Australia: the racist country?
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Date Posted:
February-2-2010 15:24
1324
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By Nick Kraegen
Attacks on Indian students, and the ensuing negative coverage in the Indian media, have sparked the latest round of guilty hand-wringing/parochial flag-waving that characterises our national “Are we racist?” debate.
The usual people have weighed in. Gerard Henderson cites Van Thanh Rudd (Kevin’s Ku Klux-dressing nephew) and Warwick Thornton (aboriginal director of Samson And Delilah) as examples of prominent, non-white Australians who have expressed concerns about Australia’s inherent racism, but declares their views irrelevant because they are successful, and therefore Australia must not be racist. Hmmm.
Even cricket writers are having a go. Peter Roebuck wants us to treat the actions of one drunken yobbo as evidence of a “darker malaise” around issues of race in Australian society. Right. Perhaps you should stick to waxing lyrical about Shane Watson’s cover drive, Pete.
Meanwhile, the argument really has nothing to do with the reality. You can’t say that an entire country is racist any more than you can deny that there are racists among the Australian population.
So, as usual, dickheads on the extremes get all the coverage, and we get no further on the important questions like “Why are these attacks occurring?”, “How do we stop them?” or “Why does the discussion of racism always seem to halve the IQs of everybody involved?”
So what do you think? Is Australia a racist nation? Do you even care?
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