PERCEPTIONS OF ETHNIC RELATIONS AND UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER CULTURES AFTER THE 1MALAYSIA CAMPAIGN
Article sidebar
Main article
Abstract
Malaysia has unique compositions that are based on multi-racial, multi religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual population. This creates challenges in forming national unity, getting every member of the society to understand other cultures and build strong ethnic relations. YAB Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak launched the 1Malaysia concept in 2009 with the aims of building a united and progressive nation where the multicultural features of this country are used to form the 1Malaysia identity. Even though the 1Malaysia concept has been massively publicized via various modes of communication, there has been very little research on perceptions of ethnic relations and understanding of other cultures after 1Malaysia campaign especially from the perspectives secondary school students. Thus, this study attempts to close that gap. Questionnaires were distributed to 1700 secondary school students in Malaysia using stratified random sampling method. The findings showed that majority of the students felt that the relationship between different ethnic groups in Malaysia was very important, but they perceived the current situation of the relationship as moderate and they were neutral in terms of their level of satisfaction regarding the relationship. The Malay culture ranked first in terms of being understood by the secondary students, while the Chinese culture ranked second and the Indian culture ranked third. In addition, there is a significant relationship between students’ ethnicity and their level of trust of other ethnic groups. Thus, it is hoped that the findings from this study will serve as indicators for the 1Malaysia campaign planning unit to strategize towards changing secondary students’ perception of ethnic relations and their understanding of other cultures to further improve the level of trust between different ethnic groups.
