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MALAYSIAN STUDIES
A SOCIAL STUDY ON RACIAL
HOMOPHILY IN CAMPUS
DR RAJA AHMAD ISKANDAR12540
RAJA
YAAKOB
KOHILA MARIAPAN
12617
BAVANI KOLAN DE VELU
TH
APRILMUTHU
2012
RANI6ELIZABETH
RUSTAM TALIPOV
12834
12262
YASHADINI ANANDARAJAH
12899
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................
LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................................................
PROBLEM STATEMENT.........................................................................................................
FINDINGS.................................................................................................................................
INTRODUCTION
The notion of homophily is among the oldest and most recurrent in social
science. Homophily is defined as tendency of individuals to associate and bond with
2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Today, universities around the world highly stress on racial homophily and it
remains as a key focus of attention with respect to diversity in education. The reasons
for this to be in place were already discussed in introduction part of this research. Such
a focus on racial diversity has provoked many related researches, in order to understand
the issue deeper and get some qualitative data for analysis of it. Studies of racial
homophily and the past topic related research reveals that interracial friendships are far
less common than same race friendships (Hallinan & Williams, 1989; Joyner & Kao,
2000; Lewis, 2012).
To avoid the problems of interpreting the consequences of attitudes, many
studies focus directly on actual relationships. Dubois and Hirsch (1990) asked
respondents whether or not they had other-ethnic friends. Patchen (1982) asked
respondents how much they interacted with other-ethnic peers. Sometimes a personal
network approach was used to determine the prevalence of inter-ethnic relationships. In
these studies respondents were asked to name their (for example, three) best friends and
were then asked to indicate which ethnic group each friend belonged to (Fong & Isajiw,
2000) and (Smith & Schneider, 2000). The main limitation of these studies is that the
number of other-ethnic friends or the ratio of other-ethnic friends to same-ethnic friends
says nothing about the respondents individual inclinations because the studies did not
control for the opportunities for relationships. Because schools, neighborhoods,
universities, etc. are often segregated, people often have more opportunities to engage
in relationships within their own group. They might, for instance, prefer inter-ethnic
relationships but still have more intra-ethnic than inter-ethnic relationships because
they live in a mono-ethnic neighborhood or visit a mono-ethnic school (Baerveldt &
Van Duijn, 2004).
different, nonstandard questionnaires. For example, Kinket and Verkuyten (1999) asked
students to rate different ethnic groups on several attributes, such as honesty and
smartness. Verkuyten et al. (2006) asked students to rate different ethnic groups on how
much they would like to interact with a representative of these groups. Patchen
(2002) questioned students on a wide range of attitudes towards their own group and
PROBLEM STATEMENT
History shows that Malaya is a colonial creation with ethnic groups living side
by side but never mixed. Many factors have caused this situation. The first can be
traced back to the "divide and rule" policy during British colonization. This kind of
administration greatly limited interaction and communication among the different
ethnic groups and segregated them according to their economic functions. For example,
th e M a l a ys w e r e k n o w n t o b e f a r m e r s l i v i n g i n r u r a l a r e a s , Chinese
were involved in the commercial and mining sectors in urban areas while the Indians,
on the other hand, worked as labourers in estates and plantations.
The education system, as it was long before we know it today also varied
according to different ethnic groups in terms of curriculum and methods of
dissemination. There was no such thing as a standardized education system back then.
Since these vernacular schools comprised a single race, lessons were conducted in its
respective language, such as Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Due to the inconsistencies
and differences in the education system, there existed barriers and gaps among the
different races in Malaya.
All these shows that racial homophily has been happening before the
Independence Day itself during the colonization era by other countries and its
effectscan still be clearly seen in our current daily life. For example, in our
campus,students tend to mix more with their own race. The main objective of this test
is to study racial homophily and the students awareness and opinion on this issue. The
view of the younger generation on this matter is essential as they are the future leaders
of our country. We need to investigate both the short and long term effect of racial
homophily as it is one of the determination factors of our countrys future development.
7
FINDINGS
SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE
RACIAL HOMOPHILY pervasive tendency of people to associate, mix with
people of similar race or ethnicity as theirs.
1. Age Range
15-20
20-25
2. Gender
Male
Female
3. Race / Ethnicity
Malay
Chinese
Indian
Others. Please specify : _________
4. Are you aware of the homophily issue in our campus?
Yes
No
5. Rate the interracial relations / racial unity in our campus.
Poor
Average
Good
Excellent
10. In your opinion, has a government project such as Satu Malaysia had any
positive impact on you or people surrounding you?
Yes
No
11. Is racial homophily threat for Nations (Malaysia) prosperous future?
Yes, strongly agree
Yes, to some extend
Maybe
10
Age Range
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Age Range
50%
85%
40%
30%
20%
10%
15%
0%
15 - 20 years
20 - 25 years
Gender
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Gender
50%
40%
30%
71%
20%
29%
10%
0%
Male
Female
11
Race/Ethnicity
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Race/Ethnicity
43%
19%
19%
19%
Malay
Chinese
Indian
12
Others
Yes
No
29%
71%
13
Yes
No
Poor
Average
Good
Excellent
33%
57%
Language
Culture
Family Background
All above
Others
24%
19%
43%
14%
36%
14
Poor
Moderate
Good
Excellent
48%
52%
Yes
No
46%
54%
15
Yes
No
In your opinion, has a government project such as Satu Malaysia had any positive impact on you or people surrounding you?
45%
55%
Yes
No
23%
50%
27%
DATA ANALYSIS
In the survey conducted, around 15% of respondents are aged between 15-20
years while the remaining 85% are in between the range 20-25 years old. All the
respondents are UTP students from different races or ethnicity. Besides, 71% are males
and 29% of them are females. We found that most of our respondents are aware of
homophily issue in the campus. They realized that certain people tend to mix with the
people of similar race or ethnicity as theirs. This can be noticed when some people
form their own cliques to associate with whenever they engaged in any activities. On
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RECOMMENDATION
As the study suggests, one of the main reason a test was conducted is obtain
ways to overcome the issue of racial homophily in campus, well in this case Universiti
Teknologi PETRONAS. Students have to be encouraged to have a perspective that
emphasizes performance rather than race,this mentality will indirectly abolish the need
to be a racial homophile. As education is a backbone of any individual,school is a good
platform to promote racial unity and curb racial homophily. The recommendation stated
for this factor was the abolishment of vernacular schools as it in a way promotes racial
homophily. It is also suggested that opting for building of more national schools are
encouraged.
On the other hand, events that depict various cultures should be held. Events
like these will give chance to students to learn and accept other culture and race. As a
result, a understanding among the races will be created and the gap will be bridged. As
an example, food can be used as a culture promotion tool. Individuals of different races
can organize cultural potluck gathering where they can experience and learn cultures
through food. Besides that,educational talk shows that focuses on different races should
be carried out. In this case, students will be able to trade ideas and opinions on their
cultural and racial understanding. It will act as an essential platform for students to
learn about other races. As a result, racial homophily will be buried.
Since students are largely involved in groupworks as part of the studying
process, it is important that mixing between races is done to set up a group. This will
build a diverse atmosphere for the students to work in as there are racial integration and
ideas will not be biased. It is hoped that these ways will be executed successfully in the
near future in order to curb racial homophily for the betterment of the university,people
and the nation.
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CHALLENGES
In the process of completing our Malaysian Studies project entitled A Social
Study on Racial Homophily in Campus we encountered many challenges. The most
vivid challenge was our group members consisting of two different courses. We are
comprised of mechanical engineering and civil engineering department, therefore
fixing a meeting time was tough. Even though with such hurdle we manage to
successfully complete our project.
Next, our general topic was social; therefore there was a lot to choose from
since social issue is the current hype issue. But with crucial consideration our team
members settled with the topic racial homophily which has always been a problem in
every community but ignored as always. Racial homophily is pervasive tendency of
people to associate, mix with people of similar race or ethnicity as theirs. Since this was
not a mainly studied topic in Malaysia, we had to surf through some challenges to
obtain the research paper on this topic.
While carrying out the interview on our respondents who were all UTP students
consisting of all ages and races, we found that many did not want to cooperate when it
came to video interview. But there were few students who offered to help us on our
project and gave a sincere interview which really made our process easier.
The next step was to collect data obtained from the survey, interview and
journals/books. The challenges we had been here to come up with the method of
representation of the findings. We were supposed to come up with the best and most
comprehensible way of data representing because only then data analysis would be
easy.
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CONCLUSION
Our major findings suggest that the homophily model applies
exclusively to all students in UTP. Though UTP students live in an environment with
different cultures and races among them, they could not be differentiated from their
single-race counterparts (statistically). Our evidence suggests that students seem to find
their place among single-race groups in spite of their identity asserting their racial
difference. However, their specific experiences of integration vary depending on their
racial backgrounds. Due to this, it was noted that none of the respondents chose
excellent for racial unity in UTP. This marks the inexistence of strong bond of
interactions among students from different races in UTP.
Most of the respondents chose to mix with friends of their own race. One thing
has to be noted here, having friends of our own race will also have adverse impact in
terms of education. Since Education is the platform for all future undertakings it is very
important for a person to be exposed to all races so that he will get connections and
widen his network. This might be helpful in his future if he is able to bond with all
races. At the same time, it contributes to nation integration as well because a person
who doesnt build network during study life would have difficulties in networking
during work life. So education is a foundation to strengthen nation through racial
mixing. Many respondents mentioned that aspects like culture and languages are
barriers to students mixing among their own races. We have to realize that we are now
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REFERENCE
[1]
Wikipedia, free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily
Homophily.
Retrieved
from;
[2]
Kamaruzaman N. Z., Zawawi A. A. (2010). A test of homophily as basis
of classroom informal networks Conference on Science and Social Research
(CSSR
2010)
Retrieved:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?
tp=&arnumber=5773901
[3]
Burgess S., Sanderson E., Umana Aponte M. (2011). School ties: An
analysis of homophily in an adolescent friendship network. University of
Bristol.
Retrieved
from;
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2011/wp267.pdf
[4]
Mollica K. A., Gray B., Trevino Trevino L. K. (2003). Racial Homophily and
[5]
Wimmer A., Lewis K. (2010). Beyond and below racial homophily:
ERG models of a friendship network documented on FACEBOOK. American
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APPENDIX
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