Our Rainbow World

It sounds too idealistic to be true, but black, white, yellow and shades of red all are what make for a beautiful human experience. Celebrate those differences instead of condemning others.

I am always utterly confused when I think about Adolf Hitler’s mad obsession with the supposed superiority of the Aryan race (the blond, blue-eyed figures of his Eva Braun fantasies, not the actual Aryan people of the Indian subcontinent). 

How could one man created by the Almighty believe that he has the almighty power to decide the top-grade race, just like selecting the best type of rice from Thailand or Cianjur?

I know that Hitler, like me, had a mother, only the woman who gave birth to him was white skinned (with, notably, some Jewish blood running through her veins), while my mother was a Chinese-Javanese mix and reportedly descended from a royal concubine.

In this state founded on the Pancasila ideology of many races and many peoples coming together as one, I am, perhaps for reasons of convenience, classified as keturunan, meaning a person of ethnic Chinese descent. 

I am not sure whether the intention of putting me into this category is actually to list me as a second or third-class citizen. If so, my question would be the same as that to Herr Hitler: What’s your reason for making me second best?  

Of course, we do it all the time, in all our lives: short or tall, poor or rich, the son of a pauper or a prince, black or white. It’s part of our societies, from the paradoxical color bar that clouds the thoughts of most Indonesians to the legendary home of the free, the United States, where the world’s greatest democracy still cannot stamp out the scourge of racism. 

I may sound like an unrealistic, idealistic Pollyanna, which is what one friend told me. But I still cannot understand why we cannot live in peace with all our differences, as was drummed into me as an elementary school student. Is my head in the clouds, fed an impossible childhood dream of celebrating our differences that this country cannot actually fulfill?  

A couple of months ago I watched a performance of traditional keroncong music by singer Ubiet. It was interesting to hear, but the next day I was listening again to my usual mix of music, from Mozart, Samson, Maroon 5, Linkin Park and Beyonce. Each in their own way, they are good to listen to with their variations in melodies, notes and rhythm. 

To me, it’s like a musical rainbow that is so beautiful to behold because of the color found within (which may be why the gay community embraced the rainbow as its symbol for acceptance, just as Hitler brandished the swastika as his emblem of hate and fear).

I don’t have cold, hard figures as supporting data, but from my almost half century on this Earth, living in different countries and working in various work environments, I believe that the real barriers to achieving harmony stem from a wounded soul full of envy, vengeance, disappointment and ambition. And insecurity.

It’s easy for these lurking fears to get the better of us, to consume our souls and turn us against others. But I always remember the words of my supervisor many years ago when discussing the finer points of running an office.   

“Creating a work team involves not seeing the differences among us, because if you continue to focus on what is different among us then we will never achieve anything but stay stuck in the same place,” he warned me.

My homework since then has been to never observe the world with the hate-filled perspective of Hitler (or the vindictive despots who preceded and followed him), but instead as someone who gives thanks to God. It’s no different than the first principle of Pancasila declaring Indonesia as one nation under God. 

It should logically follow that any country that respects and loves the Creator would never discriminate against minority ethnic groups, would not systematically keep them oppressed or summarily consider them lesser simply because of the way they look, the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes (I’m not even going to try to fathom how a God-fearing nation can become the world champion for corrupt practices).

But things aren’t that simple, however. And instead of brooding in my frustration, wondering if that venerable Pancasila principle exists today as nothing but cynical lip service, I will live my life my own way. I will look outside, appreciate the beauty of the colorful rainbow and listen to my iPod shuffle.

One of the songs I listen to is our national anthem, Indonesia Raya, with its stirring line, “the land where I spilled my blood”. There is enduring truth in those words; regardless of where we came from or what we look like, we all fought for this nation. And no hateful words, policies or stereotypes can change that.

+ Samuel Mulia 

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