(First published on Feb 26, 2014 in Malay Mail): When I hear people tell me racism in Malaysia is a lie made up by alternative media, all I can do is shrug with a smile on my face and tear in my eye.

To find out on Valentine’s day that your Chinese boyfriend of three years has been seeing a more “suitable” girl on the sly because he is convinced his parents would not approve of you and was too scared to even tell them you existed is, to say the least, painful.

This column is not about my heartbreak. It is about the construct we call race. It is about us making excuses not to care about another person because they are the wrong colour or faith.

And it has been a painful reminder about how much racial polarisation there is on this side of the country. In Sabah, being of different races is rarely a hindrance for dating or marriage. If my Chinese maternal great-grandmother had decided not to marry my great-grandfather, I would not have existed.

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In many ways, I’m a mongrel. With a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But I’ve never thought it made me special or in any way different. Until, of course, I came to West Malaysia and I discovered that people chose their friends, lovers and even employers by what race or faith they profess.

Even when you are a certain race, you have to meet some sort of “criteria.” If you can’t speak your mother tongue, you are criticised. Never mind that your mother tongue was not spoken at home; it is somehow a character failing that you cannot speak the language of your forefathers.

My Dusun father sometimes forgets his children do not speak Dusun. He misremembers speaking it to us when he always, always spoke to us in English to make sure we would master it by adulthood.

My mother has never spoken a word of Bajau to us. Occasionally she lapses into colourful Bahasa curse words and her cooking is a funny fusion of Chinese, Indian or Malay cooking thanks to having Pakistani and Chinese grandmothers. I will always remember fondly her egg drop corn soup, sesame chicken, cornflour-laden vegetables and her mild kurmas.

I guess maybe, to West Malaysians, my parents were special. They were not concerned about what race we called ourselves. They were never bothered about us being a representation of any ethnic make-up.

Be good people. Have faith in God. Work hard. Do good. Love the written word. Be your own people, not what other people say you should be. That was how my parents raised their children.

And then I come here, to West Malaysia, and the first thing people ask is what race am I? What faith am I?

I did not understand why they needed to know that before they would decide whether or not they would like me or employ me. I still do not understand.

I loved my boyfriend because he was the type who would sit by a lost grandmother and wait until a family member would come claim her. Because, when I was ill, he would cook me noodles and buy me herbal medicine from the nearest sinseh. Because he was kind, and he was gentle and he would hold my hand when we crossed a busy street. And he would take me all the way to Klang for the bak kut teh because it was amazing and he wanted me to taste it too.

Kindness. A good heart. A gentle nature. Well-mannered. Those were the things I valued, never race, never faith, not even looks. And it did not matter that he never had any money, but it mattered that he spent time looking for wrapping paper for the gift that was all he could afford at the time, that first year he walked into my life.

I know in time my heart will heal. That I’ll stop crying myself to sleep eventually. But I will never get over being made to not feel good enough because of an accident of birth. That being the “wrong” race is a liability in this country, when it shouldn’t be. For any reason and not just my pitiful, unimportant heartache.

So what I wish for the country is this: that no one ever needs to endure any sort of pain for what was never their fault in the first place. That we can embrace our differences instead of penalising each other for what they cannot help.

At least, maybe, I can feel this broken heart wasn’t in vain.