What every Malaysian needs to know about ‘race’.Part 2: Exploring and disaggregating ‘bangsa’

What every Malaysian needs to know about ‘race’.Part 2: Exploring and disaggregating ‘bangsa’: By Clive Kessler

What every Malaysian needs to know about ‘race’.Part 2: Exploring and disaggregating ‘bangsa’ By Clive Kessler | February 15, 2012 The Malaysian Insider FEB 15 — So important in private thinking and central to public discussion of Malaysia’s most fateful challenges, the word bangsa, it was suggested in Part 1, is inherently vague, complexly ambiguous. It is a general, multi-purpose word that yokes closely together a number of related but ultimately differing ideas. That is the strength and value of the word. By bringing a number of divergent things together, it helps us to compress and condense out thinking and, then too, the verbalisation of our thoughts. It makes possible all sorts of mental “short-cuts” around difficult issues. It even enables us to imagine that the difficulties around which we make those tricky short-cuts are not there, that they do not exist at all. T...

Full article: http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2012/02/15/what-every-malaysi...