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Saturday, March 13, 2010

Racism in Aboriginal Australia

Racism in Aboriginal Australia

Scratch an Australian to find a racist. It's easy to use racist terms without meaning to.

Racism exists at all levels of Australian society but Australians are in denial.

Are Australians truly as open-minded and open-hearted as the world perceives them? Or does a multicultural mentality hide racism?

Read on to discover that racism in Australia is alive, it's only hidden behind a friendly mask.

I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country.
—John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia (1996-2007) in 2005 [17]

I do not believe that racism is at work in Australia.
—Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia (2007-) in 2010 [33]

Racism is still alive and evil in this country, I can assure you.
—Colin Markham, former NSW parliamentary secretary for Indigenous affairs

A study by the Australian National University published [in 2009] found clear evidence of racism in Australia.
—Sydney Morning Herald [33]

35%
Percentage of applications job seekers with Indigenous-sounding names had to submit to get the same number of interviews as an Anglo-Australian applicant with equivalent experience and qualifications in a study in 2009 [33].
70%
Percentage of surveyed Australians who thought India's media was wrong to brand Australians as being racist toward Indians, after several attacks on students [33].
5%
Overall percentage of surveyed Australians opposing multiculturalism [33].
20%
Percentage of surveyed Australians opposing multiculturalism in the urban fringes where most overseas arrivals settle first [33].

How can you tell someone is racist?


"Racism is still alive and evil." Racist graffiti painted on the gate of a Canberra Aboriginal youth organisation. Photo: Koori Mail [7]
I believe you're hearing a racist person if they make general, derogative remarks about a group of people based on their race. Upon close inspection of their claims, most of them are incorrect.

Racism and racist remarks serve to bond with people who have the same opinion. Many people who have racist opinions somehow know that these are not accepted in mainstream society so they join political groups who share their racist views.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation
One of these political parties was the One Nation party, founded by Pauline Hanson in April 1997. Let's have a brief look at some excerpts from her maiden speech to parliament in September 1996, [4] and why they are racist.

I have done research on benefits available only to Aboriginals and challenge anyone to tell me how Aboriginals are disadvantaged when they can obtain 3 and 5% housing loans denied to non-Aboriginals.

Racist statements like this show a lack of information and balance. If Hanson had done her research properly she would have found out that Aboriginal housing conditions were nowhere near what the average Australian enjoyed. At the time Hanson spoke, more than 9% of the Indigenous population in rural areas lived in "caravans, shacks and improvised accommodation" and 9% of Aboriginal people's rural homes did not have a toilet [3].

20% of Aboriginal people lived in "dwellings which had eight or more residents" [3]. Compare that to the total Australian population where less than 1% had to live in such overcrowding houses.

I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago.

This comment shows a lack of empathy and compassion for other people's situation.


Anti-racism poster. ANTaR invited visitors with this poster to test if they were racist.
Many opponents of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations thought likewise. 'Why me?' they asked. But this misses the point entirely. Rudd didn't apologise because he was guilty personally, he apologised because he felt sorry for what these people had to endure and how they suffered. For Aboriginal people this was a giant leap forward towards healing.

Racist people have trouble putting themselves into the shoes of others. When talking about land rights for Aboriginal people, Hanson said, "Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here." She doesn't even try to understand where Aboriginal people come from, what land means to them. Racism and egotism walk hand in hand.

One of the great things about free speech is that when racists can say what they really think, the public realise how disgusting they are. It's when the law makes them clean up their act that they appear more reasonable and electable.
—Geoffrey Robertson, human rights lawyer [27]

Institutional racism
Many people experience racism by another person. If companies or government bodies act in a racist way this is called institutional racism.

For example, when the South Australian government refused to fund Aboriginal legal aid the head of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc called the government's refusal institutional racism [29].

The media is another culprit. Many journalists fail to properly research stories and end up reinforcing existing racial stereotypes.

In fact, the worst offender of institutionalised discrimination and marginalisation of Aboriginal people is the government.
—Neil Gillespie, head of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc, South Australia [29]

Example of institutionalised racism

Racist stereotypes continue to persist in Australian's minds, even if they are magistrates, as the following story shows [30].

A man struck a woman with his car while she was lying on the ground in a parking lot. He was told by bystanders that she was drunk and would be okay.

The man proceeded his journey with the woman left on the pavement where she later died.

In the Magistrate's Court the man received a A$400 fine and was allowed to keep his driver's license.

In sentencing, the magistrate said: "It's clearly the case that an Aboriginal person in the dark on the bitumen or other places is extremely hard to see... It's easy to imagine how such an accident could happen."

The magistrate obviously had no notion about the diversity of Aboriginal people's identity.
Poll


Is this cheese name racist? "COON is Australia's best known cheese brand," says the company's website.


Read more about if the term 'Coon' is racist


Australia's politicians fail on racism

If you haven't already done so read the two quotes by successive Australian prime ministers at the top of this page. They are tale-telling proof that politicians have lost touch with reality.

Both politicians and Australian police commonly argue that many of the assaults on people of different ethnicity are 'opportunistic' rather than racist [33].

Australia hasn't had a multicultural policy for 15 years. The Race Discrimination Commissioner is part time, his other responsibility is as the Disability Discrimination Commissioner.

"Our politicians are fixed in denial… Politicians believe there are electoral costs and no benefits to acknowledging racism," says Prof Kevin Dunn, an expert in human geography and race and ethnic studies at the University of Western Sydney. Dunn collected the "most comprehensive data on racism in Australia" [33].

Look at how [politicians] responded to the global financial crisis [in 2008/9] or any other problem… they find the problem and tackle it. But not with racism. It seems we [Australians] can be broke, we can be fat, we can be anything. We just cant' be racist.
—Dr Yin Paradies, senior research fellow, University of Melbourne [33]

Avoid racist terms


Anti-racism campaign of the City of Sydney and the AIDS Council of New South Wales in May 2008 (detail). Click the image for a larger version.
What do you think are suitable expressions to address Australia's first people?

Aborigine
Aboriginal
Black
Aboriginal person
Indigenous person
Black person

With all of the above terms we have to bear in mind that although they are commonly used now they are the legacy of colonisation. Aboriginal people do not agree on a 'preferred' label but some labels find the support of many.

Remember also that prior to colonisation the First People of Australia identified themselves by their language group. They would say "I'm a Dharawal man!" or "I'm an Wiradjuri woman." Some country names around the greater Sydney area include Darug (near Katoomba, Blue Mountains), Gundungurra (near Goulburn, south-west of Sydney), Dharawal (Woolongong), Eora (Sydney; although this name is disputed), and many more.

Others still might prefer to call themselves a Koori or a Murri, but these refer to areas within Australia, e.g. Koori is used by people living in New South Wales and Victoria (the latter sometimes using 'Koorie'), while Murri is used for Queensland and far northern NSW.

Aborigine is the noun describing an Aboriginal person, but many Aboriginal people consider this use of it racist.

Aboriginal is an adjective and used to describe 'Aboriginal people' or 'Aboriginal children' or an 'Aboriginal viewpoint'. Some sources use it as a noun which I and many other people think is wrong.

When Aboriginal people write about themselves (for example in the Koori Mail newspaper) they mostly use 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people' which also expresses that they make a difference if they come from Australia's mainland ('Aboriginal people') or from the islands of the Torres Strait.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are opposed to the term Indigenous being used as it generalises both cultures.

A guide how to address Aboriginal people
The Aboriginal-owned newspaper Koori Mail tries to be as specific as possible when writing about Aboriginal people. This means that you should use the following hierarchy in descending order of preference.

The person's language group, e.g. 'Wiradjuri'.
The area the person comes from, e.g. 'Murri'.
'Aboriginal' if they come from mainland Australia, 'Torres Strait Islander' if they're from there.
'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander' to be generic.
'Indigenous' thereafter.
On this site I've chosen to use 'Aboriginal people' and 'Indigenous people' interchangeably without any intent to offend.

For more on this topic read the article about Aboriginal identity.

An ABO is an Australian Born Original person.
—reader's letter, Koori Mail [26]

"Toxic labels"
Unfortunately many Aboriginal people begin to identify with, and behave in accord with the 'toxic labels' Australian society defines for them [10]. It is easier to act as mainstream Australia perceives an Aboriginal person than to challenge that cliché and overcome a continued negativity attributed to the Aboriginal stereotype.

According to senior Aboriginal academics even terms such as 'urban', 'traditional' or 'of Indigenous descent' are seen as racist when defining or categorising Aboriginal people [10].

Further suggested appropriate terms to use [10]:

Dreaming rather than 'Dreamtime' (for more on this see Aboriginal spirituality)
Family groups instead of 'clan'
Language groups, not 'clans'
Traditional over 'tribal'
Through my time with the Nyoongar people, I got to see first-hand the ingrained systematic racism in town and it made me sick to see such backward behaviour still existing in what was then the 20th century.
—John Butler, musician

Is 'Coon' a racist term?
'Coon' is an insulting term for Aboriginal people and is believed to come from the 1850s Portuguese term 'barracoons' which describes a place of temporary confinement (usually a cage) for slaves or convicts in which they had to wait before being sent away to the places they were due to work.

It could also have meaning as a shortening of 'raccoon', a Washer Bear native to North America. The black eye masks and noctural habits of raccoons along with their tendency to steal paralleled the characteristics of typical robbers and thiefs.
No matter how you answered my poll above, results often depend on how you ask the question. I tried to be as neutral as possible, just asking if the cheese name was racist. The Herald Sun in its online site asked "Is a call for Coon cheese to change its name political correctness gone mad?"

Is a call for Coon cheese to change its name political correctness
gone mad?2,390 votes

Yes, people need to get over it, it's just a name93% No, there's a reason we can't use words like that any more6% source: www.news.com.au/heraldsun, October 2008
Note how there's no mention of the name being racist. No mention of Aboriginal people being offended by the name. The Herald Sun asks if it is overly political correct to ask for a name change. From this angle many people might agree, given the fact that the brand has been around for quite some time.

Note again how the options given to the users of the poll suggest that one should 'get over it' and move on and doesn't explain what the reason is why we cannot use 'words like that' anymore. For the passing surfer this poll is totally useless in the absence of context to the question.

At the moment we have a group of non-Aboriginal youth getting around calling themselves the KAC (Kill All Coons).
—Jacinta Ferguson, Wodonga, Victoria [25]

Racism in the arts—a window into the past

In 1957 Rolf Harris, then 27, wrote the song 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' which became a number one hit in Australia. The song was originally made of seven verses and the chorus. The sixth verse went as follows [20]:

Let me Abos go loose, Lou,
Let me Abos go loose.
They're of no further use, Lou,
So let me Abos go loose.
Altogether now!

'Abo' is a derogatory term for Aboriginal people. In the context of the song the above verse becomes even more racist because almost all other verses are about animals which are to be let lose after the drover's death the song is about.

Because of the racist term used the song was banned in Singapore. In some versions 'Abo' got replaced with 'emu' [19].

Racism is not in the past. It stares us in the face every day.
—Phill Moncrieff, reader letter, Koori Mail [28]

Harris' lyrics, as innocently as they might have been conceived, offer us an insight into the horrific practices of bush men in the 1920s. Xavier Herbert, born in 1901, reveals them in an interview he gave in 1984 [24]. Note the racist use of expressions like 'gin spree':

We used to go up to Broome for our holidays and I knew, all through Western Australia, black velvet was the thing. It's changed a lot in recent years but the perfect mate for the bushman was the black girl...

The pearling industry was established in Broome and the pearlers used to go up into the Kimberley country and steal the young [Aboriginal] gins to work as pearl divers. Of course, they used to rape them, too, and when they got too pregnant they'd chuck them overboard.

Stockmen used to go out for a 'gin spree', too. They'd run the blacks down and take the young girls [who'd] sit down and fill their fannies with sand.

Recommended movie

Tip The movie Spinning into Butter (USA, 2009) is one of the rare works to pick up racism as a topic for a feature film.

It's a powerful film about a series of racist incidents on a campus which shake the community out of their equal opportunity sleep. The film shows how difficult it is to adress racism on both a personal and community level, but also that there are no easy solutions.

Racist place names changed

When settlers named places in Australia they sometimes used names we consider racist today. Most of these placenames have quietly been changed to less offensive ones, however, some can still be found today and some Aboriginal people campaign against them.

E.S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand
Stephen Hagan fought for almost 9 years for a rugby league stand's name to be changed. It read E.S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand.

Stephen Hagan took his case to the Federal Court (where he lost) and finally to the United Nations, where the Council for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) agreed that the sign should be taken down [22].

His campaign came at an enormous cost for him and his family. Not only did he have to invest a lot of money, but he was also personally assaulted and threatened. In September 2008 however, the stand was torn down and the mayor promised not to name the new building with the same name. Hagan's wife Rhonda directed a film about her husband's fight called Nigger Lovers.

Racist Victorian placenames
For decades a mountain in north-east Victoria, called Mt Niggerhead, fuelled a heated debate about its name. In December 2008 the landmark was renamed to Mt Jaithmathangs after one of the traditional languages of the area [21].

This renaming, however, is not without controversy with one of the Aboriginal groups involved claiming that part of the mountain belongs to their country and its new name was offensive.

Racist placenames in Queensland
In Queensland's Alton Downs, near Rockhampton, people are debating if they should rename Black Gin Creek Road. White Australians used to call an Aboriginal woman a 'gin', often implying that they were used for sexual services by the white men. Another 'Black Gin Creek Road' is near Bambaroo, 60kms north-west of Townsville, Queensland. Nigger Creek near Wondecla, QLD, is yet another example.

The reason that people so ferociously advocate for keeping these racist beacons of Queensland's past has a lot to do with the fact that many non-Indigenous Australians do not know what it feels like to be called a 'gin' or a 'nigger' or a 'coon'.
—Amy McQuire, Aboriginal journalist [22]


Renamed due to racism. The 'Endeavour Avenue' in Sydney's suburb La Perouse was originally called 'Aborigine Avenue' but later renamed after Captain Cook's ship "following agitation from non-Aboriginal residents" [23].

Its former name is much more appropriate since La Perouse once was an Aboriginal mission and today is home to many Aboriginal families.
Contemporary racism

A subscriber to an Australian newsletter made the following observations [32]:

"If you want to find out about Australia put a sticker supporting Aboriginal causes on your car. Young blokes are usually the main problem as far as abuse goes. The reconciliation stickers seemed to be OK, but anything stronger than that eg Treaty or Land Rights causes a hostile reaction. I have even been abused for having a sticker advertising radio staion Triple A Murri Country on my car."

"There's an extremely strong undercurrent of racism in Australia, although, on the evidence, mainstream rather than undercurrent is probably more accurate."

"The fact that politicians , police etc are afraid to call it what it is, suggests that a majority of Australians do not class this behaviour as racist and will vote anyone out who calls it racism."

"If you want to be a person of influence in this country you steer well clear of issues like Australian racism." —which confirms the quotes from the beginning of the page.

Last Australia Day I had both the Australian flag and the Aboriginal flag on my car aerial, with the Aboriginal flag first—my aerial was snapped off.
—A subscriber of the Recoznet2 newsletter [32]

"Every Indigenous Australian has a story of racism," observes Amy McQuire from the National Indigenous Times [17]. She argues that "most non-Indigenous Australians have a story in which racist thoughts were uttered or acts occurred."

And she is right. Read the following examples.

Racist examples
These are just three examples showing how racism permeates everyday life, from an ordinary fan, to police, to federal ministers. Sadly, I could quote many more.

"Don't worry love, these things happen."
During a rugby league game a fan racially abused Aboriginal players and supporters, calling them 'monkeys' and 'blacks'.

When an Aboriginal witness asked for the manager she was told "Don't worry about it, it's football, these things happen."

However, in this instance the fan was tracked down and banned for life. [11]

"I'm of a large build. Not fat and black."
An Aboriginal health worker was pulled over for a traffic offence. In internal police documents which were used to prepare the court brief the worker was described as 'fat and black' [12], words which were also included in drop-down menus of internal document templates [14].

Queensland Police commissioner Bob Atkinson later apologised to the victim.

Showcasing Aboriginal people
In July 2006 as part of an employment scheme then Aboriginal Affairs minister, Mal Brough, proposed 'showcasing' Aboriginal people for tourists in five-star hotels by having them work 'front of house' on reception [13].

People... would attack my Aboriginality and they'd call me a black bitch. All my life I've been criticised because I'm Aboriginal.
—Joan Winch, Nyoongar Elder and Professor at Curtin University [15]

Racist terms in the press

Racist headline in The Australian. Aboriginal people believe this newspaper does not support their interests and uses the term 'blacks' in a derogative manner.
A lack of positive Aboriginal stories is prevalent throughout Australian newspapers.
'Black' in general is deemed racist. Which does not mean we cannot find it nowadays. Check out the newspaper article in the image which is taken from The Australian newspaper of May 17, 2006. This headline offends Aboriginal people. I've talked to one and he confirmed it to me. I found this headline in an online search in less than three minutes. Five minutes of searching The Sydney Morning Herald did not turn up any similar headline.

Another example of the extent of prejudice is the intolerance of Australians to foreign languages being kept and used by the new immigrants. Too often we hear white Australians talking amongst themselves that when people come to this country they should speak English and leave their own mother tongue back in the country from which they come.
—Michael Anderson, Aboriginal Elder [31]

Carelessness leads to racism outrage

Racist term used in a profile of a car forum member. The man was 25 years old and lived in Western Australia where also the car race incident occurred.
"I didn't realise it would be so bad," a careless white man said after he had sparked an outrage in Western Australia's Kalgoorlie [5].

The man had participated in a car race and named his car 'Foul Coon' because "we have always called Falcon cars 'foul coons'". What he considered to be "just a saying" deeply angered and offended local Aboriginal people. To add insult to injury some other team members had painted themselves black and wore red headbands, traditionally worn by senior and respected initiated Aboriginal men.

'Foul Coon' is used colloquially in car forums around Australia. The forum profile shown here seems to confirm what the CEO of the Goldfields Land and Sea Council, Brian Wyatt, told newspapers: "They think that beer and naked girls behind the bar... are the way of life around here, and saying and doing whatever you like when you like."

Aboriginal people allege hotel racism
A group of Aboriginal people took the former owners of the Newcastle 'Sydney Junction Hotel' (NSW) to court for allegedly denying them access to the hotel because they're Aboriginal.

The issue was if the hotel had a 'no coons' policy and which person of the hotel's staff and security personnel was responsible for implementing this policy [2]. The pub operator and security firm were ordered to pay AUD 90,000 to the victims [16].

In a similar incident in March 2008 a group of Aboriginal women were asked to leave the Haven Backpackers in Alice Springs [6]. The group attended a lifesaving training and were told that they were "unsuitable" guests and were asked to leave shortly after checking in, because Japanese tourists were "afraid of Aboriginal people".

Once a person's a racist, it's difficult to change them.
—Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner [8]

Effects of racism

Anyone who is exposed to continuous racism suffers, no matter if this racism occurs at a young age at school or later in adult life.

93% of the people who took part in a three-year study of the Flinders University's Southgate Institute in South Australia reported experiencing racism, particularly within the justice and education systems [29]. Experienced regularly racism leads to poor health the study found.

"We found that Aboriginal people do not primarily have a higher rate of illness because they lack knowledge of what behaviours are good for their health," the study's chief investigator, Dr Anna Ziersch says.

"Compared with the general population, twice as many Aboriginal people did not drink and most exercised regularly—and yet they had worse physical and mental health."

Ongoing racism can have the following effects on a person's health [9,18]:

heart disease,
premature birth,
hypertension,
mental illness,
physical illness,
suicide.
Three out of four Indigenous Australians experience racism in their everyday lives.
—Gary Highland, ANTaR National Director [9]

Genocide comparable to the Holocaust

If a people has done an historical wrong it remains in the national conscience and is passed on to future generations. Germans pass on their feelings about the crimes of the Third Reich to their children, more than 60% of whom still feel guilt and even more a huge responsibility for what was done in their country's name. But Australians generally deny any responsibility for the crimes against the country's Indigenous peoples. Comparison with the Third Reich is not far fetched, with many Australian writers comparing Australia's missions and government reserves with Nazi concentration camps.

A guilty conscience can have two effects: For one, the government tries to educate people to prevent such crimes ever happening again. For another, by the time German teenagers graduate from high school they will have been taught thoroughly about the Nazis in history lessons. The danger there can be that they no longer want to hear about it.

In the Australian context, read the following comment posted on a blog in response to an entry about the 2007 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards where Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes had won the Best Film category [1]:

Recipe for award-winning Australian film:
Start with the message: White people are bad, black people are good. Add: Aboriginal cast. Stir. Watch the critics swoon and the awards rain down!
—posted by 'Sick of P.C.'

The author of this post is clearly tired of hearing that black people are good because white people did them wrong. Repeat something too often and you lose its impact. We shut down because what is taught is true and hits a raw nerve. We don't want to face our responsibility and turn away.

I assume 'Sick of P.C.' belongs to this younger generation. Older generations invert the reasoning: It is the black people who are bad and the white people who are right. This is because they grew up in the society which committed the crimes. They were exposed to government efforts to explain that what they did was 'right'. Australians deny any guilt because they were on 'the right side'. Older generations of Germans, for example, find something good in Hitler's actions (e.g. full employment).

I was preparing for the opening ceremony of Australia Day, a public holiday in Australia which celebrates the start of the colony. Volunteers handed out flags, and I was after an Aboriginal flag. A senior volunteer only had Australian flags and said: 'Take this one, this is the right one!'
—personal experience

The quotes reveal Australia's hidden racism. More often than not it is expressed by what people do not do rather than what they do or say. The Third Reich could only pick up its genocidal momentum because Germans failed to oppose Hitler's mass murder of the Jews. Similarly, few Australians will speak up for Indigenous Australians for fear of being marginalised just as they are. This website is my personal contribution in an effort to break the silence.

ED'S NOTE

White Australian denial, only creates a movement against it, then we are called terrorist, not activist

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