As you may have noticed (or maybe not, I don't know how much coverage this is getting outside of Australia) Australia has yet again been labelled as Racist. Between the Hey Hey skit, our criticism of Japanese Whalers, the fear that Indians and Asians are taking our jobs, that Muslims are "terrorists" and the recent KFC ad we have been the target for being called racist. As an Australian I think this is unjustified but I thought I would put this to an unbiased audience.
Now firstly the Cricket ad. Its the most recent "evidence" in this case of "Australia is racist". For a start, we have no reason to fear or marginalise West Indians and West Indians aren't African Americans. This was an Australian ad for our major cricket sponsor KFC which aired during and after the Australia vs. West Indies test. At some point there was going to be fried chicken and West Indians. Secondly, this was an Australian ad not an American ad. The vast majority of Australians, unless they have put effort into understanding a part of America's racist stereotypes which aren't shown on any media we get from America, wouldn't have understood that KFC + African American = Racist. I knew of this stereotype before but I only noticed when it was pointed out.
The other major "racism" example we have currently is the one against Muslims, Asians and Indians. I think for the most part we are over the fear of Asians taking our jobs much like we are over the same fear we had when Italians, Greeks and Germans came here post WW2 and Vietnamese after the Vietnam War and our distrust of anything Japanese post WW2. Indians are the current target in this but even then I think we are listening to the voices of a shrinking population. This is the same thing that is happening and has happened everywhere in the world. If you live in a "rich" country think about the words that are said about your immigration policy. The Muslim thing is another issue and even though it has slowed down recently...... I think we know what event in 2001 sparked it.
Then after all this people love to bring up the stolen generation.... despite the fact that almost nobody in Australia would say it was right. Our last PM got a lot of criticism for not saying sorry for that and we ended up voting him out for a PM who would (among other things). Yes, there are still a minority who are still racist against our Aboriginal people (see some of the comments on that video) but these people are just that, the minority.
Other than the aboriginal thing, which has been adressed by the current government (I believe it is the Australian Labour Party who's in office now), I haven't heard anything about racism in Australia.
Similar issues are in every other western country, particularly concerning Islam. We have a guy here who wants to outlaw the free distribution of the Quran and calls Islam a fascist ideology that can't integrate in a multi-cultural society rather than a real religion.
The thing is, this guy, Geert Wilders, and his Party for Freedom could very well become the largest political faction in our parliament if you believe the polls from months on end. He claims that he defends western freedoms but wants to limit them at the same time while doing so.
An Indian student was killed in Australia a few days ago. Immediately people concluded it was about race but our police said that they were not willing to speculate about the motive at this early stage...... so today an Indian newspaper published this cartoon.
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"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"
I'd personally say that Australia is up there with Canada on the "Countries the World Doesn't Need to Worry About" list.
EDIT: I'm an American, so I'm not really sure if that's a stereotypical statement or not. If I have made a stereotypical statement, I take all the blame and I am completely sorry.
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I appreciate your intentions with this topic, but let's face it, they never go the right way on this board. I'm going to lock this topic, not as a punishment to you or anyone else who has contributed so far, but because I dread to think of some of the answers we'll get in future. Again, I applaud your good intentions and so far nobody's shot the dog on this one, but better safe than sorry. Hope you guys understand; if you want to discuss it, use the Contact Us form.
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Topic: Racism and Australia
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