An honest criticism is the first step towards identifying and subsequently, rectifying mistakes. In a society sensitive to ethnic issues such as in Malaysia, such honest criticism may be hard to make when it crosses ethnic lines. By crossing, I mean to say the critic and the criticized belong to different communities. Too often, innocent criticisms that cut communal boundaries are taken as acts close to racism if not racism itself, with the concept of non-interference is applied thoroughly.
That is an unfortunate tendency which may show that how far a person is from a racialist worldview. I suspect the misperception of an honest criticism as something racial in nature is closely related to a person’s inability to take criticism as well as personal bias.
When criticized, instead accepting the criticism attributing as directed towards his own mistake, he seeks to attribute such criticism to something unrelated to the mistake, thus putting the criticism in a way that it might be unjustified. In doing so, he changes the subject from honest criticism to something else. For a criticism that cuts communal barriers, if the criticized person views his world through communal lens, race or other communal-identifying factors become the obvious candidate for the purpose of diversion.
Sometimes, honest misunderstanding may occur but even then, there must be a basis for such misunderstanding. I am inclined to believe that certain misunderstanding is based on a person’s consciousness of communal-identifying factors, possibly placing too much emphasize on race, etc rather than the criticism on the mistake itself. In this case, when such criticism is made, the first thing that comes to his mind is skin color, etc — which is irrelevant to honest criticism — instead of the beef of the criticism itself.
In many cases, the concept of non-interference is held with utmost jealousy by communities. Any criticism coming from outside a community would be deemed as interference and only criticism coming from inside the community could be taken as sometimes legitimate. I could offer a few instances as examples to illustrate my point. Religious conservative Muslims in Malaysia do have problems having non-Muslims to criticize the status of religious freedom within Muslim Malaysian community. Another is the example was when EU ambassador to Malaysia, Thierry Rommel criticized Malaysian discriminatory economic policies. Malaysian political leaders in turn told the EU to stop meddling in Malaysian affairs.
These two possible causes do not make an exhaustive list but they are particularly important to recognize in politics. For a society that places too much political correctness rather than truth, along with one’s the ability to divert attention as mentioned earlier, any poor critic would find himself being unfairly accused of being a racist by too many people whom are particularly adept at coming up with conclusions only after piercing any issue only skin deep. In the end, if the critic does not have the stomach to fight on active or passive misconception, the mistake which the critic had pointed out would be drowned, forgotten and left uncorrected.
For this reason, in a society as diverse as Malaysia, it is perhaps desirable for any legitimate criticism to be kept inside a community, where the critics and the criticized belong to the same community. Through this, at least, communal issues could not be used to divert attention. More importantly, pragmatically speaking, is that any for legitimate politically-related criticism is to be made, it is good to have partners with different background. When there is communal difference between the would-be critic and the would-be criticized, the critic would be better off to find a partner to eliminate the communal difference and have the partner to criticize would-be criticized.
This is a sad conclusion that appeals to pragmatism, if the assumptions are true. It is sad because the art of criticism itself becomes the victim of racism, trying to avoid the diversion the non-interference policy grants. It is sad for the highest moral demands honest criticisms against all wrongs, regardless whether if it cuts communal lines.