Okay. Hong Kong is pretty damn racist, I think. Not in the sense of racial violence, of which there is very little, but in the sense that vaguely (or blatantly) insulting nicknames for any group that’s not local Chinese are the norm, people have no problem drawing conclusions about whole races from TV or a single experience, and many people have no problem saying things like “dark skin makes me think of people as dirty, like the dirt under your fingernails.”
While it’s true that the “White Australia” policy was only completely abandoned in 1973, it was being (too) slowly dismantled from the end of WWII. As gobear suggests, the “White Australia” policy was not the official name of the measure, and the piece of legislation that helped provide for the exclusion of non-Europeans was actually called the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. It’s provisions included the following:
Interestingly enough, if you take out the dictation test, those paragraphs sound rather similar to many aspects of current US immigration policy.
The dictation test, in which an immigrant was required to pass a test in a European language, could also be use to exclude radical Europeans, because it never specified which European language had to be used.
In 1934, a Czech communist by the name of Egon Kisch came to Australia to speak at the All-Australian Congress Against War. After failing in attempts to deport Kisch summarily, the govenment sought to establish whether he was an illegal immigrant by administering the dictation test. Because Kisch was fluent in six or seven European languages, including English, the officials decided to give him the test in Scottish Gaelic. Kisch, of course, failed the test, but the Australian High Court invalidated it on the grounds that Scottish Gaelic was not a European language under the legislation’s definition.
All in all, an interesting little historical episode.
I think, unfortunately that Australians can be very racist. There are some very low racial points in our history: treatment of Aboriginals, the white Australia policy, Pauline Hanson, perhaps the children overboard disgrace and the ensuing election.
That said, however, given the opportunity, Australians can be remarkably eager to embrace other cultures. Despite the racism, there is, I feel, much pride in Australia’s diversity, and I feel (or maybe hope) that if not fed by electioneering politicians, Australia’s racism will atrophy, allowing our better qualities to shine.
Still, I don’t want to give the impression that Australiais a terrible place if you’re not white. For the most part, racism is an uncomfortable part of the background. There isn’t widespread bigotry toward people, just the occasional ugly stereotype or discussion.
First, Asia is culturally diverse. There are a lot of countries there. It’s not just a moncultural block called ‘Asia’. The same applies to Europe.
Second, while this doesn’t directly address diversity, Australia has almost twice as many people born overseas as the U.S does.
Third, it is little wonder than we don’t have as many Africans. We didn’t ship them over here and make them work in our cotton fields. It’s also little wonder that we don’t have many Native Americans; there were none to begin with, and considering the small number who live in the U.S, it is not surprising that there aren’t large numbers of them anywhere else in the world. It should be noted, however, that the proportion of Aboriginals that make up our population is even smaller than the tiny proportion of Native Americans who make up the American population, a fact that is truly dismal.
Likewise, we don’t have a large amount of Hispanics because there are no Hispanic countries nearby to allow for easy migration. If Mexico was north of Queensland, I’m sure we’d have a far higher number of Hispanics.
Fourth, you are correct about Perth. It is the only Australian city with a single immigrant group totalling higher than 10%, but that immigrant group is the English. (White) South Africans aren’t far behind.
I’m not sure about the lack of African people you’re friend saw. I regularly come into contact with Africans, usually around the uni, but it isn’t uncommon to see them around the general community. And I don’t live in Sydney or Melbourne - I’m only in a small city.
That’s because black doesn’t necessarily mean African here. You’ll see newspapers using the words Aboriginal and Black interchangably. It’s just not a racist term here (though I admit to not liking it, for some reason).
Parts of Australia are racist. I grew up in one such area in country Victoria, and sadly have to count my own relatives as shockingly racist, and I cringe inside at some of the things I hear on my infrequent visits back there. On my last day home before I left for the ‘big smoke’ my grandmother took me aside for a private chat to impart upon me good advice for life. The advice my family matriarch gave me was to “stay away from yellow women” as “its not fair on the children”. She went on that “they used to be a good race until they got into drugs”. I doubt she has ever really known an asian in her life. :rolleyes: One of her sons, my uncle, ran unsuccessfully for senator for the One Nation party.
Some rural areas like where I grew up are still very anglo-centric and racially homogenous although it is changing. Of the 600 odd kids that were at my high school in my years there, we had as ethnic variety 3 italians, 1 greek, 1 serb all of whom were referred to as wog. For one year we had one aboriginal. No asians, no blacks, the school was overwhelmingly of scotch/english/dutch/german ancestry.
By contrast Melbourne and Sydney (which between them account for not much under half the Australian population) are very ethnically diverse. My current department at work out of about twenty includes two chinese, one vietnamese, one malay, a son of an australian soldier and his japanese war bride, a syrian muslim, two italians, a czech, a pole, and my boss is dutch and married to a norwegian. I find the earlier comment that a resident of Melbourne had never seen an african as mere hyperbole its so extremely unlikely. I’d be surprised if many US cities would be more diverse. Granted our specific mixes would differ, and geography alone suggests we will have more Malaysians then Mexicans but I suspect the overall situation is comparable.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by dorkusmalorkusmafia *
**Said friend in my analogy was from Melbourne originally but currently lives in Sydney. He had never seen a black (African) person outside of television. **
[/QUOTE]
I’ve gotta call bullshit on this one. I think your friend is having a lend of you, mate. My next door neighbours are African. If I walk to my local railway station I’d average seeing probably four to six African faces on the way (but generally no Aborigines). You’d need to be hiding under a rock to live in Sydney and have never seen a black person. You’d have never caught a taxi, or a train, never gone downtown, never been to the tourist areas, never been to the markets… That’s astounding.
As for the OP, most of the points I wanted to make have been said. Australia has had low points of racism in its history, much like the US (we even had a small amount of slav… er forced labour of Pacific Islanders on the queensland sugarcane fields). Like the US, we have marginalised our aboriginal population. Like the US, we are a generally tolerant and diverse society. And like the US, we have always had, and we always will have our share of bigots. In fact, like much of the Western world, we have seen in the last ten years or so an increase in the scapegoating of migrants, and the (relative) rise of extreme right lunatic politicians.
I find it surprising that people are saying Australia is less diverse than the United States, though. I’m sure that in a major city in either country, you could find migrants from just about every nation on earth. If anything, we don’t have the “big three” of white, black, and hispanic populations, followed by smatterings of others. I think our mix isn’t any more diverse necessarily, but it is a little more balanced. There doesn’t seem to be any one dominant large minority here.
I also have to say bullshit.
I have never been to Australia, but I sure met a lot of them while travelling through Europe. The ones I met loved to party and always included minorities. Granted, as a Gay man I found the Aussie men to be sexist pigs (their viewpoints on Sheilas was unbelievable), but racist was something I never saw.
Now if you want to talk racists…back in the 80’s nobody was worse than white South Africans! I don’t know if it has changed, but those folks could make a red-neck American feel ashamed to be white!
Down here in the deeper parts of ‘downunder’ (Melbourne), I’ve got to admit that seeing folk from Africa is a bit of a rarity. Not unheard of, but still pretty special.
But in terms of racial diversity (and I’m sure I have mentioned this before on this board), but when I was in high school in the 1970’s, there were 26 nationalities represented in my school community of 1200 kids. And this was quite a few years before we experienced the major influx of folks coming in from S.E. Asia. We have even MORE diversity in our backgrounds now.
Yes, we have racism. But I do believe that it is dying out as those in our community who hold the most bigotted views are ageing and NOT passing their values on to their kids who, for the most part, are enjoying the advantages that living in a multicultural society gives them.
Just as an example, my dad served in the Australian Armed Forces during WW2 defending Darwin against the Japanese Forces. Forever after, and until the bloody day he died about 18 years ago, he warned me against those ‘evil nips’ and to watch out for them 'cos they would be ‘out to get me’. Now, because I had grown up in different times to my dad, I was able to pass off his omens as foolish mutterings. I KNEW Japanese kids and their families and they were just like me.
And the Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistani kids, and the Italian, Greek and Turkish kids, and the Lebanese and English and Spanish kids, and the kids from Chile and the kids from Nauru and the kids from Mauritius, and the kids from Germany and Latvia, and the kids from Afghanistan and Egypt, and those kids who hailed from Rhodesia and Mexico and even those who came from the US of A, were all, funnily enough, just like me. They might have had darker skin, or glossier hair, or a mum who cooked better food than my mum did, but basically, we were all pretty much the same model of kid.
And I think you will find that I’m not the only Aussie who feels this way. Actually, I reckon I might actually be in the MAJORITY for once in my life!!
Australians are (I think) less racist than Americans, but far more xenophobic. There is a whole huge bunch of people who worry about Aussie culture getting destroyed by those damn immigrants. I’ve gotta say, tho, that racism is pretty unpopular over here, simply because Australia is more culturally diverse than most places. I’m speaking only for Sydney, however, so I can’t really garantee anything usefull about the other 15 million or so Australians.
Cough splutter I think you’ll find that neither the majority of blacks, nor any of the Native Americans “immigrated to the US”…
This assertion is borne out by the experience of Ireland, which was pretty monoracial until about 5 years ago. “Ireland of a thousand welcomes” me arse.
I’ve certainly heard it suggested by people who’ve lived here their whole lives that Ireland has simultaneously become more diverse AND more racist. I guess when it was all white, people just didn’t even think enough about other races.
I suppose you’d have to ask one of the few non-white people who grew up here in those times, though.
There were 120 languages spoken in the suburb over from the one I lived in, by census, when I was last living in Sydney. Australia’s pretty racially diverse, just because some racial groups are not heavily represented there doesn’t make it less diverse than the US.
As for the question, I’d say it depends on where you are. I grew up in Tasmania which is predominantly of northern European heritage, the migration patterns when I was last there still tended to include a disproportionately large number of people from the British Isles. But I didn’t see much racism towards most ethnics groups. The big exception - huge, huge amounts of racism towards our indigenous people. I hope it’s changed, I haven’t been back in five years, haven’t lived there in nigh on ten, but when I was living there, it was still both common and acceptable to stereotype indigenous Australians as lazy, drunk and unemployable. I’m ashamed of that, and I’d argue against it whenever the stereotype came up, but that particular form of racism seemed to be deeply ingrained among my peers. Dunno if it’s worse than elsewhere but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t seen it.
Let us say we do have a Gaussian distribution for racist thinking and we established that distribution across the entire population of the Earth. If it were found that 90% of Aussies were in the top 10 - 25% of the world distribution, then it would be perfectly valid to say that (on average) Aussies are very racist. I am making no comment on whether that is actually the case.
Hmm Idlewild the Tasmanian you wouldn’t be idlewild of Guinevere perchance?
Yeah, I would. 
Not too many of us Tassies at large, and I tend to keep this username on most all of the messageboards I visit.
We like to keep them stuck away on the island. Imagine the havoc they would wreak if we let them loose.
In Brisbane I see lots of Asians. Mostly they are young and I figure they are students or tourists, not permanent residents or citizens. The CIA factbook tells us that Australia is whiter than the USA: 92% Caucasian vs 77%.
Australia seems to me to be relatively monocultural. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but the only Asians I can recall who are on regularly is a newsreader on ABC and one of the characters on “Neighbours”. I’ve seen Aborigines on documentaries but the only time I saw one on a comedy or drama was on a satire called “Lifestyles”. It was sort of funny and may be relevant, so I’ll relate it here.
The show gives helpful hints that are actually jokes. For example, to make your kid behave, the medical expert suggested that you put them on a vegetarian diet. In the next scene a formerly energetic child is listlessly sitting on the couch, lacking the strength to get into trouble.
One of the experts is a working class guy named Todd, and he sometimes gives tips on drinking, such as putting a dummy in your passenger seat and a student driver sign on your car so that police will think you’re just a bad driver, not a drunk driver.
In the sketch I’m talking about, Todd wakes up with a hangover and can’t remember the night before. He talks about what an unpleasant feeling it is hearing from one’s mates that one got out of hand and went too far. His advice was to take a black friend with you on your next bender so that no matter how drunk and ill-behaved you get, everyone will assume your friend was drunker.
And that’s it, the only time I can remember seeing a black person on an Australian TV show. Granted, there aren’t many blacks in Australia and I’ve heard that in areas where there are higher concentrations of Aboriginals there are TV stations or shows made to reflect their interests.
Another example of monoculturalism on TV was a commercial that was a montage with a song called, I think, “We Are Australia”. There were heaps of people in it. IIRC, every single one was white, except a brief shot of an Asian family.
As I posted before I don’t think Aussies are particularly racist. It would be nice to hear the particulars from cainxith’s friend on why he decided Australians are racist.
The show talked about above may have been Life Support (returning soon!).
Firstly, I don’t agree with most of what Ironikinit says, I don’t believe Australia is monoculturalist, we do not force assimilation because Australia has very little to assimilate with. The question of “What is Australian culture?” has plagued many people for decades, so we have a tendency to embrace other cultures IMHO. As for TV, considering our meagre resources, we have many shows dedicated to different cultures (and as such, different parts of Australian culture) from Italian Christian TV to “Blokes World!” and such. Commercial TV in Australia is not a good measure of cultural diversity in this country, or indeed, any country.
I’ve in inner-city Melbourne & I’ve come in contact with racism, not overt racism, but just a quiet comment or two behind closed doors by some family members and a few friends. Usually my response is to remain silent for a few moments before informing them that their comments are inappropriate and will not be tolerated, depending on whom the person is, it might also entail a literal dig in the ribs for their trouble.
I’ve lived in rural areas, where without a doubt; racism is more rampant that large cities, but even that is changing now. I’ve also lived in the Middle East for a period and whilst there I found racism on levels I had not encountered before, I saw a man beaten with a wooden baton on the head by an officer of the law, because he was blocking the way of my family and I at an airport, I didn’t ask for it, it just happened, which makes you wonder how it can be that things like that become accepted, this is something I have never seen in Australia, nor would I like to see my beautiful country slip so low.
It would be incorrect to say that Australia is a country free of racism, from my experience, most racism (as has been said before) stems from older generations, and for the most part, this unfortunate trait has not been passed on to Australia’s children, within a few generations I think that racism may become a non-issue. Australians have grown since the time of the “White Australia” policy, and whilst we’ve yet to remove these bottom-feeding scum sucking racists from our social horizon, we’re trying our hardest.
I’m a white Australian (I don’t really feel that I need to identify as such), indeed, I’m about as white as you can get, my family came out with the First Fleet, and no doubt partook in the White Invasion of this country, and whilst I cannot undo what has been done, I honestly try to wage war if you will, on racists and bigots.
I’m not sure how this will come across, I’ve just got so many thoughts flowing through my head, and clarity is not my strong point.
To put it succinctly, I don’t think Australia is ‘more’ racist than any other countries, indeed, I have found Australia to be one of the most tolerant countries of all I have visited or lived in. I won’t deny that there are racist elements in our society, as there are in all societies, but I think that we are slowly but surely closing that sad chapter of our history.
So why don’t you all come down under and see how we’re doing, we’d love to hear from you all!,
[sarcasm] But right now, I’ve got to go and throw a shrimp on the barbie before going to hunt some coons [/sarcasm] :rolleyes:
Yeah figured it was you. There are only about 4 Tasmanians that have mastered literacy so the odds were high. 
Oh and its Ellgryn Ravensglutter 
This is obviously anecdotal, but when I first came to Melbourne I was struck by how incredibly ‘white’ the place was compared to New Zealand where I came from. People talked about cultural diversity a lot but their idea of it seemed to be all the different types of Europeans here.
Now Ive been here a while there are a few cultures here but theres a lot of place you can go where you’d think that was true. One thing I was told by an Aboriginal man once was that when he goes to buy cars with his white wife, the car dealers talk to his wife about the car instead of him. You generally need some pretty heavy racism for gender to get trumped on issues like that.
I cant easily qauntify it and am obviously biassed but my experience was certainly one of Australia being more racist overall both institutionally and individually.
Still fairly progressive, ton of peopel who arent, etc etc.
Otara
See the sort of horrible discrimination Tasmanians face? Help, help! I’m being opressed! No, really. Tasmania has some significant problems in addition to the rather unpleasant views on the rights of indigenous people. I’d say homophobia, leading to quite serious differences in quality of life due to discrimination, was the big social wrong that drove me crazy while I was there. And as Otara alluded to, gender roles can still definitely be an issue.
Hi, Ellgryn