I'm writing this letter in response to Saad Hashim's Toyota salesmen and the national language .

When everyone speaks Bahasa Malaysia, will we achieve the so-called "national unity"? Or, to put it another way, would you be hostile toward somebody just because he/she doesn't speak your language?

Ethnic Chinese Indonesians speak good Indonesian among themselves but did the so-called 'national unity' spare them from ethnic-cleansing during social unrest? Black Americans speak good English and are fully integrated into American culture. But aren't they being discriminated against everywhere, anytime just because of their skin colour?

Switzerland has German, French and Italian as official languages in the respective regions where those respective people are the majority. Do you see any problem with the so-called 'national unity' there? What about Quebec in Canada?

In Malaysia, language is always being singled out as the major culprit for the failure of the so-called 'national unity'. But I suppose in a society with a rich diversity of culture, we need a tolerance and respect of cultures which includes the languages of other races. Culture is just about a way of living.

People live in their own community, and speak their won language, because they share a same living style. It doesn't imply that they are hostile to other races. What kind of logic concludes that the so-called 'national unity' is at stake just because Malaysians don't speak the same language, don't enjoy the same food and don't wear the same dress? This is nothing more than a rhetoric of intolerance and xenophobia.

I really wonder how interracial harmony can be fostered in a society with a wide social disparity among the races further worsened by the institutionalised racism. Affirmative action that was supposed to narrow the gap had actually been implemented along the colour of skins. Rather than language, should not the ruling coalition whose component parties were formed along the racial line rather than political ideology be questioned?

From here, I see the culprit of the so-called 'national unity'.