There are more appropriate ways to address or refer to somebody than to use stereotypical names or labels. While the topic of race can be quite sensitive in Malaysia, there’s technically nothing wrong with mentioning someone’s race or ethnicity when describing them (depending on the situation).
However, some people can be outright racist like the time this netizen called Chinese people “Ching Chong” when replying to Ceddy’s tweet about unity. Just earlier today, an Indonesian coach is being accused of being racist for using colours to describe 2 of our Malaysian athletes. Here’s what happened:
@bella_nabila98 Apa yg hitam dan putih nii 😂 #pearlytan #franceopen2022 #thinaahmuralitharan #fypシ #leeziijia #fyp #viral
A video posted by user @bella_nabila98 is currently going viral on TikTok. The video showed an Indonesian badminton coach giving instructions to one of his players, Febriana Dwipuji Kusuma during a tournament. After carefully listening to the video, netizens caught the coach using “White” and “Black” to describe the opposing team, Malaysian badminton duo, Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan.
The video quickly went viral, now reaching over 94.8k views, 6.5k likes, and almost 300 comments at the time of writing this article. Netizens believe that the coach used the “colorful” terms to label the athletes based on the colour of their skin. Many called the badminton coach out for his racist labels with some saying they’d prefer he calls the duo “Soya Cincau”.
However, some netizens on Twitter argue that calling Pearly and Thinaah “Soya Cincau” is also considered racist as they believe Soya and Cincau are terms used to also describe them based on their skin colour. Others suggested everyone should simply call the duo by their name rather than colours or food.
There is currently no official statement released by the Indonesian coach nor the Badminton World Federation (BWF) regarding the viral video. In other news, Pearly Tan & Thinaah Muralitharan recently gave an outstanding performance at the recent French Open 2022 where they also received praise from several gold medallists.
