Nessa Theo, Indonesia
I hated my people for being two things at the same time. I hated them for being admirable yet demeaned, beautifully resilient yet unpleasantly cliquey. Then, I hated myself for being ironically similar. I hated myself for both loving and resenting them, oscillating between understanding and being completely perplexed by them. To stand by them yet sneer at them — different parts of my heart pulling in opposite directions.
Isn’t that the reality of being born into the middleman minority? People struggle to place you in their narratives. Sometimes, you are the cunning, rice wine-drinking, pork-eating, Chinese economic opportunist who has leeched off the sons of the land. Other times, you are the perpetual outsider, the victim of recurring violence, a diaspora that never fully belongs. This ambivalence seeps into your heart, leaving you in a state of existential angst.
You drown in the competing narratives told by the Indonesian state, activists, and elders — each vying to shape the way you understand your daily reality. So, you see people, hear remarks, and interpret them differently depending on which frame dominates your mind that day. Is Uncle Ciu-Ciu’s comment a reflection of racial superiority or a bitterness born from past violence? Is the constant pointing out of your Chineseness during a residency in a Javanese village a microaggression or innocent amusement?
One day, you resent your Chineseness when a Chinese friend shares how his racist parent disapproves of his interracial relationship. On another, you find comfort in chatting with the first Chinese person you’ve met in days. How do we speak of Chinese-Indonesians? How do we speak of the middleman minority? How do we reconcile the identity we inherited, a tangled web of socio-political and historical complexities spanning centuries?
These groups have fought wars and raided each other, but they did not massacre in this manner. If this is hatred, then it is very young, Ugwu — a character from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun — wrote about the Igbo killings he witnessed. It was not an ancient enmity but a product of British colonial divide-and-rule policies. These policies manipulated differences between tribes, ensuring disunity and making colonial governance easier.
If 2024 has shown us anything, it is that the world’s complexities stem from a colonial system that has outlived the empire itself. Our lips may have sung of independence, yet the colonial system continues to shape our present realities.
As much as I despise the constant suspension and ambivalence of being in the middle, I would not wish for its erasure. While I long for a simpler, more peaceful coexistence, it cannot come from subscribing to one label or another. True change lies in our relentless navigation of the middle while recognizing that the real force we must dismantle is the colonial legacy that still breathes and shapes our world. It is that historicized, oppressive system we must abolish. It is a transformative justice and future we must fight for — one that fosters a more equitable, kinder coexistence.
I wish for such tenacious strength. I wish for such tender determination.
