"People here racist or not?"

"Yah, sometimes. But anywhere you go, it's the same lah. Like in Malaysia, it’s worse, man."

And, so on.

Curious parents of children studying in Australian universities often wonder if Aussies are anti-Asian. Media coverage in early June of Indian students being harassed and harangued in Melbourne has understandably stoked parents' fear about safety on Australian streets and ' gwei-lows ' going around bashing Asians - just for fun.

After a short stay though, and getting a feel of the city and suburbs, Malaysian visitors are pleasantly surprised at considerate drivers on Aussie roads, courteous cashiers at checkout counters, friendly strangers on the streets.

"G'day. How are you?"

"Wah, people here so polite and friendly."

Indeed, visitors are prompt to feel that here's the place where minorities and foreigners can live, love, work and play as well as the majority local Anglos. Fair go for all.

Coming from where drivers don't give two hoots to pedestrians, where a courteous 'please' and 'thank-you' is not much of a habit in daily transactions, where strangers on the streets are feared as potential scammers - the 'Aussie-way' is certainly refreshing. All it takes to spoil the experience are the occasional middle-finger pointing road-ragers ("Bloody Asian driver!") and drunk yobos ("Hey, chinks, go home!").

The isolated street rant is burnished in the visitor's take-home memory. An otherwise fresh experience soured by isolated verbal abuse.

"Aiyah! Australians are so racist." We react to unpleasant situations with absolute tags and obsolete labels, pushing the Other down a notch or two on the scale of social acceptability.

Mix of demons and angels

I remember a time when other ethnic groups were known only as ' gwei ', the 'devils'. They still are. In colloquial Cantonese, Indians are ' keleng-gwei '. Malays are ' malai-gwei '. Aussies are ' hong moe gwei '. The bogeyman was either the ' malai-gwei ' or ' keleng gwei '.

But the Chinese, they are the ' tong yan ' (literally 'Tang people' from the Tang Dynasty). Indeed, during my childhood Chinese were the only non-devils around. Yes, that tense is past. With eyes to see and ears to hear, one learns and knows better. The tong yan are as devilish as the Indians, Malays and Aussies in their peculiar ways and viles.

We're all a mix of demons and angels. Some with messianic delusions. Some with apocalyptic tendency and xenophobia coded in their genes. These characters emerge like toads from their coconut shells whenever issues of race and religion are raised through the media by thinking – and unthinking - citizens.

Australia has its share of xenophobic toads ['Islam is incompatible with Australian values'] who have never leapt beyond the Australian shore, whose imagination of Malaysia can be summed up in a sentence: "It's an Islamic country, they hang you for drugs, they chop your hands for stealing", whose sense for Asia is shaped by travel brochures and travel clips on TV. The good news is these characters are fodder for media satire as troublesome clowns.

Malaysia's alarmist toads

Malaysia has its share of alarmist toads and troublesome clowns too – lately, those sycophantic political hicks and intellectual wannabes jumping on the 1Malaysia bullock cart. Which, expectedly, has stirred visceral, and generally, unproductive misguided questioning of the non-bumiputeras’ patriotism and allegiance to a 1Malaysia.

More than 50 years after independence, it's a pity that Malaysians are still classified by the "colour of their skin" instead of "the content of their character" (Martin Luther King Jr). Some commentators are still peddling the message that the Indians are descendants of migrant coolie labour and Chinese are guests of the country (' hak yan ' in Cantonese). Thus, lately the parochial questioning by some commentators of the Indian and Chinese allegiance to a 1Malaysia.

Here, I refer to reactions to an opinion article by Ahmad Murad Merican. The article was published in Utusan Malaysia . If I read the Bahasa article correctly, Murad essentially says that the Chinese press have no clear record of reporting that actively fosters nation-building, neither do Chinese journalists show a sense of 'patriotism' and, by implication, a sense of a Malaysian cultural identity. That's a big call to make – and qualify - in a short article of about 1,150 words.

Murad's other points are: Malays should learn Chinese to successfully compete with the Chinese (I'd ask, how about learning Chinese to communicate rather than compete?), that Utusan Malaysia should consider publishing a Chinese language edition. These are all good in stirring debates but irresponsible in its implications, and certainly, ludicrous in its assumptions.

The assumptions are: that Chinese media have since independence contributed little to 'nation building', that the Chinese are still living and prospering in Malaysia because of the grace given them by the original Malay inhabitants, that perhaps it's time the Chinese show their appreciation for being allowed to stay.

The illusions of identity politics

Peddling terms like 'patriotism', 'nation-building' and 1Malaysia – regardless of the good intentions - without qualifying what they actually mean in reality to the average Ah Chong, Ali and Muthu have only stirred lots of cacophonic croaking by the toads of narrow identity politics.

I left Malaysia in 1986 after a few good years of teaching journalism at ITM Shah Alam to work as a journalist in Australia. As an outsider now looking in, I believe the day will come – maybe not in my lifetime - when the many insecurities that continue to drive a wedge between the Chinese, Malay and Indian will be replaced by a generation of trilinguists – who can read, speak and banter fluently in English, Mandarin and Bahasa (perhaps even in Tamil).

Therein lies a potential generation of Malaysians who are willing and able to see beyond racial classifications, who are drawn to the merits and good in each other. The apung is surely ample for all to share. No one, born and bred in Malaysia, should be made to feel a need to justify their place and station, their sense of 'patriotism' and 'love for country'. In reality, though, discriminatory government policies have arguably made the Chinese and Indian what they are.

Commentators and politicians must consciously make more sense when they throw into the public space their malformed ideas and theories about a dominant Malaysian cultural identity, demonstrative 'patriotism', national unity. And so on. Cultural identity politics hijacked by xenophobes, political hicks and pseudo public intellectuals only reinforces prejudices or creates new ones among the gullible citizens and will only further divide communities.

Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen has cautioned against the illusions of identity politics. I quote from his book, Identity and Violence (2006, p.1-2): "A sense of identity can be a source not merely of pride and joy, but also of strength and confidence… And yet identity can also kill – and kill with abandon. A strong – and exclusive – sense of belonging to one group can in many cases carry with it the perception of distance and divergence from other groups. Within-group solidarity can [also] help to feed between-group discord."

And discord among Malaysians will stretch further till breaking point with the continued politicisation and narrow classifications of Malaysians by race, religion and creed. To close, I quote part of a song in 1987 by The Seekers:

We are one, but we are many

And from all the lands on earth we come

We share a dream and sing with one voice:

"I am, you are, we are Australian" (read: Malaysian)