Yes siree! I can emphasize with Ramesh on this one. I have had a run of such encounters my self in the last week or two.

Two days ago I was walking through the Sydney suburb of Lakemba,when three men in thawbs stopped me & asked: “Where are you from kafir, and what are you doing here?
Two days prior to that I had occasion to visit a friend in the Sydney suburb of Redfern, when two darker skinned individuals called out: “What are you doing in The Block, whitey?”
And, just four days prior when I called into a shop in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, the shopkeeper commented: “We don’t get many guilos here, where are you from?”

I asked myself, why were they so enthusiastic to ascertain my identity, where I come from?

If I was of any other colour I might have called it racism …but no, hadn’t the great social theorists (and every anti-racism campaign from Gough to Gillard) *educated* us that racism was endemic to Europeans –so it couldn’t be that!

Still it puzzled …could our betters have gotten it wrong … for days I felt like Winston in 1984 slinking away avoiding friends & foes.

Then Eureka! The answer struck me … under our multicultural ground rules these people were perfectly entitled to interrogate any whitey who entered their homelands, and turf me out if they saw fit. It was ME who was showing my white shoganism by taking offence to it!

So the great social theories remain inviolable – only Europeans can be racist --and all our high-minded activists can continue trotting out each day in the sure and certain knowledge that in exposing every morsel of European self preference (real or imagined) they will rid the world of racism once and for all.

Where are you from?

That question could be asked for a variety of reasons.
Something as simple as being fascinated by someone's
accent and trying to place it. I would not assume that
people were being deliberately divisive. It could
simply be curiousity. However, having said that I do
recall a funny incident that my husband had a few years
ago. He was waiting for his turn to have some tests done
at one of the largest hospitals in Melbourne when an
older nurse came up to him with her list of names and
glancing at my husband's long European surname asked him
in a loud voice:

"Do you need an interpreter?"

My husband looked at her, smiled, and answered in his
perfect English accent:

"Why doesn't the doctor speak English?"

SPQR:

And not too many words...Love it!

Thanks for your article. I totally agree. I’m white but lived overseas for a number of years as a child and an adult and hence have “an accent”. I resent being asked every day “where are you from?”. The effect is to make me feel that I don’t belong even though I am Australian born. I lived in Canada for a number of years. I was never asked this questions by strangers. After getting to know me people gradually asked about my background. The effect was that I felt as if I belonged in Canada. Indeed I felt more Canadian and at home than I ever did in Australia. Strangers in Canada didn’t ask me “where are you from” so it felt they assumed “I belonged here”. David L and Don, you need to think about what it feels like to be asked this question day in, day out. It isn’t the person’s intentions that matters, it’s the effect of having to tell the same story day in, day out what does.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Where do I come from? Why planet Earth of course. My ethnicity? Why human being of course!
This Author is clearly one of those over sensitive recent Asian arrivals, completely at odds with Australia and Australians, and just looking for any excuse whatsoever, to justify his very own reverse perverse form of anti white anti Christian bigotry/racism?
If you don't like us and or our social mores? Then feel perfectly free to return to where you came from!
People/Australians have only two real motives for taking an interest in, or talking about you?
They are either interested or jealous.
Moreover, they will rag/tease/sledge you incessantly, if you act a little to precious or pretentious.
We really are, in the main, an egalitarian lot. And often seeming invective, if uttered with an accompanying smile, is really a term of endearment.
Giovanni was right, when he described us as a weird lot.
But hey, if you have a fair dinkum Aussie for a mate, you have a friend for life. Who would likely give you the shirt off of his/her back, if he/she believed your needs were greater? We are inherently, a very decent freedom loving People and the reason I love this land and her peoples so very much.
Count the number of war graves in parts of Europe and elsewhere, if only to understand, we have sacrificed the very cream of our young manhood, fighting as volunteers, for the rights and freedoms of others, in righteous European wars, we simply did not ever have to be involved in!
Look, we have very little control over what happens to us or our future. The only thing we have absolute control over, is our thought processes and through them, our attitudes!
One would commend the Author to study the life and teachings of Gandhi, who basically set a nation free, with people power and passive resistance, and a welcoming smile for absolutely everyone.
Rhrosty.