

Thus, today black lawyers are suing companies implicated in slavery and are hoping for a national apology for the wrongs done to the black community and their rights during the time of slavery, which was certainly a major contributor to the development of corporate America.

So was the Oscar event. Not being able to recognise, or the misrecognition of, a reality and the inability to objectify it is certainly a serious social pathological condition. Non-recognition or misrecognition can be genuine or motivated but the problem remains.

Official stance

What has all these got to do with us? With the announcement of the findings of the investigation of racial segregation in Malaysian schools recently, an issue that began sometime the end of last year, suddenly all kinds of persons directed their unreasonable attack on the secretary-general of the National Union of the Teaching Profession, N Siva Subramanian.

Whatever his position is today, Siva then made a revelation of the widespread nature of racial segregation in Malaysian schools, particularly involving the Indian Malaysian community. Without giving him the report of the investigation, it was decided Siva had misunderstood/misrecognised the whole thing and, therefore, needed to tender a public apology. The belief that there are no racism or racial discrimination or racially biased decisions made in this country was being re-asserted again by officialdom. But in Malaysia, it is a highly contested one.

The discussion on segregation in Malaysian schools, or as a commentator from Penang recently suggested, separation, that is going on in our society relates to our serious inability to come to terms with racism or racially informed or directed decision-making, in the public and/or private spheres.

In a society where racial/ethnic inequality is all too obvious, where an indefinite racially-based affirmative action policy is sustained, where residential patterning, occupation and employment recruitment strategies, resources allocation, friendship formations and social affiliations are racially/ethnically motivated, the official stance is that there are no problems between races in Malaysia.

Not in our corporate or private sector. Not in our educational sector. Not in our public and social security sector. Not in the governmental sector.

We are so bent on saying Everything is fine. While some ethnically influenced decision-making is understandable, there are many that directly or indirectly hurt us individually or collectively, drawing our citizenship in a multi-ethnic post-colonial society into question. As a nation, we certainly suffer from collective social blindness.

Institutionally sustained social blindness

This social blindness is, of course, institutionally sustained. Even such an institution as the Malaysian Human Rights Commission or Suhakam, while recognising all kinds of discriminations in this country, does not recognise racism or decisions made on the basis of race/ethnicity that infringe human rights. For whatever reason, it still is not ready to engage with racism in Malaysia.

In addition, given the way mainstream reporting is done in this country, it seems to suggest that even editors like to think that some Malaysians are bent on making big what is really a non-issue and therefore unimportant. They certainly help contribute to the collective farce we like to sustain. What kind of culture and nation are we building?

As a citizen, I really would like to believe that my country is mature enough to be above racism or racial discrimination or racially-biased decision-making. But no matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true. Besides being a conscious one, racism is also certainly a part of our unconscious routine activities or the unintended consequences of some practical response.

In whatever way it may be fleshed out, we need to come to terms with that reality. And address it, consciously and critically. And through such critical engagement build a tradition and culture that are mature enough to be above racism.

M NADARAJAH is a lecturer who is helping to put out a book on Indian issues based on malaysiakini reports.