Uitm S Kkk Cosplay Teaching Racism Or Trivialising Terror

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So we’re cosplaying the KKK now - in a university - to “raise awareness”?
That’s like setting a house on fire to teach fire safety.
Sure, cosplay can be a tool for education, empathy, and activism, but there’s a fine line between critical engagement and embodying history with careless reenactment and normalising hate.
Dressing up as one of history’s most violent hate groups - on campus, and without clear framing or consent from those impacted - is not pedagogy. It’s performative and harmful.
When symbols of terror are re-enacted without deep, critical context, the result isn’t education but the aestheticisation of trauma.
Academic exercise or atrocity?
UiTM says the KKK march was just part of its “Contemporary Global and Legal Issues” assignment, and simulation can be a valid teaching tool.
However, Unesco guidelines make clear you must frame hate symbols properly to show you’re studying extremist propaganda, not celebrating it, and link it to specific learning goals.
The teaching process needs to protect students’ well‑being with trigger warnings, psychological support, and a debrief.
Effective anti‑racist pedagogy integrates the voices and experiences of those targeted by hate, rather than having students “play oppressor” in isolation.
Whistleblowers who paid the price
And here’s the real kicker: Those who dared to speak out, who saw the harm and tried to sound the alarm, are now being punished.
There are disturbing allegations that the students who leaked footage of the incident were barred from leaving campus and that whistleblowers received threats from their own peers.
We’re not just failing to teach accountability - we’re actively disciplining it.
So again, what exactly are we teaching our future generation?
That dressing as white supremacists is fine if it’s “for a class,” but feeling disturbed by it and having the courage to call it out is punishable?
That critical thinking is only welcomed when it doesn’t challenge authority or comfort?
Yes, cosplay can teach empathy. It can challenge norms. But at what cost if it’s done without accountability?
If universities can’t draw that line, are we educating students to think critically or just to shock for grades?
Embrace cosplay, yes, but not at the cost of moral clarity, critical thinking, or punishing those who dare to question the system.
Bad pedagogy meets constitutional colourism
Against this backdrop of normalised, institutionalised racism, trivialising the terror of the KKK becomes almost predictable.
Pusat Komas has documented that “racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia occur on a daily basis” across Malaysia’s social, economic, and legal landscapes.
When the law itself privileges one group over others, it sends a tacit message that certain forms of hatred are acceptable, so why wouldn’t a university “experiment” with white hoods in the name of pedagogy?
Without confronting the constitutional and institutional roots of racism, exercises meant to “teach” human‑rights awareness risk perpetuating exactly the harms they claim to critique.
Only those who’ve never faced the daily trauma of discrimination would dare reduce the KKK to a costume.
For many around the world, their legacy is not history. It’s a living, generational terror. - Mkini
S VINOTHAA is a Malaysiakini team member.

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