Tag: discrimination

Categories
Liberty Society

[2877] ICERD is not the be all and end all

I did not follow the ICERD debate closely until recently. I felt like the issue rose to national prominence out of nowhere, and then it died a spectacular death before I properly understood what it was all about. If you had asked me what ICERD was, I would be able to mutter some keywords like anti-discrimination before I would exhaust my time trying to be intelligent and having to google Wikipedia to understand it.

Nevertheless, as a layperson with liberal bias, I would gravitate automatically towards supporting ICERD ratification. I consider myself as a liberal, even if these days, some of those who claimed to be liberals in the past feel some kind of political reluctance to wear the label anymore, lest they become superliberals and attract the wrath of their political idols.

And so, I do feel slight disappointment how the ICERD debate has played out. Slight, because I do not think ICERD is one of the most important things in the to do list.

To be honest, while I do not believe in the eye-rolling allegations by its opponents that ICERD would require amending Article 153 of the Constitution, it is unclear to me — and even to other liberals who I have talked to and are more invested in the issues than me — what would entail after its ratification. That makes me feel that a ratification is more of a signalling exercise than anything else. The whole ICERD debate generates more heat than light, partly because the so-what questions have not been addressed, and so giving space to red herring counterargument like “Israel signed ICERD.”

In the end, I think there are many reforms that are more important and urgent that liberals should push first, like electoral reforms including local council elections, instead of ICERD.

But for liberals out that who invested more on the ICERD issue, please do not feel too discouraged. I am reluctant to use this argument but perhaps it is not the right time for it. Perhaps we should continue to do what liberals have been doing: conversations, fora, awareness, understanding, empathy on the ground on values like equality.

That kind of activism would prepare the grounds for a more liberal societal attitude than a sudden ratification of ICERD would do. After all, for changes like these to happen, it usually needs to come from the bottom-up, not from the top-down.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2847] We care because we are capable of empathy

It’s a big, big interconnected world out there. And that interconnectedness, ironically, makes the world smaller is a non-physical sense. Economically, socially and politically. Our lives are no longer affected purely by domestic matters. To some, the foreign affairs segment in the newspapers is an abstraction but for some others, the lines demarcating domestic and foreign concerns are blurry.

These remain the days of globalization still, however the Trumps, the Le Pens, the Farages and all those who long for a smaller world are trying to rewind the clock. They may yet be successful but for now they have a lot to undo. In the meantime, many have multiple homes and multiple affiliations with friends traversing national boundaries, opposing such undoing and rewinding.

For Malaysians, the war in Ukraine so far away across the Asian continent painfully proves the fact foreign affairs are home affairs too. Many Malaysians could not find the country on the map, but it still has an impact on the Malaysian psyche. And Malaysians did care for development in Bosnia during the Balkan War and in Kosovo. They do care about the conflicts in Palestine, in Syria and in Iraq. And to take a trivial example, there are Malaysians who care about the fate of foreign, English Premier League teams, despite not being English themselves.

The refugee crisis in Myanmar is also a Malaysian concern, because these oppressed men, women and children are coming to or passing by Malaysia. Whether we like it or not, we have to act in one way or another. Pretending the imaginary lines on a 2-dimensional map as an impregnable wall ensuring that is not our problem will not help by one bit. And to turn back the boats is not just an illiberal policy, it is heartless.

In the several years after the 9/11 attack, I became a victim of profiling at US airports, just because of my nationality and my Arab-sounding name. Security personnel would put me under extra security measures and screening. That discouraged me from leaving the US for home for the next four years for fear I would face immigration troubles upon reentry at the airports. I knew of other international students who needed to report to the Homeland Security office regularly, and I feared being subjected to the same requirement as an entry condition.

And so, I spent my entire time as a student in Michigan travelling throughout the US, reaching New York, DC, Miami, San Francisco, St Louis, Chicago, Sioux Falls and more. I remember how it felt like to drive the car through the Great Plains from the Great Lakes, or how peaceful it was staring into the night sky from the bottom of the Tuolumne Canyon just north of Yosemite in California. I learned to love America for the wonders it brought to my young mind.

Indeed, my political beliefs to a large degree were shaped in the US. However flawed the US is with all of its hypocrisies, it is still the greatest liberal democracy that the world has. It is the Athens, the Rome, the Baghdad, the Cordoba and the Delhi of our time. Just because of that, I looked up to it. Because of this and because I spent a significant portion of my early adult life there, if I had a second home, the US would be it.

When Trump and his followers do what they do, and among others equating the US to Russia, I feel that is an undoing of what the United States of America is supposed to be in my eyes, a foreigner, who looks kindly to the east across the Pacific. Trump is killing the US that I know, and by that, threatening the idea of liberal democracy all around the world (even in Malaysia where our democracy is becoming increasingly flawed and more authoritarian). That makes me angry.

The Trump’s ban, now challenged in the courts, adds further to the anger. My alma mater, the University of Michigan, is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. And I am entertaining thoughts of returning to Ann Arbor to catch the festivities and walk down the memory lane. Trump’s ban, could potentially affect me. I still remember my experiences at various US airports during the Bush era. I thoroughly dislike the discrimination and I do not wish on others what I went through.

So, I do care for things that if happening in the US. The world is interconnected enough that I have real attachments to the US. Needless to say, I have friends in the US too.

But one does not need to have personal ties to the US to be worried about development in the US. It is just like how some of us are concerned about the oppression in Xinjiang, or in Iran, or in Egypt, or in the Philippines or anywhere else without the need to have any personal connection.

Even if we cannot think of ways which a reclusive, protectionist US could affect Malaysia — it will by the way: HSBC economists think Malaysia will be one of the top four economies to be worst affected by a protectionist US — we can still care because we have empathy for other human beings. Injustice or discrimination anywhere is still wrong and we can take a position on the matter. We can make personal judging based on our values. We have enough room for empathy those near and far beyond our shores.

Because of our capacity of empathy and because of the interconnectedness of the world we live in, it is outrageous to think we have to choose between caring US-based or Malaysia-based issues. Both are causes for concerns. I care for the deplorable things happening in the US, and at the same time, I care about the 1MDB corruption scandal, or the blockade in Kelantan, along with other injustices in the Malaysian society I am living in.

Indeed, it is a false dichotomy having to choose the US or Malaysia. There is no reason why a Malaysian needs to choose between the two. We can be concerned for both, and more.

More importantly, there are liberal values and among them are that we all are created equal and all should have the same fundamental rights. This applies all around the world, not just in and around your small neighborhood.

In time when anti-liberal populists are turning national policies inward, it will be most disappointing to have liberals retreating to a small-world cocoon as well. Such inward retreat would be a betrayal of liberal belief, that liberal values are universal in nature and not provincial. We fight racism, discrimination and everything bad out there by staying true to our liberal values, not by abandoning it.

Categories
Economics

[2542] The ageism of minimum wage

In general, minimum wage affects the labor market negatively. At some level, it will increase the unemployment rate. That may happen either through direct disemployment as employers struggle to meet the cost, or through the freezing or insufficient job creation growth as the labor force increase. Whatever it is, I believe the relationship between minimum wage and unemployment rate is relatively well-publicized and many who are serious about the issue do know of the relationship. The lay proponents of minimum wage still promote their policy but they do know that relationship is a wall to scale.

There are other less publicly known effects. Discrimination against small firms is one. The adverse impact on low-skilled workers is two. There are others.

Here is another and it is the distribution effect across age.

Consider two workers of the same skills. Worker A is 25 years old. Worker B is 50 years old.

Both qualify for minimum wage.

If an employer had to choose between the two for a low-skilled job, which would the employer employ?

Without hesitation, I would take the younger one if I was the employer.

Between a 25 years old and at 50 years old, it is very likely that the 25 years old will be the preferred choice of anyone with profit-motive. He is young and that means he has better health than his older counterpart in general. There are other factors of course like attitude and initiative (if the particular person in his 20s is a damn punk and the 50 years old person is a nice old lady, I will employ the lady) but there are many reasons to think that an employer can squeeze more productivity out of the young worker than out of the older worker for a given wage, on average.

For those who know their economic jargon, then that means the younger worker offers better marginal product than the older worker will on average. In simpler terms, the younger worker offers greater productivity than the older worker.

How about experience? Surely experience works in favor of the older workers, right? Remember however that low-skilled jobs require little training. The kind of jobs requires no or little experience. That effectively discounts experience as a consideration.

When one pays a person according to his or her productivity without any restriction on compensation, then one can employ anybody up to any number until your last marginal product of labor is no longer positive. Note the causality: your productivity determines your wage. The first determination is your productivity and your wage is a function of your productivity.

Under minimum wage, the wage is the first determination and your productivity now is a function of your wages. Here, wage is the first determination because an employ know his cost and he will want to find workers with the productivity that matches the cost that is minimum wage. This immediately limit the kind of workers that the employer will employ.

Now, go back to the productivity of the young and the older workers mentioned in the beginning. Older workers will have lower productivity to younger workers. That is an immediate disadvantage in terms of employability in the age of minimum wage.

I think this point is important because a lot of younger workers do not really need a job. Many are out of school and are merely looking for extra pocket money to have some fun. These young workers will qualify for minimum wage. They do not need the jobs. The jobs are merely summer job so-to-speak, not necessarily part-time too.

Compare this to older workers who qualify for minimum wage. This type of older workers will likely need the minimum wage jobs more than the younger workers. They are in it to survive.

Controlling for everything else, minimum wage can hurt the workers that, arguably, the policy of minimum wage is supposed to help. Yet, the policy hurt those that it is set out to help.

Categories
Society

[2456] There is a silver lining behind the Seksualiti Merdeka ban

The Annexe Gallery is Bohemian. It is a world of its own, very different from the rest of banal Malaysian life. It attracts anything but the conservative. Its taste in art is different. Its taste in politics is different. It is young, urban, middle-class and it challenges mainstream culture. It is a special spot in Kuala Lumpur.

All kinds of festivals are held there. Farish Noor is always there to share his alternative understanding of history to challenge the official narrative. In many ways, the larger Central Market Annexe is a center of subversive politics. Hishamuddin Rais used to run a small eatery there, patronized by so many Malaysian lefties, and sometimes, yours truly too. I was there not so much of my support for his mostly left politics. I was there just because I was hungry.

And then, Pang Khee Teik is always there to make anything happen. From what I understand and observe, Pang is the pillar for anything at the Annexe. He made the Annexe what it is today. Fringe but fun. Small but popular.

Pang or really the Annexe Gallery has been organizing Seksualiti Merdeka for a number of years now without any controversy. I took that rather nonchalantly but in retrospect, it was an impressive feat. After all, to organize a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender festival in a jumpily religious Malaysia is not something advisable to do. But those festivals went on anyway, and because it was nationally politically uneventful, I thought nothing much of it. The failure to note what was supposed to be an outlier in a conservative society is perhaps a mental lapse of mine.

But I was not really interested in the fair, despite being aware of it. It is not a Mardi Gras as celebrated in Sydney. The Seksualiti Merdeka festival typically occupies merely a floor of a restored colonial shophouse. It is not big at all, size-wise. It is just some people with booths, forums and maybe performance in a privately-owned premise.

The thought of the festival’s outrageous success to go on without any repercussions within conservative context struck me only after when the Malaysian authority suddenly decided to ban the festival. Some conservatives finally took notice. It is apparent that the festival succeeded previously because the authority or the wider society did not know about the festival.

Now they know of it and decide to ban it.

The ban is a timely reminder for all of us that the LGBT community suffers from extreme prejudice and discrimination by both the state and by the wider society.

That is the silver lining. It raises the profile of the LGBT community in Malaysia and their challenges. Whereas previously the term LGBT would not appear at all in mainstream media, the past several days signaled a change.

That change is both for the better and for the worse. It is for the better because it pushes the boundary of acceptability. It is for the worse for some LGBT community members perhaps, if they want to live a quiet life.

I am not a member of the LGBT community and so, maybe I do not appreciate too much of the preference to stay in the closet. I am not at risk when I see the need for them to come out of the closet. But they need to know that for all the condemnation they receive, there are those whom will put up a thumb-up for the courage they garner.

In any fight against societal discrimination, there will always be a relatively challenging time. That is when the society first becomes aware.  That awareness is an important first stage of any anti-discrimination fight. Without awareness, there can be no fight for equality.

So fight the ban. But take heart if the first fight is lost. It is merely the first step towards a better future.

Categories
Conflict & disaster Personal Society

[2428] How September 11 2001 affected me?

I have told this story many times to friends.

I just woke up from sleep. It was sometime between 8AM and 9AM. My first semester at Michigan. The first or the second week of class. Chemistry class was due at 10AM. Or really, ten after ten. It was Michigan time, you see.

I needed to print some notes and check my email before class. So, I came down from my room and saw a notice on the door of the computing lab at the basement of the Michigan Union. There was a national emergency, it said. The office was closed. I had no idea what the emergency was about.

I logged on the computer, went on Yahoo! and saw a burning World Trade Center. This must be a hoax, I told myself. It was too outrageous to believe.  I dismissed it.

I was young, barely 19, and was still processing what was going on.

I went to class anyway, not wanting to miss anything. I rushed across the Diag, on a possibly clear blue morning.

There was none to be had. The professor was there and the class was a little bit more than half-full, but everybody came to realize something bigger was happening. The Twin Towers had collapsed. Class, dismissed.

Elsewhere, there were talks of repercussion. Friends through emails were warning of backlash against Muslim students. That also included most Malaysian students in the United States. There was fear.

I had heard of stories of xenophobia elsewhere, but I did not suffer from it throughout my 4 years as a Michigan undergraduate. Not ever. Maybe it was the liberal nature of Ann Arbor compared to some other parts of the US, but never once I became a victim of xenophobia.

The weeks and months following the attack formed lasting impression of the US society in my mind. It was one of admiration. There were fierce debates throughout the years about what was right and what was wrong. But the society itself survived the illiberal tidal wave that threatened individual liberty. Coming from a relatively, very much closed society that prevailed in Malaysia then, the societal dynamic of the new world was enticing and refreshing. I was impressed at the US society despite all the criticisms against it.

It was in the US where I found my values.

I have always said that I became a libertarian because of my experience in Michigan. Now, I think I became a civil libertarian because of the September 11 attack. I did not have a label to point at then, but in retrospect, I knew September 11 was the seed for me.

I saw how a free society can regulate itself and overcome fear and distrust. There was little prejudice around even after the attack to completely unravel the argument that a free society will self-destruct, an idea that was prevalent in Malaysia, and maybe still is.

And I saw how freedom needed to be defended from fear and distrust. I saw friends were forced to report to the Department of Homeland Security in Detroit regularly, just because they came from certain countries. Every time I needed to board the plane, the security team would select me for extra screening, just because I am a Malaysia. I took that as racial profiling and I despised that. It was insulting.

That too, strengthened my view on racial discrimination.

I visited New York later in 2002. I visited the site of the World Trade Center. It moved me.

September 11 was not just some event that happened on the other side of the world. It happened on my side of the planet. It deeply was personal.