Australian Racism

Self-images invariably distort and hide the truer nature of things, whether they are about an individual, group or nation. In this article, Peter Kuttner argues that there is far more racist prejudice in Australia than many of us are willing to concede.

I am moved to write about racism because I am troubled by my feeling that Australia is a more racist country than its prevailing self-image is willing to concede. I am not claiming that Australia is racist in the way apartheid South Africa was. Nor do I think Australia necessarily has a worse record than other comparable countries in this regard. My quarrel is with every country whose citizens kid themselves on this issue, by claiming to be other than what they are, thereby making a bad enough situation worse.

My disquiet is partly caused by politicians blandly stating that Australia is not a racist country when they discuss events like the Cronulla riots or the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne. Racism festers beneath the surface of community consciousness when it escapes civic censure. It seems to be widely condemned only when it comes to public attention in the sporting arena, whether AFL, rugby league or cricket. In making my case I am hampered by the lack of a phrase which conveys the idea of a country being mildly or moderately racist. In current usage, associating the word racist with a country implies it is built around race or is riven by racial conflict. This is evidently not true of Australia and may explain why politicians and public figures – including Michael Kirby in a recent radio interview – believe Australia is not a racist country.

According to my Webster’s, racism is ‘hatred, rivalry or prejudice accompanying difference of race; belief in inherent superiority of some races over others; discriminative treatment based on that belief.’ Its definition touches on the intensity of feeling inherent in the word. My Concise Oxford is emotionally neutral. It identifies racism as ‘a belief in the superiority of a particular race; prejudice based on this; antagonism towards other races, esp. as a result of this; the theory that human abilities are determined by race’.

Racism can essentially be understood as ‘fear of the other’. Fear of the other, or of the different or of the unknown, appears to be hard-wired in our species because, regardless of any protestation to the contrary, I believe we all connect with it to varying degrees in our lives. Please understand that I am including a person’s non-communicated, innermost and fleeting thoughts in the mix. So it is all the more important that we resist the temptation to make the hard-wiring an “it’s a fair cop, but society’s to blame” sort of excuse.

The word which most accurately describes the state of mind associated with racism, sexism, chauvinism and their like is prejudice, which can readily but does not inevitably give rise to hatred, resides in a dark place in human nature and reveals itself in negative thought, word and deed. By self-definition, prejudice has no room for subtelty or nuance, but its manifestation can range from fleeting to obsessive thoughts, mild to vitriolic speech and token to murderous action.

Racism is a word with vile connotations. Of all forms of prejudice, it is the worst because it derives its visceral potency from condemning people for no other reason than the normal physical appearance with which they happen to be born, fixing on genetic differences of pigmentation and facial features. The very idea of busying oneself with the ethnic and racial characteristics of an individual or a people for the sole purpose of demonising them, is to me not only grossly unpleasant and offensive, it is also completely uninteresting. It is an abomination to then go to the lengths of bringing in the cruelty and injustice of segregation. It is stupid too, given that it also curtails the freedom of its begetters. People can conceal their sexuality and politics. They cannot hide from their innate appearance, even if it does not reveal whether they follow a religion or the country to which they owe allegiance. As an aside, people who are born with a physical disability can be victims of prejudice for much the same reasons as those who are victims of racism.

There are three groups of people who stand out as targets of racism in Australia: aborigines, muslims and boat people (many of whom may be muslims). It is because racism is always cropping up somewhere in Australian society, whether in casual conversation, in print, on the airwaves, in sport, the military, the police and, above all, in the underlying tension between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians, that I feel Australia should be regarded as either a mildly or moderately racist country. A country does not have to resemble the former American South or apartheid South Africa to be racist.

I write from the perspective of an agnostic westerner and admit to harbouring and expressing, but not otherwise acting on, prejudice. It is up to us to distance ourselves from those who make prejudice the focus of their lives. It is also up to each and every one of us to take responsibilty for our own prejudices, firstly by recognising, and then admitting to ourselves, that they exist within us. Thereafter, we can leave them unspoken or unwritten so that they do not gain energy in the world by being heard or read. We must keep our prejudices to ourselves, and refuse to take any further action to promote them.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that most people think racism, like bad driving, is something which applies to others but not to them, that, whatever their race, they would be morally offended to ever be labelled racist. However, I believe that in many cases, such indignation would be tinged with hypocrisy. In a country like Australia, there is no doubting the resentment directed at non-white immigrants for supposedly taking jobs, accommodation and government handouts from white Australians. I have heard people preface their disapproval of these immigrants by stating that they are not racist. Thus, they are either betraying their discomfort or even feelings of guilt at giving in to their baser instincts or, through lack of self-knowledge, they are unable to see that in venting their annoyance they are actually being racist.

This article has been stirring in me for quite a while. What finally pushed me into writing it was Scott Morrison’s complaint about the government paying for relatives to attend the funeral of boat people who drowned off Christmas Island. Because it deliberately draws on racism (the federal opposition) or weakly panders to racism (the federal government), I find the debate about boat people to be sordid on both sides of politics.

Morrison’s remarks were crass and offensive, their timing callous. They were the kind of remarks a racist would make. If anything could have made matters worse, it was Tony Abbott defending Morrison as one of the most compassionate people he knew, which suggests that  Abbott and others of his close coalition associates, Joe Hockey a notable exception, may be as wanting in compassion as his Shadow Minister for Immigration.

Peter Kuttner is an artist who has lived on Tamborine Mountain since 1987 when he migrated from England. The Australian landscape, flora and fauna soon captivated him. Driven by his love of the sub-tropical rainforest, Peter became active in the community and campaigned for conservation and the introduction of effective planning controls. In 1998 he acquired a video camera and started filming in the rainforest, and has since created The Tamborine Mountain Archive, a vast gallery of the Mountain’s biodiversity.