The last I remember of that Chinese boy was a streak of white running towards the school gates, away from the 100-odd group of boys who were there that afternoon to kick his arse.
Class had finished 15 minutes earlier, and I walked to see the entire second-floor corridor filled with people. The crowd was converging on a classroom down the corridor. Next to me, a few Malay boys were laughing and talking about the fight that was about to happen.
I pushed my way through the throng of boys to the centre of the crowd, where I saw one of my friends. “What’s up?” I asked him.
He looked at me and laughed. “Nothing that concerns you. Don’t get involved in this.”
I shrugged. “I’m not intersted in getting involved, but, seriously, what’s up?”
“Ah, nothing much. Just this new boy. He moved here recently, and already he was rude to” so and so, he said, naming one of the boys from my class. “He challenged him to a fight.”
“Then what’s with everybody here?” I asked. It was a disparate crowd that filled the corridors. The offended party, a Chinese guy, was in the centre of the crowd with his Chinese friends, all ready for whatever was going to happen. A group of Indian boys was talking with them. From the periphery of the crowd, a group of Malays was pushing inwards.
“Nothing. Hey, man, seriously, it’s none of your business, you should leave.”
“Okay,” I said, but of course I stuck around to watch.
The crowd grew bigger. People were talking about how the fight had started, with whole new theories of creation appearing, mostly predicated on rumour and bullshit. “Even the Malays have got into this,” one guy next to me said to his friend. “All three races coming together. Muhibbah, man.”
I agreed. It looked like a slightly twisted Petronas advertisement. A new Chinese kid on the block pissing off an older Chinese guy, and everybody comes together regardless of race to teach the kid a lesson.
In the end, the fight never happened. The boy showed up, all spunk and machismo, to face a very pissed off bunch of guys. Whatever bravery he had quickly drained out of him as soon as he saw the multiracial, hundred-strong group ready to kick his arse. I could only just see him from my vantage point at the sidelines, tearing hell back down the stairs and out for the school gates. He was thoroughly spooked.
This happened years ago, when I was still in secondary school, but it has stuck in my head because it’s an inspiring story.
Back then, we congregated mostly around the language we spoke. But teenagers really don’t care about race, unless we’re told that we have to. Teachers play a considerable role in teaching students how to think. Racist teachers, like a certain headmistress and her senior assistant, don’t help matters.
To the growing teenage mind, everything needs to be black and white. He’s my friend, he’s not my friend. That’s the reason why cliques and groups exist in school. They cater to the need to feel like you belong somewhere.
Cases of bullying and fights in school, then, are simply an extension of that us-versus-them mindset. Much of the time, they can be resolved with a little effort at disciplining those involved. But racist incidents like the one that happened recently at SMK Tasek Mutiara are what you get when teachers throw racism into the mix.