Racism from the margins: Theorizing Malaysian Chinese Racism

In response to the need for a more plural theorization of racism, as well as Chen Kuan-hsing’s (2010) call for scholars to engage with the issue of ‘racism in the Han-centric worldview’, this paper theorizes Han Chinese racism in Malaysia. The Chinese in Malaysia exist as a minority group within a country where they have been marginalized by Malay political parties, and excluded from the benefits of affirmative action policies. Theorizing Han Chinese racism in this context requires conceptualizing racism as a phenomenon which can be perpetuated by a minoritized group which is itself the target of racialized violence.   

This paper argues that the racialized social system offers a framework for theorizing Han Chinese racism in Malaysia. This posits that Malay and Chinese Malaysians engage in racial contestation based on social and material rewards along ethnic lines, and racial ideologies are utilized to rationalize, justify or contest the distribution of these rewards. Drawing from qualitative interviews conducted with middle-class Malaysian Chinese, I argue that Malaysian Chinese are able to develop racial ideologies which complement the belief in Han Chinese cultural and civilizational superiority, both in spite of and because of, their position as a marginalized population within the context of Malay supremacy and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. This paper explores how in the context of the fluid racial hierarchies and intersecting oppressions which characterize countries such as Malaysia, racial discourses from both majority and minority ethnic populations can be utilized to justify racism against those deemed as Others.