"'What's the difference between Mat Dan and a Bangladeshi worker who can speak Malay?'"
Mat is white whereas Bangladeshi people are black. Malay people worship white skin and thus they even give money to beg-packing white people who exploit this to travel South East Asia for free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGFARCfQUU In fact, Mat himself was one of those. "Rather than just spending his time travelling with Western backpackers".
It's much simpler: Bangladeshi workers speaking Malay are a dime a dozen. Westerners learning a minority language in Malaysia are relatively few and far between. Millions of whites visit Malaysia as tourists but they don't become celebrities.
It's also not about "worshipping white skin", but about being amused and/or feeling validated by the western internet.
Finally, the protest against western backpackers asking from money (a recent fad protest in some countries) is irrelevant to this particular story.
There's a term for that, it is called beg-packing. It is not irrelevant as it has been suggested in the comments that Mat was originally a beg packer. The article itself states that he was a back packer travelling South East Asia. http://www.popularyoutube.com/video/HYkgwRJvc2s/Dear-White-B...
> It's also not about "worshipping white skin", but about being amused and/or feeling validated by the western internet.
Thank you for clarifying. I'm using the term worshipping perhaps to oversimplify "feeling validated when a white person gives attention/time". And yes, it is about skin color, as a Western black person who is fluent in Malay would not get any attention.
I mean not relevant as in "there are tons of beg packers and hardly any raise to any fame with local populations".
I've been in Malaysia several times and in the general area. It's not like there's any work shipping of whites, much less white beg packers, going on, waiting for someone to speak the language to ignite...
>* Thank you for clarifying. I'm using the term worshipping perhaps to oversimplify "feeling validated when a white person gives attention/time".*
Well, that I agree could play part. Tho that's the same often happens in white places, e.g. in my Eastern / Southern European land, western validation is often celebrated -- so I wouldn't say it's tied to skin color.
I have no knowledge of whether he did or didn't, but it really seems like a much more recent phenomena (and I think those doing it are contemptible frankly).
You've misunderstood the point. Here's a simple proof. A Western black person speaking Malay fluently would not get the attention or celebrity that Mat gets. That proves that it is about worshipping white skin.
Well, doesn't that presuppose what it tries to prove? How do we know that a "western black person speaking Malay fluently would not get the attention or celebrity that Mat gets"? Part of the story is that it came from a viral hit, which are flukes, and so not necessarily representative...
Second, even if so, couldn't it also be because a black person is not as much associated with the West to Malays (since the West's own cultural industry/history has traditionally been showcasing whites as its main representatives) -- as opposed to some "worshipping of white skin" in itself?
Seriously though, I think you are possibly correct but it may also be unfairly projecting the racism of our society onto someone else's.
That quote doesn't support your statement.
I have visited Terengganu. The Malay spoken in Terengganu is the same as the Malay spoken elsewhere. It would the equivalent of saying Arkansas English versus American English.
> Terengganu Malay is one of the most aberrant from all the Malay varieties in the Peninsular along with Kelantan-Pattani Malay and developed a distinct phonetic, syntactic and lexical distinctions which makes it mutually unintelligible for speakers from outside the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
People from areas quite far away are aware of this, such as the KL shopkeeper mentioned in the article who could not understand its protagonist.