It all started when I overheard some of my neighboring countrymen refer to an Indonesian as an “Indon”. I never expected that I would hear such word in this campus. To my understanding, there would not be any educated person using the word.



Surprisingly, some Indonesians refer to themselves as an “Indon” on their Facebook statuses. These statuses undoubtedly cause a great number of controversial comments. Many, if not all, criticized the use of “Indon”. Most comments suggested that the term is derogatory to Indonesians. I then did a Google search and found some newspaper articles on the issue.



Interestingly but unsurprisingly, Google linked to some other news about “Indon” that were written either by Indonesians or Malaysians.



The former indicate that they hate being referred to in such a way, while the latter seemed to use the word to mock or dispara...