What is Race?
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word ‘race’ means one of the main groups that humans can be divided into according to their physical differences, for example the colour of their skin. Race also means a group of people who share the same language, history, culture and etcetera. Based on Wikipedia, race or racial group usually refers to the concept of dividing humans into populations or groups based on certain characteristics. In other words, race or racial group is a term used to segregate humans based on their physical characteristics like skin colour, facial features and hair texture, their common descent or heredity and the language they use daily.
There are four main races that exist in the face of this earth. They are Caucasians, Mongolians, Negroes and Australoids. Caucasians or also known as white people are subdivided into three subdivisions. The subdivisions are Nordic race, the Alpine race and the Iberian race. Mongolians are usually identified by their yellow skin, straight black hair and their sturdy body. Negroes are also known as Africans or black people. They are easily identified by their dark skin and curly hair texture. Australoids are mainly Australian aborigines and native people of Papua New Guinea. Australoids have the same skin and hair characteristics as Negroes but they have a smaller body.
Racial Prejudice in Television Commercial
Prejudice according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary means an unreasonable dislike of or preferences for a person, group, custom and etcetera especially when it is based on their race, religion, sex and etcetera. When a person or a group starts to develop positive or negative preferences towards another person or group just on the basis of their race, it is called racial prejudice. Racial prejudice will lead to stereotyping. According to the same dictionary, stereotype is a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not true in reality. In other words, racial stereotyping is having the idea that everyone from a certain race has the same characteristics.
In Malaysia, racial prejudice is quite strong among the multiple races available. Malaysians tend to have negative prejudices towards people from a different race than theirs. This becomes worse when the media always portray different races with specific characteristics or behaviour. For example, in television shows, commercials and movies most ‘Ah Long’ or loan sharks are Chinese, drunkards are usually Indians and ‘Mat Rempit’ or street racers are Malays.
In 1986, former Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone mentioned that the average American intellectual standard is lower than the average Japanese intellectual standard because of the black and Hispanic people in America. He also said Japanese’s ‘racial homogeneity’ is their strength. In 1997, Professor Lino Graglia from University of Texas Law School mentioned that “Black and Mexican-Americans are not competitive with the whites in certain institution because their culture does not encourage achievement and in their culture failure is not a big issue. These two statements are the most common racial prejudice we can see in the world today. People always see black and Hispanic people as people with average achievement because they are stereotyped as being intellectually challenged. While Japanese people in the other hand are always portrayed as being the smartest people in the world. And people also see all Japanese as a nerd or weird because they are being stereotyped like that.
In television commercials we can often see black and Hispanic people portrayed in a negative way too. They always show black people being a couch potato who eats a lot of chicken or burgers and they always show Hispanic women on the beach or walking through town slacking around. Black and Hispanic people are also always linked to the street gangs and drug dealing. It has become something like a common knowledge to think like that.
The same goes in Malaysia. Everyone has their own stereotype towards people from different racial groups. Malays have their own stereotyping towards Indians and Chinese. Commonly Malays and Chinese would try to avoid Indians because they are stereotyped as cruel and cannot be trusted. Malays and Indians stereotype Chinese as being greedy. Indians and Chinese on the other hand stereotype Malays as lazy and always depending on the special Bumiputra privilege. This can be widely seen in local television commercials. The stereotyping of the main races in Malaysia is so common until the races being stereotyped can accept the stereotyping.
In Malaysia we try to avoid racial dispute by adapting to these stereotyping but seriously this has to stop because it is like a cancer that will kill us sooner or later. Television commercials try to use these stereotyping as humour to entertain the viewers. But, all these acts are just one of the various ways to promote racial prejudice. We might laugh at the racial jokes inside a television commercial but unconsciously we will cultivate racial prejudice towards other races.
For example, the Perodua’s Chinese New Year 2008 commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQxuAnY23Bs) is openly promoting stereotyping. It clearly labels the ‘Ah Long’ or loan sharks as Chinese. When the issue of ‘Ah Long’ or loan sharks became popular a few years back, people has always been seeing these loan sharks as being Chinese people. We even gave them a Chinese name. This is because the biggest cases are involving Chinese loan sharks. The media started to label them as ‘Ah Long’ as a media sensation but it also automatically labels loan sharks as Chinese.
In the TV3’s Hari Raya 2007 commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq5Y6cwmPzo), it shows how a person can be very prejudice of another person from a different race. It shows how a Malay lady assumes the Chinese man sitting next to her is eating the food she just bought. But the truth is that Chinese man happens to buy the same food and he is eating his own. This shows how a person can become prejudice just because the other person comes from a different race. It might be hilarious but think again. Should we prejudge a person just by his or her race? This is one of the racial prejudices that exist in our community subconsciously.
Television commercial producers might claim all these racial prejudice is just for entertainment but the reality is it promotes social conflict. Children who have no idea about what is social prejudice might see one of these commercials and subconsciously start to cultivate social prejudice. Media controls what people think and talk about. But do we really want to pollute our minds with racial prejudices?
