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April 20, 2024, 08:58:16 pm

Author Topic: Racism in Australia  (Read 11224 times)  Share 

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #15 on: June 08, 2013, 11:04:48 pm »
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Nope, I would never write institutionalised with a z. :P

That's precisely my point, actually. I never suggested that racism has been completely eradicated, nor am I going to question OP's experience - my point was that cases of racism are limited to the individual level, rather than being a real societal issue in Australia. People of different races do have equality of opportunity - this board is a fine example of that. Therefore, it's not really right to suggest "white privilege" nor that racism towards Whites is justified in any way.

I don't think this discussion is benefitting anyone, and is probably inappropriate here.

The issue of racism in Australia is one of great complexity. However, first I'd like to talk about what you have said, which is effectively, 'Whites don't have an advantage'. You really do have an advantage in Australian society being white, the large disproportionate amount of people on television in Australia are white. A disproportionate amount of CEOs are white. Any industry where it's desirable to be in, it's an advantage to be white. Anecodally, my GP was an orthopaedic surgeon when he was living in Egypt, since he's come to Australia, he's had to work as a GP because he can't get any one to review his work within the college of orthopaedic surgeons, he pessimistically said on the matter, 'If I was born here with white skin, I'd be an orthopaedic surgeon by now.'  I'm not going to go into research to prove this, frankly because I can't be bothered, maybe someone else can?

Racism in Australia is a complex issue because we are such a multi-cultural society and as a result, there's not a commonly defined social standard, there are no cultural values. Take it this way, I am from Serbia, in Serbia, we always talk of the other ex-Yugoslav nations with racist jokes, yet this is something of a paradox to us because by definition for us a joke cannot be serious and thus cannot have a serious racist premise. For instance, the Slovenian philosopher Zizek nails this with his anecdote as follows. One of my friends, who is from Montenegro came over to my place the other day (and Montenegrins are stereotyped to be very lazy and there are a lot of earthquakes in Montenegro) so I said to him, "Jure, how do Montenegrins masturbate? They put their dicks in the ground and wait for the earthquake."

We see nothing wrong with this, we are of different religions, different skin tone, and yet we are happy to joke about it, we thoroughly endorse it.

Anglo-Saxon Australians, however, are very politically correct and personally, I hate this position. I mean, when the government pays out Asbestos victims but merely issues an apology to so many of the  'stolen generation' and they get nothing, nobody bats an eyelid aside from a few university students with too much time on their hands. But when a bloke makes an innocuous joke on radio about Adam Goodes who has a clear track-record of  not being a racist and it is beyond obvious he was merely joking, everyone loses their shit. I just don't get it.

So, from a personal experience. I was playing soccer last year with a coach who was of Balkan descent with many Anglo-Saxen players in our team. He'd openly say things like, 'Kenny you daft Scottish bastard' and Kenny would be up in arms at the apparent racism, but I understood, it's just the way we explore cultural differences in the balkans. Now, you can say, 'yes, but we're in Australia', which is precisely my point, a problem with our multi-cultural society is that there is no standard moral point of view, if we are to be multi-cultural, we are then equally accepting my coaches position on 'racist jokes' as we are that of the player. Otherwise, we're not in multiculturalism, we are merely forcing immigrants to adopt our culture, which paradoxically, is also considered racist.


Professor Polonsky

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #16 on: June 09, 2013, 12:19:11 am »
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Seeing that I subscribe to objective morality, the idea that we are to be accepting of all positions is not one I am willing to accept. I really think this ought to be split elsewhere (although I think that'd be problematic considering the anonymous posts), but I'm not too sure how I feel about multiculturalism either. Taken to an extreme (which we have), it's just another facet of globalisation which leads to a degradation of national identity. But that's another topic altogether.

I think we do have societal standards which are set in stone. I mean, obviously you have the obvious ones (murder, etc) but even on issues like racism we have a broad consensus. You may or may not agree with them - like the condemnation for the Adam Goodes racism row - but they're still there. A society can't function without them.

As for the question whether being White is advantageous in Australia. Firstly, you have to remember that the vast majority of Australians are indeed Caucasian, of various ethnicities. So while it may seem - especially to us city-dwellers - that a disproportionate amount are White, that's not necessarily true. I think that the example which you cited is a better example of the difficulties faced by a first-generation migrant rather than that of racism. If you can't be bothered conducting research (and please, if you/anyone does, cite something which shows racism - not correlation between two variables), then you can't really make such a claim. I'd imagine the burden of proof would be on the person making a claim like this one.

spectroscopy

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #17 on: June 09, 2013, 11:07:34 am »
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sorry, i was reply #7, and cbf being on anon anymore
The whole "more ceos are white" argument is flawed because there are more white people in australia and therefor it makes sense there are more white ceos, but being a migrant wont stuff up your chances, ahmed fahour was ceo of nab australia, is currently ceo of australia post, and he was born in lebanon with brown skin and an arab name. Frank lowy was CEO of westfield for ages and im pretty sure he didnt even speak english when he moved to australia in his 20's

and as for your egyptian doctor, he might just be using that as an excuse becuase he couldn't pass the australian licensing exams?
check out health.gov.au , it has the numbers of how many people pass from each country on there
seriously, if you go to the royal childrens hospital/royal melbourne  right now and ask for the best surgeons or specialists in any faculty most of them wont be born or educated here, when i was at the hospital only 1 of my doctors were australian educated and he was brown skinned ! and the rest were all educated overseas, and only half were white

and also doesn't australia need more gp's (especially rural ones) so we have to bring them from overseas ? might explain it even further

Anonymous

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #18 on: June 09, 2013, 11:42:51 am »
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sorry, i was reply #7, and cbf being on anon anymore
The whole "more ceos are white" argument is flawed because there are more white people in australia and therefor it makes sense there are more white ceos, but being a migrant wont stuff up your chances, ahmed fahour was ceo of nab australia, is currently ceo of australia post, and he was born in lebanon with brown skin and an arab name. Frank lowy was CEO of westfield for ages and im pretty sure he didnt even speak english when he moved to australia in his 20's

and as for your egyptian doctor, he might just be using that as an excuse becuase he couldn't pass the australian licensing exams?
check out health.gov.au , it has the numbers of how many people pass from each country on there
seriously, if you go to the royal childrens hospital/royal melbourne  right now and ask for the best surgeons or specialists in any faculty most of them wont be born or educated here, when i was at the hospital only 1 of my doctors were australian educated and he was brown skinned ! and the rest were all educated overseas, and only half were white

and also doesn't australia need more gp's (especially rural ones) so we have to bring them from overseas ? might explain it even further

I said a disproportionate amount, not more.

12% of Australians are of Asian background.
24% of Australians were not born in Australia.
35% of Australians have both parents born outside of Australia

And yet:
http://resources1.news.com.au/images/2013/03/27/1226607/961733-grant-denyer.jpg
http://9adelaide.com.au/wp-content/uploads/NEWS_TEAM_BANNER2.jpg

Professor Polonsky

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #19 on: June 09, 2013, 12:41:43 pm »
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Not born in Australia, or parents born outside of Australia, does not mean one is not White. I fit both categories, and yet there is no chance you could say I'm not White. And besides, all that you have there is anecdotal evidence - no proof of a correlation, let alone racism.

Anonymous

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #20 on: June 09, 2013, 01:52:52 pm »
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Not born in Australia, or parents born outside of Australia, does not mean one is not White. I fit both categories, and yet there is no chance you could say I'm not White. And besides, all that you have there is anecdotal evidence - no proof of a correlation, let alone racism.

You don't need empirical evidence to conclusively determine white privilege in Australia.

Privilege 1: If I am a white man and I produce a body of work and it is critically acclaimed, I can be reasonably certain this is because of the quality of my work. If I am non-white, I can never be certain that it's not a case of tokenism.

Take Majak Daw for instance, bloke is just an average footy player, and yet every commentator raves on about how great he is after he plays an average game. It's impossible that such a situation arises because someone is white.

chasej

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #21 on: June 09, 2013, 03:41:32 pm »
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This is a help and advice forum. Is this really the place to be doing this? Especially with anon posters being able to say whatever they want with no accountability.
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Anonymous

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Re: A sensitive topic
« Reply #22 on: June 09, 2013, 04:03:39 pm »
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This is a help and advice forum. Is this really the place to be doing this? Especially with anon posters being able to say whatever they want with no accountability.

Good point, I'll move it to rants/debate.

Professor Polonsky

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #23 on: June 09, 2013, 06:13:34 pm »
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mmhm, I'm fine with splitting the thread (and suggested it myself several times), but I think that the OP did originally raise an issue which belongs in the anonymous board.

EvangelionZeta

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #24 on: June 09, 2013, 11:36:47 pm »
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Nope, I would never write institutionalised with a z. :P

That's precisely my point, actually. I never suggested that racism has been completely eradicated, nor am I going to question OP's experience - my point was that cases of racism are limited to the individual level, rather than being a real societal issue in Australia. People of different races do have equality of opportunity - this board is a fine example of that. Therefore, it's not really right to suggest "white privilege" nor that racism towards Whites is justified in any way.

I don't think this discussion is benefitting anyone, and is probably inappropriate here.

Racism doesn't have to be on paper or explicit - it can be subtle, or even subconscious as well.  People in Australia make judgements about people based on their ethnicity all the time - the Asian kids in high schools are the ones who are more academic, the Indian kids are the ones who come from oppressive families, etc.  Until we stop differentiating people based on their biological factors, we are still racist.
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Professor Polonsky

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #25 on: June 09, 2013, 11:53:11 pm »
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That's not racist, it's factual.

EvangelionZeta

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #26 on: June 10, 2013, 12:08:44 am »
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That's not racist, it's factual.

Even if there are trends, it doesn't mean you can judge any one individual based on a trend.  Just because somebody is Asian doesn't mean that they are academically inclined.  The movement against racism is to challenge the tendency towards lazily (and perniciously) assuming things about people based on their biological factors.
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Professor Polonsky

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #27 on: June 10, 2013, 01:14:44 am »
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Oh, fair enough. Applying generalisations to individual cases is illogical a priori. I think it's very much human nature to judge other people by a multitude of factors. It's not ideal, I agree. But I think racism has far worse consequences than that.

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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #28 on: June 10, 2013, 11:51:16 am »
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Oh, fair enough. Applying generalisations to individual cases is illogical a priori. I think it's very much human nature to judge other people by a multitude of factors. It's not ideal, I agree. But I think racism has far worse consequences than that.

It's human nature, but it's also an aspect of human nature that can be altered or controlled (like greed, for instance).  A lot of it depends on social discourses.  Feminists have come a long way, for instance, in reversing the prevalence of judgements/jokes about women being "weaker" or "more emotional", which really do have a lot of negative consequences. 

I'd say a lot of these judgements/jokes about race still do come into play too, and in damaging ways.  I would say, for instance, that amongst a lot of upper-class white men (certainly amongst their children, if my high school days were anything to go by), there is a perception of Asian-Australians as less creative and less independent, which is the flip side of the perception of Asian-Australians as hardworking/academically inclined (ie. they are all tiger parented but don't develop themselves), which could in part account for the "bamboo ceiling" phenomena.  I have a friend who is a leader in an Australian gay community as well who says there is a certain construction that people of Asian ethnicity are "submissive" and "bottoms"; perhaps there is some biological rationale for this yet again, but when you are judged in such a way simply based on your ethnicity, that's when your ability to actualise and inhabit the kind of person whom you want to be gets diminished.
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Re: Racism in Australia
« Reply #29 on: June 10, 2013, 01:53:12 pm »
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> there is a perception of Asian-Australians as less creative and less independent, which is the flip side of the perception of Asian-Australians as hardworking/academically inclined (ie. they are all tiger parented but don't develop themselves), which could in part account for the "bamboo ceiling" phenomena

I think the same way about Asian-Australians, even though I am one. This is not racism, it's just your typical stereotyping. Similar generalisations apply to the white population as well, such as tradies are bogans and St. Kilda is full of douchebags.

Also, let's face it, a large majority of Asian-Australians aren't very creative nor independent; there are always exceptions, but a stereotype doesn't appear out of thin air.

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