NewMatilda had a good article this week about racism and the rhetoric about the attacks on Indian students by Russell Marks. Racism Is Not The Problem
There is a ‘mea culpa’ school of thought about Australia – the theory of “ingrained racism” that began with the murder of the indigenous population and has carried on as a dark undercurrent in our culture.
Marks says that this “tries too hard to mould the facts to its essential truth. It suggests an element of co-ordination; it hints at a conspiracy.”
This is one of my objections to the use of ‘racism’ to explain events. It hints at a cabal determined to tip all coloureds off the edge to the continent. (Instead of an attitude that is part of the human condition everywhere.)
And in so doing, echoes the paranoia that Australia’s multicultural policy is a covert means of destroying white Australian culture.
‘Racism’ is many things: fear, jealousy, plain ignorance, opportunism, greed, bullying and one-up-manship.
Marks points out that the areas where ‘curry-bashing’ has occurred, Melbourne’s west and outer north and Sydney’s west are areas where poverty is widespread, and suggests
“Investigations into general socio-economic conditions will illuminate much more about the apparent “curry bashing” epidemic than the half-baked attempts at explaining them in terms of Australian “ingrained racism” have managed to date.”
