Any brighter future will depend on Burma crafting a new and more inclusive identity, one not tied to race and one not based on a notion of uniting fixed ethnic categories. The British were correct in analyzing Burma as a zone of “racial instability.” Accepting this, seeing it as a strength rather than a weakness, finding new sources of national identity, separate from notions of ethnicity, and embarking on an aggressive agenda to end discrimination in all its forms, are elements of a conversation that’s been almost entirely absent.
