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Racism may broadly be defined as the preferential treatment or unfair favoritism shown towards one particular race or ethnic group in employment, grant of citizenship or scholarship and other social benefits over another race or races based on race alone. Racism rears its ugly head everywhere; it exists in America, UK, Europe and Asia is no exception: in fact, racism is well and alive in many parts of Asia.

When an Asian American or Asian Australian is abused, even verbally by a white neighbour, it is racism if the sole reason for the abuse is because the victim is an Asian by ethnicity. Similarly, if a Chinese Malaysian is not awarded a Government Scholarship even though he or she has achieved the highest academic accolades, whereas a Malay Malaysian who has not performed as well as the aforementioned Chinese Malaysian did gets the scholarship, that is racism, period. The Malaysian authorities usually defend their brand of racism by glossing it over as 'affirmative action', a state policy adopted purportedly to help the 'disadvantaged' ethnic Malays. However, anyone who has lived in Malaysia long enough, including foreigners, will be able to tell us that there are many under-privileged Malaysians of all ethnicities: Malays, Chinese, Indians, Dayaks, Bidayuhs, Melanaus etc. Malaysia has somehow gained a degree of notoriety in that it has more or less institutionalized racism. One particular ethnicity or race i.e. the Malays has priority in almost all the fields of commerce, opportunities for higher education, grant of licence etc over the other non-Malay Malaysians. The privileges enjoyed by Malay Malaysians are written into the laws and enshrined in the Malaysian Constitution.

Extreme and violent forms of racism have occurred in recent times in two predominantly Muslim countries in South-east Asia, viz Malaysia and Indonesia. In Malaysia in the late 1960s Malay racists attacked Chinese Malaysians and plundered their properties and also murdered hundreds of these hapless citizens of the nation, victims of racial riots in their own land due largely to government inaction to clamp down the extremists. Similarly in Indonesia in the 1980s, under the repressive and racist regime of Suharto, Chinese Indonesians had been systematically persecuted, as happened in the military-supported riots that left thousands of Chinese Indonesians slain and their properties pillaged.

To be fair, I think perhaps almost everyone is 'racist' to some extent in the sense that

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