Making sense of the Old Town White Coffee episode — Lee Hwok Aun

OCTOBER 7 — We recently got into quite a tizzy over a purported ‘racist’ job ad. An Old Town restaurant outlet in Johor Bahru posted a job ad for waiters, chefs and supervisors, adding that priority would be given to Malays and Chinese. It went viral on social media. Netizens vented fury against this discriminatory practice; many condemned it as racist, especially against Indians, and as an assault on our multi-ethnic fabric. Old Town subsequently retracted the posting, and notified the public that they would be investigating the matter and following up with the branch’s ethnically Indian manager.

The Old Town episode reveals two necessities. First, we need to exercise restraint before screaming racism. Second, we need clear, balanced, and smart fair employment and anti-discrimination laws, and an effective oversight, monitoring and enforcement agency.

I’m glad that social media drew attention to this, and it is right and proper that the offensive ad has been withdrawn, but we also need to critically examine our eagerness to overreact and oversimplify.

Various explanations are plausible besides ethnic prejudice, including the polar opposite situation that this manager may actually intend to have a representative workforce — employing Indian, Malay and Chinese workers. We need to allow for the possibility that, far from being ‘racist’ (against his own ethnicity, on top of that), the Indian manager can find Indian workers through informal, private channels but is posting the formal, public job ad to tap into the broader pool, to reach out to more Chinese and Malay applicants. Maybe he can easily get South Asian migrant workers.

The point to drive home here, though, is that we know next to nothing about the circumstances behind the job ad to be flinging racism accusations, and we have little means and no real authority to probe further.

For sure, the Old Town job ad was badly worded, and intentionally or not, caused communal offense and emotional injury. Such language, and hiring practices that publicly confer preference on one group, should be prohibited.

But we also need to be mindful that the wording of job ads plays a signalling role for the purpose of attracting particular applicants, and that companies may decide to attain a particular workforce composition even before opening up to receive applications. Is this wrong? Again, who are we to make sweeping judgments? In some situations, prejudice may lurk beneath, but in other situations, a company may well want to diversify its workforce – surely that’s not a bad thing.

Instead of pouncing on every mention of an ethnic group or language requirement and labelling it racist, we should formulate clear rules and guidelines for what constitutes fair practice. And we ought to draw a distinction between identity-based criteria – particularly ethnicity and gender – and qualifications- or skills-based criteria, such as education certificates and language proficiency.

This calls for a national conversation on the subject, encompassing managers, workers, fresh graduates, scholars, policy makers, government officials, and citizens. We should seek to be better informed on job applicants’ experiences, and why managers post job ads in particular ways.

Toward legislating fair employment practices, we need to settle on clear legal rules and ethical guidelines on hiring practices, including on what is acceptable content for job ads and what is unacceptably discriminatory. Here’s where differences between identity traits and qualifications become important.

There is a strong case for prohibiting any statement that an identity trait — ethnicity, gender, etc. — is ‘preferred’ or ‘an advantage’. At the same time, we can allow for statements like ‘women are encouraged to apply’, with clear rules for when such a hiring approach is permissible – such as, when a company aims to increase diversity. This is the practice in some advanced economies like the US Let’s say a company wants to diversify its workforce, but if it posts a generic job ad it will not be expanding the pool that it hopes to tap into. Mentioning that a group is encouraged to apply — with grounds that must be justified if investigated by an enforcement agency — sends a signal to the unknown, general labour market, so that more from that group might be attracted to apply and hence the company can select from a larger, and hopefully better, pool.

The implications for gender and ethnicity vary. While actively encouraging women’s participation probably faces less objection, there is a disquieting, jarring sense toward a phrase like ‘Chinese and Malays are encouraged to apply’. Various Caucasian-majority countries have established ‘minorities’ as a non-specific and less contentious category for outreach efforts, but that term lacks meaning and applicability in Malaysia. So we may want to stick to catch-all notices like ‘we encourage persons of all ethnicities to apply’, which might prompt the interest of some people who might otherwise not apply. This is undoubtedly complicated and demands wider, deeper deliberation.

The propositions above might feel awkward, but with public awareness campaigns, perhaps it’s not so difficult. Actually, if we want to enforce rules and codes of conduct, we really have no choice but to formally outline what are fair and permissible. With such determination, employers will have clarity on how they will be monitored, on what constitutes unfair discrimination, while being assured that the law supports efforts to enhance diversity and promote opportunity for particular groups.

This is far better than issuing a blanket prohibition on all utterances of ethnicity or gender, which in the end leaves parts of the recruitment process to operate in the shadows.

Skills and qualifications, even language proficiency, are quite a different matter. There is more justification for these to be publicly advertised job criteria. Morally and pragmatically, more distinct lines can be drawn between them and ability to perform a job.

Nonetheless, further clarity is also still needed, because there’s too much knee-jerk and selective reaction at the sighting of a job ad stipulating “Mandarin required”. Almost always, this is the context, and it seems many people desire to reinforce their preconceived stereotypes of Chinese companies or multinationals filtering out non-Chinese. I have seen an influential blog lambasting Mandarin language requirement in a job ad, while manically or conveniently ignoring a footnote at the bottom stating that the job would require travel in East Asia. I have not seen any accusations of racism when “Arabic required” appears.

Research on hiring discrimination suggests to me that, for the most part, language proficiency when stipulated in recruitment notices are legitimate job requirements – and the situation does not fit the caricature of Chinese companies using Chinese language as a way to screen out non-Chinese applicants. I was involved in a study which looked at about 700 accounting and engineering job openings. Interestingly, 10 per cent of Malay-controlled companies posted Chinese language as a requirement or advantage to the applicant. Unsurprisingly, 35 per cent of Chinese-controlled companies did likewise. We deduce from these observations that companies should be given the benefit of doubt that their intentions are sincere, professional, and consistent with their operational needs. Of course, some instances may arouse Spicion, but such should be answerable to an enforcement agency, not social media vigilantes.

Surely many of us agree with the creation of a federal body to monitor and adjudicate employment legislation and to promote awareness of good practices. This institution will be responsible for investigating reported infringements, and conducting random audits of employers.

I am inclined to a Fair Employment Commission or something of that orientation, with a wider mandate than ‘equal opportunity’. To oversee both the public sector and the private sector, which is only right and proper, existing affirmative action or group preferences must come under the purview of this commission.

Now it gets really complicated. But we cannot have it any other way. And until we have a mature, constructive and dispassionate national conversation, we will continue to be mired in bad practices and overreactions.

* Lee Hwok Aun is senior lecturer in the Department of Development Studies, University of Malaya.

**This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online