I can't take credit for the idea. It was the title to a segment on a TV show I like to watch called the '7pm Project.' It's a daily news program with a panel of hosts and various guest hosts with a comical twist. I like it because it highlights Australian news stories and sometimes goes a little more in depth and invites experts on to discuss them as well.
There are a couple of regulars on the show who grate me sometimes due to their sometimes racist-leaning or sexist-leaning jokes and comments. I'm trying to open-minded, though. Maybe this is simply a more honest/raw culture? The female host on the show never seems to be bothered by the comments, so I guess she represents the majority female perspective.
I think it's ironic that the show decided to do a segment on racism since I continually notice their seemingly racist comments. The one that grated me most was a discussion about immigration. This is a hot topic in the US as well, and spurs a lot of racism at home, so I'm familiar with this subject. But the difference in this case is that the immigrants are
asylum seekers. They're escaping harsh conditions in their homelands and as a desperate (sometimes last-ditch) effort, they're paying some guy to (hopefully safely) take them on little boats from Southeast Asia to Australia so they can have a normal life. They even showed some statistics comparing the US, France, Canada, etc. who have accepted
tens of thousands of asylum seekers versus Australia couple thousand. So what's the problem? I have no idea. I can't remember exactly the horrible comment that was made, but even one of the other hosts called the comment out as being racist during the show. Of course it couldn't be straightforward, it was more like "Now, I like to have a good time, but that sounds racist."
The day before the show they interviewed an Aussie college kid who called President Obama a monkey on his twitter account. He was extremely defensive despite the interviewers using kid gloves with him. He insisted it was a joke and that people were stupid if they didn't understand that. A professional comedian guest host on the show suggested that comedy was not as easy as it seems. That was as harsh as they got with him. He obviously deserved an intellectual pounding, but the hosts were either unable or unwilling to do battle.
Then the day of the show, during a previous news story, they were discussing a prison murder of a notorious Australian gang leader. They discussed the increasing gang activities and mentioned the influx of immigrants from ever more "scary" countries. I'm not sure what that means, but at the very least it sounds like a generalization and at the worst, racist. So next up... "Is Australia racist? We hit the streets to find out!" Seriously, do they not hear themselves talk?
So then they do a very unscientific man-on-the-street poll. Of course some say yes, some say no. Then to throw in some diversity they interview an Indian cab driver who says he's been the victim of racial comments, but doesn't really seem that bothered by it. It's better than it used to be, is his attitude. They also have an Indian "Racism Expert" on the show who says Australia is no more racist than other countries, but admitted that Australia is indeed pretty ignorant about diversity issues. They probably picked Indians because there have been some high profile
incidents of violence towards Indian students in Australian universities, further spurring international debate on whether Australia is racist and whether international students are safe here.
I'm no racism expert, and I don't even know what qualifies you to be one, but I think it would be really hard to determine the amount of "racism" of a country, unless you used obvious metrics - such as unfair incarceration rates, EEOC lawsuits, etc. Of course, I don't think that even paints the entire picture. The only evidence I personally have is anecdotal. Our friends here happen to be mostly immigrants, and some darker-skinned than me, so I may be a little sheltered from it.
But even so, within a month of being in Australia, I heard a negative comment about the "Blacks" living in a certain apartment complex. Blacks here meaning Aboriginals.
(As a side note, I've heard the word Blacks used in a positive manner, but in New Zealand, where I was asked about my background. I said Black and White, like I usually do, which was met with "So am I!!" Odd to me since they are Maori. But that was the end of my naivety about the use of the word Black. It's definition changes depending on where you are.)
But back to Australia, Theo had an incident with a group of older (all white) Aussies discussing the use of the N word in a very racist manner. I've also talked to a multicultural family, white and Japanese that has experience a lot of racism here.
I'm not the only American to notice this either. I heard a US comedian joke that visiting Australia was like going back in time - "You still have Woolworth's and racism." Another example was a horrifying fiasco that occurred last year when
Harry Connick Jr. was on an Australian TV show where a Jackson 5 spoof was done in blackface. I think he did a great job of articulating why it was offensive.
I wanted to learn more about race relations here, so I rented a DVD about the Australian reconciliation movement started in the mid-90's (and still continuing to this day, I think). The purpose was to gather information about Aboriginal and White relations and to formulate a plan for reconciliation between the races. They started with focus groups to discuss race issues. It was an all white focus group, but still many opinions were discussed. An interesting session included an Aboriginal facilitator who started with asking the group to name Aborigine tribes. They didn't know more than 1 or 2. Then he asked them to name American Indian tribes. They crowd went wild. They could name tons. Eventually, I think some people were enlightened by their new knowledge. On the other end of the spectrum, I saw a similarity between bigots around the world in that they clutch on to unfounded and unsupported views despite learning the actual facts.
I guess as long as we are highly emotional beings, we will continue to believe things that are clearly not true. Hopefully some people will eventually learn their way out of their ignorance, but ultimately we will never have a world free of racism.
I can't say whether Australia is
more racist than the US, but it does seem to be more out in the open - at least on television. There doesn't seem to be a social standard making it unacceptable. I've never been personally insulted to my face, but I do find any racist statement about any other race extremely disturbing. But it's nothing worse than what I've experience growing up in the US. Apparently racist group activities in the US have increased since Obama became president, so we definitely have our own issues at home.
