Are We Genuinely Multicultural?

We may still remember how Jakarta governor election caught so many attention. In the last few months prior to the election and the roundoff, the city was exhausted by a few demonstrations attempting to attack one of the candidates, who happens to be Chinese Indonesian and Christian (a minority group in the world's most populous Muslim majority nation), Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. Mr. Basuki also had to face a criminal trial on a charge of blasphemy against Islam over his remark about a verse in the holy book. For many people, it was pretty obvious that the blasphemy case was orchestrated. The video of his full remark on the matter was intentionally cut and edited to make it sound as if he offended Islam. Perhaps it was known that issues on religion could be a powerful weapon to defeat Mr. Basuki despite his competencies, anti-corruption attitude and experience as an incumbent governor that made him an ideal candidate. And there you go: Mr. Basuki lost in the roundoff.

The election has also widely been viewed as a test of ethnic and religious tolerance and multiculturalism in Indonesia. For long we have always bragged about how diverse our country is, how multicultural it is. However, the attitude toward minority showed during the Jakarta election campaign, along with racial slurs broadly spread on social media, has sparked a question: are we genuinely multicultural, or are we still living in a mono-cultural society that consists of many different ethnic groups and religions?

To explain, let me recall the lesson I have learned when taking Introduction to Intercultural Communication course in my postgraduate study. There are several fundamental differences between a multicultural society and a mono-cultural one that happens to have diverse ethnic groups. Having many different ethnic groups does not automatically make a society multicultural when:

• Power, prestige and privilege still belong to the established (majority) groups,
• Institutionalised racism still exists in the society and
• In many sectors (such as education, politics etc), the representation of dominant cultural perspectives is still quite strong and overshadows the other perspectives.

The people's cultural learning process can also explain whether a society is multicultural or mono-cultural. In a mono-cultural society, the people spend their childhood mostly by 'developing a sense of cultural belonging, becoming a member of their home identity groups, developing insider understandings about their own culture and becoming ethnocentric'. In this type of society, the people encounter a significant level of differences and 'otherness' in much later when they are adult (Fay & Slaouti: 2014). Some of the people might be reluctant to accept differences.

On the other hand, in a pure multicultural society, the cultural learning in childhood would be more pluralistic and the people would be encultured with the awareness and sense of cultural differences as they are growing up. This means that their cultural resources have enabled them to deal with differences and 'otherness' (ibid).

We may now reflect on the recent occasions in our society. It seems like a mono-cultural system is still preferred when it is still very difficult for someone from a minority group to hold power. We are not politically mature yet when the prestige and privilege are still given to the dominant groups. We should stop self-claiming that we are multicultural when we still prefer socialising with people from the same background, listening to only those who agree with us and letting institutionalised racism exist. We are not multicultural yet when we still encourage our children to make friends or go to school only with those from the same ethnic group and religion.

Being multicultural is not only about having more than 300 ethnic groups in our country. Being multicultural is far beyond celebrating only the number and the data. Rather, multiculturalism embraces and appreciates the cultural complexity among one another. Multiculturalism should allow us to learn from the complexity (from one another) and see ourselves and others in an equal position.

Till then, let's work hard to create an ideal and genuine representation of multiculturalism in our country that has been blessed with enormous diversity.