Race & Racism

Unless you have been living under a rock, by now you would of heard that Sam Thaiday attempted to be funny while on the Footy Show on Thursday night.

Reconciliation Australia has found that six out of 10 Australians have had little or no contact with Aboriginal people. It is often held up as a sign of how far we still have to go on our national ‘Reconciliation journey’, and in some ways I can see the relevance but I also think it’s wrong to place too much stock on this statistic.

In Australia, most of us have heard of the phrase ‘casual racism’. According to the Human Rights Commission it refers to ‘conduct involving negative stereotypes or prejudices about people on the basis of race, colour or ethnicity’ – which sounds a lot like racism, and doesn’t seem particularly casual either, at least not from the perspective of those on the receiving end.

The furore over Bill Leak’s death, and the effect it had on the RDA shows again that the dominant class do not value Aboriginal life, writes Amy McQuire.

It was very telling that among all of the discussions on changing 18C there was only one ‘risk’ mentioned: that was the risk of losing votes in marginal seats.

“I’ve seen Indigenous patients treated with suspicion and denied pain relief. We need cultural awareness programs on all levels of the system”, writes Colleen Lavelle, a strong Wakka Wakka woman, mother of four, with an inoperable brain tumour.

The judicial system in Australia targets Indigenous people more than any other group. Indigenous people are racially profiled, are killed in custody and are more likely to receive custodial sentences than their non-Indigenous counterparts. In fact, Indigenous people in Australia have higher incarceration rates than during apartheid South Africa. We continue to gaol Indigenous people for non-payment of parking fines as a result of mandatory sentencing that was instituted to target this very group of people within society.

What is the 'best way' to respond to racism? Not only is there no one answer to that question, the question itself is problematic. The real questions should be ‘how can we stop racism from happening?’

All the talk of getting rid of 18C in the Racial Discrimination Act is centred around this idea that it shouldn’t be illegal to offend or insult someone. The conversation usually tries to clear of mentioning that it has to be specifically because of their race, colour, or ethnic origin, and it definitely never goes so far as to examine, or in any way acknowledge, the myriad of exclusions for 18C presented by 18D.

Putting face to the many loving and intact Aboriginal families and engaged and active #IndigenousDads is necessary to reject Leak’s caricature of us, equally we need to find a way to talk about some sad realities beyond the reach of the Bill Leaks of the world and beyond the reach of those who fight with or against him over the top of us.

Judging from his latest cartoon and from his lame defence of it, I guess that difficult conversation is about how Aboriginal fathers are all drunks and the myriad of reasons why that’s funny...

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day has been formally celebrated since 1988, when we took to the streets in protest. In truth, Children’s Day has been celebrated in community, in some form or another, for much longer than that.

I’ve been on a major high since being presented with the Australia Council’s Dreaming Award at the National Indigenous Arts Awards in late May. Last Friday, months of feeling seriously pumped at being acknowledged as an Aboriginal music artist came to a screeching halt – after a racist encounter with an Uber driver.

I sat on this one for a while, not sure whether I could bring myself to write about it one more time, or if there was even anything left to say. It’s racist.

I was just 11 years old when the cousin that I loved and adored spent what would be his last night in Tenterfield at our home, laughing and telling jokes and stories, just being everything you could ever want to be when you got older.

By now everyone is or should be aware that RDH left Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu to die from a chronic illness he has suffered since childhood. He had vomited blood, had internal bleeding and required immediate surgery and yet he was forced to wait 8 hours before he was attended to in which time he could have quite easily died. There are allegations that he was either racially profiled or that the hospital is completely incompetent.

Sorry white peeps, this isn’t a useful ‘How to’, as the heading suggests, but don’t worry because most white people are already experts at this. Racism isn’t just the overt hatred of other races, and it isn’t always blind hatred either, but if you were raised in Australia then you have probably been far more regularly exposed to racist attitudes than you have been to almost anything else.

That slogan is decades old, and its meaning hints at white Australia's long standing reluctance to reconcile with the truth.