Liam Neeson is not a racist, but he was, but now he’s woke.

I may be biased as a fan, but Liam neeson is not a racist. Recently there was a controversy when he shared his source if inspiration for his most recent revenge movie. He cites in in his past about 40 years ago, a dear friend got raped by a black person, and he was in a revenge mode for a week, at which he was targetting black folks to get into fights to even wanting to kill them, before he realized that he was ashamed for what he was thinking and doing.

For me what he shared is more of an underlying reason why people are racist in the first place. It is either through a traumatic personal experience, or an upbringing in that mindset. It is normal to stereotype people, unfortunately even more normal to stereotype them for misfortunes caused. There are different levels.

Imagine if a dear friend was raped or at worst murdered, and if someone cared truly they would comfort them or at worst case avenge them. This by the way one of the ways the army causes soldiers to kill people. The idea of killing or harming people is difficult for most people, but if it was in order to defend a loved one, most wouldn’t think twice. Violence in itself is at times disgusting, but violence against supposedly violent people seems acceptable. Think of how you would kill a stranger vs killing hitler.

That primal anger is natural, and so is the desire to group people into boxes, by skin color, nationality, by anything. Unfortunately some of us do so in a way too generalized. It is a survival mechanism. If this one thing can hurt me, other things similar to it may be too. Even in Malay culture some of us can be racist, one example is someone I know had a bad business deal with an indian, and after that avoided businesses with any indian. Another person. a non-malay person has shared that because of our philosophy of Melayu Islam Beraja, she has realized that she doesn’t get the same benefits as malays in this country. Based on history of malay countries including Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia (one would argue I could include singapore), their nationalist philosophy and agenda that prioritizes bumiputra or locally born, stems from the history of foreugners