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ug. 26, 2016 may have been the worst day ever for Andrew Kusuma, a 26-year-old Indonesian of Chinese decent who was attacked on a Transjakarta bus for no reason except for his race and his physical resemblance to Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama. Seven attackers made racial slurs by calling him “Ahok” before hitting him several times. It is unclear whether the assault was politically motivated.

Ahok himself has not been free from racial attacks, although they have been verbal not physical. One of the attacks was issued by Yusron Ihza Mahendra, the Indonesian ambassador to Japan who is also the younger brother of Yusril Ihza Mahendra, a Jakarta governor hopeful. Through his Twitter account, Yusron asserted last March that underprivileged Chinese-Indonesians could fall victim to riots triggered by Ahok’s arrogance in governing.

Another racist comment came from Ahmad Dhani, a controversial musician who also wished to contest the local election in Jakarta’s neighboring city of Bekasi, saying Indonesia was not the land of Ahok’s ancestors and the country should not fall under foreign control.

The attacks against Andrew and Ahok, although different in form, clearly reflected that racism is still subtly, but deeply ingrained in Indonesia even 18 years after the 1998 riots that saw Chinese Indonesians discriminated against and brutalized.

This phenomenon seems to contradict the fact that the country has fully recognized the citizenship status of non-indigenous Indonesians through the 2006 Citizenship Law and, above all, the long-standing principle of “Unity in Diversity”.

As Indonesia strives to cure the harm it has done to Chinese-Indonesians in the past, racism once again emerges in the form of abhorrent actions and remarks.

Catherine MacKinnon in her 2004 article, “Difference and Dominance”, defines racism as a social injustice based on falsely constructed, but deeply embedded assumptions about people and their relative social values.

It is tragic that the falsely constructed social injustices seem to be exploited to use against political opponents for the sake of political gain. Ahok is not the sole example for this. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo also experienced such an attack when accused of being a Christian of Chinese descent in the 2014 presidential election campaigning period.

Before uttering racist comments, one must understand that racism is not only detrimental to the targeted individuals, but also to society and, most importantly, to children.

Having researched the relationship between reported racism and the health and wellbeing of children in schools in the Australian state of Victoria, health experts Naomi Priest, Yin Paradies and others argued in 2013 that racism has the potential to negatively affect children and young people’s development as well as the adjustment of both in childhood and throughout life.

The multitude of consequences can even severely impact the health and wellbeing of those who do not endure racism themselves. This could include hearing about or seeing another person’s experience of racism, or witnessing racism directed against close family members.

Therefore, our children should not bear the consequences of acts of bigotry inflicted for political ambitions. Non-indigenous children should not feel that they are treated differently or witness their family members being subject to racism. Conversely, indigenous children should not feel superior and alienate their friends because of racial backgrounds.

Lessons in school on acceptance, unity despite differences and sensibility must not be tainted with senseless bigotry that has no relevance in today’s democracy.

One needs to suspect that if leaders and their supporters make a racial difference an issue during campaigning, they would not be able to represent the people equally and fairly and would thus be unfit to lead a diverse society.

Racism may be prevalent in some other countries, including in the US, which has seen many conflicts between the police and the Afro-American community that are thought to be racially driven, putting the country’s unity at risk.

Things get uglier when one of the country’s presidential candidates, Donald Trump, advocates racism himself through verbal attacks on, among others, Muslims. Trump’s rhetoric on “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” is one example that may have made many Indonesians, whose nation is the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world, grit their teeth. Recently, Trump demonized Muslims even further when speaking to a conservative television host Sean Hannity by accusing Muslim-Americans of hiding terrorists from authorities.

The bigotry and racism are feared to have taken their toll after a self-professed Trump fan, a woman, attacked two hijab-wearing Muslim women in New York City while yelling expletives in an alleged hate crime, according to media reports. This attack adds to a series of assaults against Muslims in the country, which also saw three Muslim Americans, including an imam, being assasinated in two separate incidents in New York City last August.

Although it is premature to link this series of attacks against Muslims with Trump’s rhetoric, his provocative stance has exacerbated the sentiment of Islamophobia in the US, especially after 9/11 and the more recent multiple terrorist acts said to be motivated by the so-called Islamic State (IS) movement. Racism launched by both Trump and Ahok’s opponents are indeed different in context, but similar in content and objective: political ends.

There are some concrete examples of how democratic societies trust in their leaders despite differences in racial background and religion. A city with Caucasians and Christians topping its demography, according to its 2011 census, London is currently led by the first Muslim mayor of Pakistani descent, Sadiq Khan. Khan’s opponent, Conservative Zac Goldsmith, was accused of using anti-Muslim sentiment to try to win the election, linking Khan to Islamic extremism.

Khan eventually won a landslide victory by 14 percentage points, proving that voters were unaffected by the smear campaign. Goldsmith’s strategy backfired so badly that his own sister, Jemima, and other Conservatives Party members lambasted his racist and divisive campaign strategy.

Another example is Ahmad Aboutaleb, Rotterdam’s first Muslim mayor, who has been in office since 2009. Having been raised in Morocco, Aboutaleb migrated to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, at the age of 15. Under his leadership, Rotterdam, dubbed the most international city with 170 nationalities, has now emerged as one of Europe’s most dynamic cities with The New York Times calling it a must-see city. Apart from being a vital part of transforming Rotterdam into a modern, vibrant and techno-savvy city, Aboutaleb is known for his hard stance against IS and extremism.

There is no evidence that by being led by non-indigenous, minority leaders either London or Rotterdam fell into “foreign hands”. Nor have the leaders put one ethnicity over another. The quality of a leader is not determined by physical attributes, but by their policies, innovations and stances.

Indonesia must stop the racist and divisive narrative in all aspects of life and distance itself from what Trump is advocating. Rather than focusing on differences, we need to focus on our similarities as a nation. Then we need to ask ourselves just like what US President Barack Obama once asked: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”
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The writer is a journalist with Metro TV. The views expressed are his own.