COMMENT A few years ago I stepped into a two-bedroom low-cost flat in a suburb of greater Kuala Lumpur.

I was there to interview the family of an alleged gang member who was shot dead by police the week before. He was only 16 years old.

The boy lived with his parents and their several children in this flat that could not be more than 600 square feet.

Sitting across his grieving mother in the airless living room, our knees just a foot-and a half apart, I asked her to recount the night her son died.

She said the last time she saw the boy, he was hanging out with his friends at the void deck, as he usually does at nights.

But according to his friend who returned his helmet to the boy’s mother the morning after, they had gone to a cybercafé at around midnight.

There, the boy met up with some people this friend didn’t recognise, and he (the boy) left with them in a car.

All this while, his parents were working at a tom yam stall next to the block of flats. When he wasn’t home when she got back after closing shop in the wee hours, the mother started to get worried.

The next thing she knew, her son was dead, gunned down after allegedly fleeing a robbery scene. The parents insist this is not true. Their son, shot square in the forehead, was not a criminal.

As I watched the videos of the mob of young men at Low Yat Plaza in Kuala Lumpur, yelling racist remarks against the Chinese on Sunday night, I remembered this boy.

If he was still alive, could he have been friends with these young men? Could he have ridden pillion with a friend, travelling 15 minutes to Bukit Bintang from the working class flats and squatter homes of Kampung Datuk Keramat and Kampung Pandan, to yell racial epithets?

The 'muhibbah' front

Hours after the midnight brawl in front of the Low Yat mall, US-based Malaysian journalist Kuek Ser Kuang Keng decided to do something to reverse the negativity he is seeing on social media.

Kuek Ser uploaded a picture of his friends of different races holding a Malaysian flag in a park, and encouraged others to do the same.

“It is both a political and economic issue but painted as a racial issue, as always. Many have pointed that out. But I think the majority needs a platform to speak up.

“So far the extremists and racists have been dominating the discourse, which is not only unhealthy but may escalate the situation.

“I was thinking about a simple way that can catch attention and include everyone to join, hence the #Muhibbah #WeAreFamily campaign. Hopefully it helps to stall the agenda of the perpetrators,” Kuek told me.

Looking at the picture he uploaded, I saw people not unlike myself – middle-class people who most likely grew up in multiracial neighbourhoods and schools, who have friends of all races.

I thought of the boy again.

I thought of the flat he grew up in, the neighbours who poked their heads out to the shared corridor to see who these people were with the video camera, the young boys hanging around playing checkers and football at the void deck, the boy’s younger brother who sat in his father’s lap during the interview.

If the boy had lived, would he be able to take the same picture? Will he have friends from different races to be able to put up a picture and and tag it #WeAreFamily? Who will they be, and where will he have met them?

Young men whipped into a frenzy

It is common belief that what happened at Low Yat would not have happened without instigation. That these young men were whipped up into a frenzy because those instigating used the mobile phone incident and subsequent brawl to say, 'Look, the Chinaman is cheating Malays again'.

Well, if that’s the case, why isn’t everyone falling for it? Why are the 'WeAreFamily' hashtag followers not similarly instigated?

Are they just smarter, or is it divine providence that by a stroke of luck, they were not born to a family in a Keramat Jaya flat, where an academic study on urban poverty in Kuala Lumpur found just under 100 percent of respondents are Malay and poor?

The study, published in the International Journal of Ethics in Social Sciences last year, had a sample size of 300 households, and was conducted in three parliamentary constituencies in Kuala Lumpur – Kepong, Segambut and Titiwangsa.

The researchers, Mohd Wahid Murad et al, said they chose the three constituencies because all three had dominant races.

Electoral data shows Kepong is 89 percent Chinese, Segambut 53 percent Chinese and Titiwangsa 68 percent Malay.

But what they did not expect was that among the low-income communities of these inner-city constituencies, almost all of the respondents in each area were from a single race.

In other words, one is hard-pressed to find a non-Chinese person living in the low-income areas of Jinjang or a non-Malay in a low-cost flat of Keramat or a non-Indian living in a squatter area in Sentul.

Mono-ethnic ghettos

What this means is that in these areas of KL, children are growing up in struggling households located in mono-ethnic ghettos.

However, strip the ethnicity aspect of the data and you’ll find that most of the families surveyed have similar characteristics.

For example, the average household income for each area surveyed is less than RM1,000 a month while at least a third of the respondents for each area have only primary schooling. Less than one percent have university degrees.

But how will those growing up in Keramat Jaya know that the struggles of their families to make ends meet is the same as the Chinese families in Jinjang, or an Indian families in Sentul Pasar?

I earnestly hope that those growing up in the low-cost flats and squatters of San Peng, Loke Yew, Pudu, Pantai Dalam, Kampung Pandan and the many, many mono-ethnic, low-income areas just like these in KL can all easily take pictures with their multiracial friends.

The statistics, however, suggest that this is an act of futility.

When life is hard and you’re forced to sleep on a mattress you share with your 12-year-old brother in the living room, and someone tells you this minority race is not only rolling in cash, but cheating you at the same time, who would you believe?

Would you believe someone familiar, or the strange, sinister other?

AIDILA RAZAK is a member of the Malaysiakini team.

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