I'm so relieved to read Dr Musa Mohd Nordin's letter amidst so much online racial bashing. Like all parents, I have great hopes that my children will top their chosen fields. My daughters are straight A students as are many of her other Malay friends.

They are in ordinary neighbourhood schools in the city. They have never been hand-picked for any special treatment. They have to fight for every morsel of recognition from teachers and fellow students. They have to prove their worth many times over to get enough votes for positions in extracurricular activities.

These are no ordinary challenges for 16 and 17-year-olds in schools where they are a minority.

Often, my daughters lament the cruel racial slurs made by teachers towards the Malays which only seek to reinforce the prejudices of their non-Malay peers. My daughters have come home many times full of anger at the 'unfairness' of it all.

I have often wondered if it is better to have them transferred to a less 'toxic' environment but I think not. I told them this is the future that they need to get used to. Affirmative action notwithstanding, the world of employment, in the main, will be controlled by the non- bumiputeras.

If they want their pie, they better learn to fight for it. Who says the field will be a level one even if we do away with affirmative action? I suspect it will be even less so in future.

Having taken this stand, I am nevertheless very disturbed by the continual Malay-bashing in urban schools where non-Malays predominate. Some are downright obnoxious, others done along more subtle lines.

My daughters had been to ordinary schools abroad where we were mere wage earners. They were aware of racial biases in the countries we had lived in just as they were greatly appreciative of the friendships they had with people of other races.

It distresses me that we cannot be more tolerant towards one another; that my daughters feel this great divide between them and their non-Malay peers which are stoked by us adults; that they need to take sides when they'd rather not take sides with anybody at all and just live their teen years free of such encumbrances.

I am sometimes sad that they feel compelled to strive so hard to gain acceptance from their non-Malay peers and teachers while the non-Malay students are spared such. This situation is representative of many bright Malay students who are in ordinary city schools. My daughters and her friends have resigned themselves to seeking places in local universities as opposed to the hand-picked students in residential schools.

Will they also then be labelled as 'incompetents' and 'undeserving' compared with their non- Malay peers? It is grossly unfair to judge them such after having endured so much to prove their worth during their school years.

I would like other non-Malay parents to know that discrimination is not just a problem of the non-Malays. We Malays face it too in many areas of our lives and in the less than desirable perceptions of our fellow citizens. Let's give our children a chance to live together in a less 'hurtful' environment.