COMMENT | Fighting racism starts at home

COMMENT | “I don’t talk to bloody Asians,” he brushed me off. This was in 1986, in Perth. I was a reporter then, asking for directions to a press conference. A neo-fascist movement was then headlining the local media with its "No Asians" politics.

Anti-Asian sentiment has perceivably diminished since the White Australia policy was abolished in 1975. But racial scapegoating, and racism however it is defined, still happens when times are bad, such as the Sars outbreak in 2004 and Covid-19 today.

Those in a dominant position of power and privilege do not see racism the way minority groups in under-privileged circumstance face racism daily, their dignity degraded, their access to economic opportunities systematically blocked.

I will limit here my perception of racism to its personal targets: racial profiling, verbal slurs and physical aggression - all manifested in the police brutality against Black Americans and hateful slurs against Asians during Covid-19.

In Australia, that includes the disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous Australians, and in Malaysia, the ...