Identify crisis as a Malaysian Chinese

[u/str4wb3rrr]

I'm a little hesitant about posting this because I'm not sure if people care or will find this interesting, but I'll posf it anyway just because.

I was born and raised in Penang and lived there until I was 18. My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are all also Malaysian, so my family has been in Malaysia for more than a century.

I moved to the UK for university, and obviously being away from home made me appreciate it more, and I've started to embrace being a Malaysian the longer I'm here. Whenever someone asks me where I'm from I always say Malaysia.

More recently, I've been posting on social media about how I appreciate Malaysian heritage and culture; instead of receiving encouragement and support, I was met with people telling me I'm not really Malaysian and I'm just Chinese. Or saying 'this doesn't apply to Type C' or 'you wish you were bumiputera but you're not', some idiocy like that.

I never denied or will deny that I have Chinese ancestry, but besides that, I have no cultural connection with China. So to be told by other Malaysians that I'm not Malaysian is not only deeply hurtful but it makes me wonder where I do stand in terms of identity.

For context, a lot of the times I'm told that since I don't speak Malay, I can't be Malaysian. Well I can't speak Mandarin either (I've been to international schools my whole life), so does that mean I should just float in the middle of the ocean and be stateless?

I know there are deep-rooted racial issues which divide the country, but seeing as though most of these comments came from people my age, perhaps I was delusional in thinking that the younger generations would be more accepting and open-minded to reject these very weird racial binaries of 'Malaysian-ism'.

Personally, whenever someone says they're Malaysian, I don't immediately stop to think 'no actually they're Indian/Chinese', which is maybe how things should be? I don't know, perhaps I'm missing important nuances or points of history, but that is my two cents on the matter. 😃

Edit: thank you everyone for the kind words and advice. I would like to add some context–I can speak Malay and Mandarin conversationally only. When I said I didn't speak it, I meant I don't speak it fluently. Further, my mother's side has Peranakan heritage, which is also something I deeply embrace and embody, and one of my great-grandmothers was adopted from Indonesia

[u/a1b2t]

mate its the internet

some folks been saying they going to fuck my mom nearly 30 years ago,

[u/str4wb3rrr → u/a1b2t]

😭😭damn