Australian racism is... different from US racism. I'd like to think milder but I'm not certain. Our handling of asylum-seekers who come by boat is a festering sore; ostensibly both major parties want to discourage it because it's dangerous and people drown, but in reality it's more about appealing to racists who don't want to let brown people in because they might be Muslins and they all have STDs etc etc.
So we excised the Australian mainland from our migration zone, and those who do get here by boat get shunted off to camps in Nauru (and now PNG). Bleah.
What we don't have, AFAICT, is any close parallel to the situation of Black folk in the USA. (Indigenous Australians are probably closer to Native Americans, both historically and in the present, but a bit worse off.)
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Date: 2013-08-01 10:41 pm (UTC)Australian racism is... different from US racism. I'd like to think milder but I'm not certain. Our handling of asylum-seekers who come by boat is a festering sore; ostensibly both major parties want to discourage it because it's dangerous and people drown, but in reality it's more about appealing to racists who don't want to let brown people in because they might be Muslins and they all have STDs etc etc.
So we excised the Australian mainland from our migration zone, and those who do get here by boat get shunted off to camps in Nauru (and now PNG). Bleah.
What we don't have, AFAICT, is any close parallel to the situation of Black folk in the USA. (Indigenous Australians are probably closer to Native Americans, both historically and in the present, but a bit worse off.)
Two steps forward, one step back.