Is racism destroying the Australian Dream?
Next week will see that last of the IQ2 Sydney debates for 2015. It will be filmed and broadcast by the ABC and BBC World News - reaching an audience estimated to number some 70 million people. Details of the debate can be found here: https://ow.ly/TBjpv .
Framing the topic was especially difficult for this debate. On the one hand, we do not want to suggest that all Australians are racist or that racism dominates the social landscape. However, there can be little doubt that racism is one of the strands woven into our social fabric (as it is in most places, I suspect). Unfortunately, Australia was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a place where all people were equal - able to shrug of the burdens of prejudice that had defined the 'old world' - where identities were fixed around issues of race, religion, class and so on.
And for a while - the dream was realised. In the late Nineteenth Century, South Australia became the first place in the world to offer full political rights to all people (without distinction). It was not just that one could vote, there was also the right to be elected to parliament (to any office). However, after the compromises of Federation - things went backwards; especially for Australia's Indigenous People. They have individually and collectively born the worst of what racism can produce - including suffering at the hands of government officials who publicly stated that they could be lost to the continent without regret.
Well, what usually lurks below the surface been very much out and about this year. Adam Goodes - one of the greats of Australian Football, a former Australian of the Year (a high national honour) and a man of great courage and decency - has been targeted (over and over). He is justifiably proud of his Indigenous heritage. He is understandably defiant. But he is also vulnerable. And like sharks smelling blood in the water, his critics have shown no restraint. They are the anonymous representatives of an ugly side of life.
The Australian Dream was meant to offer advantage for all. It was meant to express a great democratic ideal - realised in the Antipodes. It risks being ruined by those who cannot see the likes of Adam Goodes as a man - but only as an example of a 'race' defined by stereotypes.
That is why next Tuesday's debate at Sydney's City Recital Hall, Angel Place, is so important. It is a debate that Australia needs to have.
Managing Director at IMPOWRD
9 年In the words of Nelson Mandella - "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Teaching the art of sharing, forgiveness and gratitude formally and in structured ways to our children - and then practicing these in the home and on the 'street' will go a long way in creating peaceful examples of how we can live in a place where racism does not exist. And an interesting point to make is that reverse racism is just as bad as racism.
Content Experience Manager
9 年I think it's high time we accepted the racism embedded in the culture so that we can address it once and for all. It is a debate that tends to come to a screeching halt most of the time because we deny it's there. And we deny it's there because racism in Australia is a particular beastie: it allows us to be completely accepting of any one person regardless of race, colour, or creed one-on-one - that's another cultural phenomenon, mateship, in action - while rejecting entire groups of people. So anyone accused of being racist can say, "But one of my best friends is aboriginal/Afghani/muslim!"
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9 年Annalie Killian as someone who has chosen to live here I too am dismayed at the latent racism that exists in this country. It has got worse over the 30 years I've been here and suspect as the economy slows down it will continue to get worse. The Adam Goodes issue is just one case in point. Disgusting behaviour towards him.
Retired, pursuing leisure opportunities
9 年A topic worth of debate indeed, but it's a debate with many dimensions. For example, while most clear thinking Australians will readily acknowledge the racially-based injustices meted out to our first inhabitants there is a perceptible and disturbing groundswell of public opinion mounting against a whole religion, by which I mean Islam. Proponents of this predjudice point to Islamic idealogues, radicals, dogma and violence to vilify entire ethnic groups while the irony of their own slide into a form of 'radicalisation' goes unnoticed.
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9 年As a South African born and bred Australian national, I can but only weep when I see the damage that racism is doing in this beautiful place . Don't let it happen. Ask people who have spent their entire lives to rise above it- it's worse than cancer. Cancer is curable!