Thread by @uglyluhan

Well it's not incorrect to say that Malays are indigenous to peninsular Malaysia. I'm not sure what started this conversation but I guess some explanations are in order on the "whites of Malaysia" statement

https://twitter.com/Burger4UJB/status/1316555668988411905

First, while I do consider Malays to be indigenous, it would be inaccurate to compare the Malay community to the original inhabitants, who are of course the orang asli that have been living here far earlier

https://twitter.com/uglyluhan/status/1182567962219352064?s=19

Secondly, while it is true that one of the orang asli groups are dubbed Melayu Asli (Proto-Malay), they arrived long before the ancestors of today's Malay majority, and have a distinct culture. To think of them as just "wild Malays" is neocolonialism

https://twitter.com/uglyluhan/status/1182569888432263168?s=19

Malays do have a strong "claim" to the land, in my opinion, not just by virtue of having been here for a long time but also for forging the first civilisations (as we would define the term anyway) in the peninsula

https://twitter.com/uglyluhan/status/1181867474737696774?s=19

The latter is of course a tenuous claim since white supremacists often say the same thing. Terra nullius was used a justification for colonists usurping land from natives who were considered "primitive"

australianstogether.org.au/discover/austr…

But to respond to the main point of the quoted tweet, are Malays too indigenous to be called the whites of Malaysia? The answer is.. no. Malay Muslims are absolutely the Malaysian equivalent of white Christians in North America. How so?

First of all, Malays are in the majority, and have all the privilege that entails. If nothing else, that alone would justify the "whites of Malaysia" tag. And if that offends you, I regularly say the same about other dominant ethnic groups, eg. the Han are the whites of China

Most Filipinos are indigenous to their country in the "pribumi" sense, yet the mainstream majority are not categorised as Indigenous Peoples. To put Malaysian Malays in that category is an insult

https://twitter.com/oona_paredes/status/1317198472030736384?s=19

Second, despite Chinese dominance in the business sector, Malays really do hold the power. It's unlikely we'll have a non-Malay PM any time soon. No political party will get far without Malay support, except in minority enclaves

And unlike white privilege which has been described as an "invisible force", Malay privilege is not invisible at all. Whether rightly or wrongly, it's enshrined in our constitution. Malaysians don't doubt its existence

sinarharian.com.my/article/54244/…

Third, although Malays have closer cultural and historical ties to the orang asli than white Australians have with their Aborigines, the basic story is the same. People lived here, another group settled later and became the majority, often at the original peoples' expense

Fourth, discrimination by the majority against the indigenous minorities existed historically and still does today. The orang asli were once captured as slaves. For an orang asli to really "make it big" in pre-colonial society meant becoming Malay, like Si Tanggang

The same assimilation policies once used by white colonists in America and Australia are still being carried out among the orang asli today, in the name of religion, education, and "development"

https://twitter.com/uglyluhan/status/1182571378970517504?s=19

And finally, if Malays are not the whites of Malaysia, then why does the Malay far-right use the exact same ethnonationalist rhetoric as the American alt-right? Phrases like "self-hating" and "race traitor". Irrational fears of being overtaken by minorities. I could go on

Malaysia is its own country so there will always be differences with any place we compare ourselves to. But in every way, it is undeniable to any objective mind that Malays are the whites of Malaysia, and being "indigenous" doesn't change that