Sin Chew Daily

To Malaysia, racializing everything is no longer a novel issue. That said, it remains alarming and worrying to segregate sports events during the school's extracurricular activities along racial lines.

A secondary school in Johor has specified that several sports events in the school's extracurricular activities are only open for the participation of students from a particular ethnic group. For instance, football and sepak takraw are reserved for Malay students, British women's basketball for female Malay students, while table tennis and basketball for Chinese students only.

Such differentiation has sparked tremendous uproar and spawned controversies over racialization of sports activities at schools.

After the incident came to light, deputy education minister Mah Hang Soon immediately instructed the school authorities to retract the decision, while education senior minister Mohd Radzi Md Jidin said dividing sports activities at schools along racial lines contravenes the objectives of implementing such activities at schools.

It is learned that the school has explained that such a ruling is necessary because of the limited sports facilities at the school in order to attract Malay students uninterested in sports to take part in the activities.

Such a reasoning is hardly convincing, though. The school should not have such divisive ruling just because it wants to attract the students to take part in sports activities.

Fortunately such a measure has met with strong disapproval among most of the people and the education ministry has taken immediate steps to rectify the problem.

Lest we forget, interracial harmony is of utmost importance to a multicultural society like ours. Racially segregative measures must never be introduced at schools on whatsoever excuses.

On the contrary, schools should be a place to promote greater unity and interracial harmony among students from different cultural backgrounds. They must instill the right values and attitudes in our students, and must not have any differential policies.

Moreover, sports by right should transcend all human boundaries and act as a cohesive force to bring all people together. All Malaysians irrespective of race must come together cheering for our athletes just like what we did in front of our own TV boxes when Lee Chong Wei was contesting in the Olympics representing Malaysia. Sports has the ability to unite the people, and racializing sports events at schools contradicts such an objective.

Ever since independence the dark cloud of racism has been hanging above the country for decades. Racist opportunists have constantly attempted to rake in selfish political gains by way of dividing our multiracial citizenry. If even such an untainted place like the school is eventually contaminated with racism, forcing our innocent students to confront the dreadful issue of racism from a very young age, how do we expect to see the ray of hope for a peaceful and harmonious multicultural Malaysia?

We must emphasize here once again that our schools must play a positive role in promoting racial harmony and unity instead of aggravating the issue of racial differentiation.

Thankfully this divisive incident has come to a close now. Nonetheless, all quarters must take cue from it not to repeat the same mistake in the future so as not to entrench the negative impact on our prized national unity.