The tragic murder of Nitin Garg has revived debate about violence against Indian students in Australia, spilling over into a range of statements at Ministerial level in both countries.
I think there is no doubt that hate crimes occur in Australia, and that it would be futile to deny that racism is a real problem in this nation.
However, there are a few issues around these events worthy of comment.
My impression, and it’s only that, is that the majority of these crimes appear to have occurred in Melbourne. I don’t think that’s because there’s a particularly high proportion of Indian students studying there. It may be higher, but there is certainly a large number in Brisbane. Is there something particular to Melbourne that may account for this?
Secondly, I wonder, above and beyond educational measures universities and others may have implemented to advise new students about safety, what can be done? The response to this, and previous incidents, seems to me to carry a demand in its wake that the government take action, but it’s not at all clear to me what action would be desirable or effective. I am sure, though, that the disavowal of racism, which cannot be unrelated to other issues in the Australian-Indian bilateral relationship, and concerns about the image Australia projects more broadly, is not helpful.
Elsewhere: Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at GreensBlog.
Update: New post.
“I don’t think that’s because there’s a particularly high proportion of Indian students studying there.”
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I think there is — Victoria has the highest number in Australia (at least this year!), although I’m not sure if that’s true as a proportion of the population (or what’s more important for that matter — just number, or proportion?).
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“Is there something particular to Melbourne that may account for this?”
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Yes, many of them live in the worst areas of Melbourne — i.e., the areas which show up as little hot spots of crime already if you look at those demographic maps. I don’t know Brisbane well, but some of these areas also have very few people around at night, so it makes assaulting others easier as no-one is going to be around to watch. I also assume that rent is cheaper in Brisbane, so foreign students are not forced to live in these ultra-crappy areas.
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“Secondly, I wonder, above and beyond educational measures universities and others may have implemented to advise new students about safety, what can be done?”
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They could be honest and say that some neighborhoods are dangerous and they shouldn’t live there, no matter how cheap the rent (I wouldn’t for one, and I’m not an Indian student). Most of the East Asian students are well aware of this.
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“The response to this, and previous incidents, seems to me to carry a demand in its wake that the government take action, but it’s not at all clear to me what action would be desirable or effective”
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Better security (or any security for that matter) at stations would help. Trying to work out how to police some of the gangs better would also be helpful. They just introduced knife search laws, which might help a little, but only if it is accompanied by a few high profile cases of tough sentencing. I imagine that getting some of the druggies back onto heroin instead of ice is probably not such a bad thing either as there would then be less psychotic people wandering around likely to do these sorts of things.
I’d tend to agree with much of what Conrad says.
And add that Indians, in general, aren’t recent arrivals, in Melbourne at least, by any stretch of the imagination. So its hard to see why they might be targeted now instead of some years ago. (I don’t accept they are targeted.
Certain sectors of some industries (health) have had significant numbers of Indian people for well over 15 years or so.
These attacks and murders are not pre planned to get Indians – the attacks are opportunistic mayhem by those who you would expect to do such things.
I think there is something a bit about Melbourne. My evidence is very anecdotal though so… I was with a friend who lives in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, and I saw some evident discrimination in the centre of Melbourne. He’s Indian but lived in Australia since he was five, and when we went out one night there were a couple of clubs it was clear he would not have been allowed in if he hadn’t been with me – and these were just general places, nowhere that I would have thought was particular.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/01/02/saturday-salon-welcome-to-2010-edition/#comment-847934
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Katz wrting on Sat Salon linked to a Wiki site on this subject and it has some useful figures-
“Indian students comprise the second largest group, after China, for International students coming to Australia for their tertiary education. From 2004 to 2009 the number of Indians studying in Australia rose from 30,000 to 97,000 with 45,000 of these living in Melbourne, 32,000 in Adelaide and the remainder in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.[1][2][3]“.
Agree with FXH, and you.
1. There is a real racism problem in Australia.
2. I’m a bit skeptical that Indians are being singled out more than any other minority.
3. If you live in a sketchy area, sketchy things happen. Sketchy things particularly happen to young skinny people on their own who may be unfamiliar with the area and not paying sufficient attention to their surroundings.
I’m not blaming the victim here; it’s a fact of life. What are the stats on nonindian assaults in those areas? Pretty bloody high, I would suggest.
I can’t also help but see this is an inevitable result of our govt shamelessly unregulating this industry, allowing anyone to call themselves an institution and letting said ‘institutions’ whore themselves out to foreign students with ridiculous promises (both of education, and life in Australia) and rank exploitation when the kids do arrive.
I agree with Conrad. There are a lot of Indians (mostly students I think) in Melbourne.
Statistically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before one of them walks backwards into a knife.
But what gets me, is all this bleating from india about racism and violence when they still have the well-entrenched caste system and where disfiguring women with acid and beating them is a daily recreational pass time for disaffected males.
It’s a bit rich don’t you think?
And funnily enough mark, I posted on the very same subject but with a slightly different angle…spooky….
http://guttertrash.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/oh-calcutta/
I don’t undersatnd the uproar over this incident, as horrible as it is. Do people not get stabbed to death in India? Does racism not exist in India? etc….
Has there been any uproar over an Aussie killed by branch baxhing in Cambodia? (not that here should be)
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/990830/cambodian-police-say-labourers-killed-aussie
Xander,
I’m not a white guy, and my experience of growing up and living in Melbourne is that there is a fair bit of racism floating around (which has diminished significantly across the decades). However, it’s not like the really nasty type you find in France or perhaps with the Lebanese in Sydney, and that’s especially true of Indians (let’s face it, they’re a generally harmless group, which is one of the reasons why people care that they are getting stabbed — would we hear the same thing if it was the Vietnamese or Lebanese community getting the same treatment?). To me, it’s more the you-are-a-monkey type racism, versus, the we-really-hate-you type racism. In addition, even if there is racism, there’s a massive difference between hassling some poor guy or not letting them into a club versus randomly stabbing and assaulting them. That’s why I agree with FXH, that these are generally opportunistic (especially because some have been done by other minority groups).
The other night I did a few back of the envelope calculations:
1. A quick Googling of the stats shows that there is in the vicinity of 250-300 murders in Australia every year. That equates to about to about 1.2-1.4 murders per 100,000 people.
2. According to Wikipedia 260,000 people from India live in Australia.
So unfortunately if we extrapolate based on these statistics we could expect that a small number of Indians will be murdered every year in Australia. Given that this is the first Indian murder it would suggest that Indians IMO at least are under-represented as murder victims.
Suggest there might be something in the residential location generating vulnerability to acts of individual violence.
If you had asked me ahead of time where i would have expected there to be a problem if there was one I would have said Sydney rather than Melbourne given ongoing issues about safety on public transport late at night.
I am however getting a bit frustrated by calls for the Australian government to do something. What do they have in mind?
Reb, I would be a bit hesitant to tar a country the size of india with the same brush; it contains multitudes, including major efforts to overcome the caste system.
You are on the right track however; in that it’s important to put this issue in a class (and arguably caste, and gender) context. The Indian students here are – I believe – overwhelmingly middle and upper class kids – a demographic that is perhaps unfamiliar with some of the contingencies involved with working class life, and the (low) status that goes with it.
The absence of women in these campaigns is also an interesting one, and I would be interested to know who many Indian students in Australia are female, and why we’re not hearing much from them.
Almost all international students I’ve taught, patrickg, are middle to upper class (Americans, Norwegians, Africans, South East Asians, Chinese, etc), so it’s a relevant point.
On the gender balance among Indian students, I think the link in the post suggests there’s a big majority of males.
I don’t know whether that has to do with gender norms in India, though I would suspect it does.
Worth remembering when we talk about caste in India that over 100 million Indians are Muslims, not to mention Sikhs, Farsis, Christians, Jews, etc. All outside the caste system. The Indian constitution is also very robust on the elimination of caste barriers in public life. Again, that’s not to say it’s not a social/cultural factor, but it needs to be put in context.
patrickg,
Good point(s).
I suspect that the reason we don’t see many female Indian students in Australia, is because women are still considered second class (or worse) citizens in india.
I think the attacks are more likely to be opportunistic (as FXH) says.
For the life of me, I wouldn’t walk around Sydney or Melbourne (or some of their less affluent suburbs) late at night without being incredibly cautious.
I think someone else mentioned that there seems to be a fair number of Indian students who work nightshifts at corner stores, petrol stations and fast food outlets so they may well be more likely to encounter trouble on their way to or from work.
It’s not a racial stereotype thing. Just the circumstances as they are I suspect.
It could well be both, reb. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. If it’s the case that there are violent folks looking to make trouble in scary suburbs late at night, that still raises the issue of who is likely to be on the receiving end of it. It’s been a few years since I really looked at the criminology literature, but my recollection is that truly opportunistic violence is quite rare. Just sticking to attacks on males, in areas such as the Valley in Brisbane where you see drunken violence, the targets are almost always people with some visible sign or perceived sign of difference; if it’s not intra-group violence, that is.
As Ive argued elsewhere, there’s a range of reasons why Indian students are very much over-represented in isolated forms of urban cheap labour (fast food, 7-11, taxi drivers). Frankly, many are being exploited, working outside the visa conditions and therefore unwilling to complain. There’s all sorts of loopholes going on.
I for one do believe we are seeing racialised violence to some degree – possibly from unemployed permanent residents resenting the seemingly ever-present Indian students in the sort of jobs you encounter when just hanging around doing little in the inner west: fast food joints, 7-11s, taxis, public transport home.
There are different types of racialised violence, and Australia is absolutely no stranger to economic/ competitive racism. I dont doubt many cases are opportunist – but equally, several clearly arent (eg the recent murder, which involved no robbery). It was nothing sort of misleading when the acting prem talked of opportunist crime in the wake of that one – VICpol must already have known there was no element of theft.
I dont agree the response has been adequate to date, its been tardy, reluctant, reactive, and elememts have been mainly for show. eg The special hotline they set up has no one at the end of it when called.
As for Melbourne, Ive made my views noted. I think the cops are quite lazy down here, frankly, at least in terms of street work, and compared to Northern cousins. There will of course be other factors – knife crime in general is up, as the police concede. But then, a few months back, they also conceded Indians appeared to be targeted in the inner west.
Indians also seem to be heavily over-represented in higher-risk jobs: taxi driving, security, convenience store and service station attendants.
From the limited news reports, it appears to be overwhelmingly teenage crime – 80% of those charged are aged between 13 and 17 according to a report in the Oz last year.
Because they are children’s court cases they are not getting the media coverage they might otherwise receive. But this was the sorry story of one ‘adult’ defendant:
“Judge Jenkins sentenced Hussein to four-and-a-half years’ jail with a minimum non-parole period of two years.
Hussein, dressed in a black suit and white shirt and supported in court by family, bit his nails throughout the hearing and stood with his hands clasped while he was sentenced to serve his time in an adult prison.
The court heard he had migrated to Australia from Somalia, aged about six, with his older brother and mother, who were both later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
His younger sister had died from malaria shortly before the family left Africa where they spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya.
The court heard Hussein had experienced a difficult childhood and by his final year of school was drinking and taking drugs daily.
His defence had argued Hussein played only a minor role in the attack, had been drunk after consuming about 10 beers, and was remorseful.
But Judge Jenkins said despite Hussein not having hit any of the victims he had entered the store armed with the intention of hurting someone and had yelled encouragement to his friends.”
“the targets are almost always people with some visible sign or perceived sign of difference”
Yes, good point.
Which would also account for the ‘gay bashing’ mentality in inner-Sydney.
And as LeftE says, gays like Indians (or minority for that matter) are perhaps less likely to complain for fear of not being taken seriously. (maybe?)
I live in Footscray, and a friend of mine used to live in a house that backed directly on to the park in which Nitin Garg was murdered.
Really, it’s not that rough a neighbourhood, perfectly respectable really. I would comfortably walk there in the evening. For the life of me I can’t see how this happened. Just really bad luck, possibly, just something random and awful that happened.
I’m a middle class, middle aged white guy, so I’m sure mcuh of this washes right over me, but I don’t detect any racism against indians in the inner west. Somalians/sudanese, yes, they are distinctly “other”, and dress more like LA gang members than middle-class students, the way the indians all dress.
I just don’t know why this is happening – or even if it really is happening (as opposed to just some bad luck)
Good discussion, lots of relevant points.
If I chuck in these names:
Phil Ruddock, Kev Andrews [context some blike named Haneef], whatsisname Jones [senior moment here] the shock jock, plus several of that ilk, and maybe a few others along those general lines -
are they irrelevant?
The Indian students here are – I believe – overwhelmingly middle and upper class kids – a demographic that is perhaps unfamiliar with some of the contingencies involved with working class life, and the (low) status that goes with it.
Not quite so Patrickg, the Indian student demographic is a bit different from other international students populations in that there’s quite considerable numbers from “aspirational classes”, ie their parents have managed to scrape enough together to send their kid off for a first world education, and literally the entire family’s future is resting on their success or otherwise. It’s also one of the reasons I believe that suicide is quite high among Indian students / international students. I think there’s a fairly similar component amongst Chinese students but less pronounced.
This is also one of key reasons why also a lot of Indian students are ending up in really crap work, often exploited, and often in dodgy areas and/or being forced to live in same.
It’s also worth remembering that many of them have come to do dodgy courses in hairdressing etc. linked to a path to permanent residency rather than for educational outcomes – that has opened the door for all sorts of financial exploitation which again lead to the shitty working & living conditions, the horizontal hostility with other people who normally work in those sectors that LeftyE touched on and just unprepared or unchosen presence in difficult areas.
I also agree with Lefty’s assessment of the response to the situation.
I don’t know how long this group has been around for, but their site started a little over a year ago and their propaganda makes clear reference to international students as the reason for a lack of cheap inner city housing in Melbourne. Far from subtle, this is very overt racism from an ugly looking group. If this is indicative of the extremes of racist sentiment in the area then surely there is plenty of scope for this to have been a hate crime.
I must say I’m pleased that LP has ditched the bogan bashing of 6 months ago and taken a more enlightened view towards this issue. We should put this murder in context, in the weeks leading up to it the talk had been about how things had calmed down and assaults against Indians had reduced.
Sam Bauers, I know of what you speak. I reckon that most of the whingers on these sites wouldn’t want to live in the crap rental accommodation that the Indian students have to live in, nor do any of these dolts actually want the shitty jobs the students do.
The same whinging and whining about the Vietnamese taking Australian jobs and living in Australian squalor holes was going on in the 70s and 80s. I don’t recall people being killed, but at the Holden plant in Woodville the disgruntled would trash their cars.
There was a tremendous amount of whinging about “taking jobs from Aussies” until a friend of mine (the son of Italian immigrants) reminded them that not one of their precious “Aussie battlers” would deign to do the crap jobs the Vietnamese were handed. I think his sentiments were expressed more vigorously, but the whinging petered out in short order.
Fair point, myriad, but that still implies people coming from the wealthier cohorts in India and Asia, given the huge populations and massive disparity of income and wealth.
myriad74,
Adelaide has quite a large amount of Indian students and from the conversations I’ve had with a number of Indians it seems quite a lot of them are from upper class families. You will find a lot of Indians that have been here for a long time (say 20+ years) themselves don’t exactly speak highly of the recent ones.
Like PDAA said it’s good see some more sensible commentary on this than in the past on here when anyone who dared say a bad thing about Indians was derided as some sort of aussie flag wearing bogan from Cronulla.
All this is about is India flexing it’s muscles. I hope the Rudd government don’t get sucked into this too much because if they do no amount of grovelling will ever be enough. Like someone pointed out India has given us the caste system, acid throwing attacks on women etc, I mean please.
Is it alright to talk about that Indian couple who were recent arrivals in the news the other day where the young husband killed his wife by slashing her throat or the affluent Indian couple here in Adelaide where the wife killed her husband by setting his genitals on fire which also burnt their McMansion down because she suspected him of having an affair and his gentials “belonged” to her?
Mark said:
That statement is almost certainly wrong or at least a misleading generalisation. Indians in this country are not especially victims of any racist “hate crime” wave, beat-up tales to the contrary. It shows the weakness of Mark’s qualitative-anecdotal (ie hand-waving) approach to social analysis. I suggest a more quantitative-statistical (ie hard-headed) approach.
For one thing there is eye-witness evidence that the are assailants are not “white bogans”. Most of the assaults have been perpetrated in the northern and western suburbs, which are the most “diversified” in the city. Commentators really need to get out more and actually witness what goes on on our fair cities streets.
More substantially, Indian students do not seem to be suffering assaults at a rate higher than the general population. The SMH reports that in VIC for the 2008-09 period there were 627.6 assaults per 100,000 in the general population.
There are 90,000 Indian students currently residing in Australia. Plus some 200,000 permanent citizens. Making about 290,000 Indian residents all up. There is a large domiciled Indian/Sri-Lankan population in VIC. I would guess that VIC hosts about 1/2 of the total Indian population, ~ 150,000.
This figure predict VIC Indian’s random assault rate would be close to 1,000 pa.
However Indian students are over-represented in higher-risk situations:
- demographic (young, male)
- economics (working in late-night occupations) and
- geographic (living in lower-income, diverse suburbs).
The assault rate for persons in such a category is probably twice the general population average.
Given the Indian student riskier situation one would predict that the assault victimization rate would probably be 50% above the average citizens rate ie closer to 1,000 per 100,000 pa. Or about 1,500 for a population of 150,000.
I cant find any specific figures for VIC’s Indian assaults rate. The best I can find is the WSJ of all places which gives the total victims of crime figure for all Indians in VIC:
The Age reports that VIC’s overall crime victimization rate (2003) is 5,000 per 100,000. For a comparable sample (150,000) of the population one would therefore expect 7,500 victims of crime for a population.
Yet there were only 1,447 Indian victims of crime last year. So the rate of crime victimization for Indians in VIC is thus about 1/5 of the rate one would predict for the state’s general population.
In short: VIC’s Indians are being under-victimized based on crime rates for the general population.
I am not for a moment suggesting that VIC’s criminal under-class get up off their back-sides and start to really get stuck into Indian students, taxi-drivers, convenience store clerks and so on. But I am suggesting that those whipping up a “moral panic” over the alleged (non-existent) racist “hate crime” wave need to take a cold shower and have a long hard look at the facts.
Jack,
whilst your analysis is nice at pointing out averages, it doesn’t take into account that some groups create a lot more crime than others — basically home grown males between 20-40 and similarly aged males of a few immigrants groups create almost all of the serious crime. Given that I doubt Indians students cause much serious crime at all, they probably do have a right to complain (as no doubt many other groups do also — females, East Asian groups, Northern European Groups, older men, etc.), since they’re basically receiving more than they’re getting.
Indeed, conrad.
Though I don’t think it’s right to say males among immigrant groups in respect of assaults and crime against the person. My recollection is that Australian born males have a higher propensity to commit such crimes than immigrants or second generation Australians from immigrant families.
There’s lots of data on this, but criminological data is notoriously fuzzy at the edges, for reasons of both classification and the way it’s collected, and what constitutes a crime (is it one that’s been ‘cleared up’, reported, resulted in an arrest, etc), and because the great majority of crimes aren’t reported to police.
And my recollection of the stats is that there’s a lot of variance among different immigrant groups and the same ones in different locales – some are well below the average everywhere, some only above the average in some areas, etc.
There’s a lot to criminology that we can’t get from stats, Jack.
One Indian visiting colleague (a Dr of the academic kind) arrived in Aust the very day that Dr Haneef was arrested and the saga unfolded.
They were from an ‘untouchable’ caste (Andhra Pradesh), but very conscious of the changes (and political and economic actions, scholarships etc) that had occured in his lifetime that allowed him to go to school, then uni and end up a teacher and researcher. His Guru was a champion of the rights of the ‘untouchables’ to education and participation in the political process.
A vast amazing country, in just about every sense of the word, of many peoples.
More fuel for the debate perhaps
Burnt body identified as Indian
January 6, 2010 – 7:10PM
http://www.smh.com.au/national/burnt-body-identified-as-indian-20100106-ltrb.html
Police have identified a partially burnt body found beside a rural road in southwest NSW as that of Indian national Ranjodh Singh.
Mr Singh, aged 25, had been living at Wagga Wagga and was visiting Griffith at the time of his death. A passer-by found his body on December 29 beside Wilga Road at Willbriggie.
…
Griffith police Inspector Paul Smith today described Mr Singh’s death as “horrific” and repeated an appeal for public information.
…
“To assist with the investigation we have appointed an Indian-speaking detective as a liaison officer, who speaks Punjabi and Hindi, and I would urge anyone with any information no matter how small, to contact us.”
conrad@#27
You seem to be making the “racist” assumption that vegetarian, Hindi Indians (plus “females, East Asian groups, Northern European Groups, older men, etc.”) are by nature more docile and law-abiding than members of the more aggressive general public.
Interestingly you did not include Africans and Arabians in your shopping list of likely innocent victims. And of course young, red-blooded Aussie males. And…you would probably be right! Welcome to the world of human bio-diversity (H-BD), a vast domain usually declared off-limits to liberal social science.
But there is a contradiction in your argument. You assume that most crime is a result of “argy-bargy” between comparable SES or H-BD groups, which is probably true. Most violent incidents are between grog-fuelled Aussies, out and about looking for some aggro. Plus the usual suspects from ethnic gangs.
This probably does drag down the non-young, non-male, non-Skip victimization rate. But in that case one can hardly accuse the “white bogans” of systematically persecuting such diverse groups.
No doubt one instance of an innocent minority (or majority group) being victimized is one too many. But the issue here is not “who started it” but “who’s getting it”. Genuine racists need no provocation to warrant an attack on a despised group.
And the answer is: the Indians are not especially prone to being assaulted. Aussie bogans are equal opportunity thugs, not racists.
Jacques, excuse the French, but what the shit do those two things have to do with *assaults* by *white australians* on *indian students*???
I know you’re all happy about the “level-headed approach” on this thread, but frankly I _do_ find your comments racist, unfair, and offensive – and I very much doubt I’m alone.
No one is here blaming the students for somehow “bringing it on themselves”. It’s a ridiculous assertion – as is the insinuation Indian students are some kind of terrible scourge on Australia.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Fix-The-Welcome-Sign/articleshow/5414015.cms
Mark the above appears in the times of India. I would be interested in your (and others) take on it.
Thanks.
mark@#28
No, thats wrong. The largest NESB adoptive immigrant groups all have higher crime rates that ESB native borns. The AIC report on Ethnic Crime in Victoria (1999) concluded that:
None of the police forces or government agencies bother recording the ethnic identity of native born criminals, no doubt as a well-intentioned effort to prevent racist stereotypes from gaining credence in the community. So its impossible to make a statistically sound generalization about the criminal propensities of “second [sic] generation Australians from immigrant families”.
But there is some evidence that some first and maybe second-generation ethnic youths are more prone to crime than their hard-working, law-abiding immigrant parents. Thats going by the formation of Middle Eastern and Asian crime squads in the NSW police and the popularity of Gangs of Oz.
Its fascinating to see how the veil of political correctness is drawn over this touchy area. One has moral panics about the virtually non-existent hate-criminal propensities of ESB natives combined with strange silence over the actual hate-crimes of ESBs. Witness the extraordinary effort it took to get the Left-liberal judicial sentence to give justice to the victim of racist pack-rapes.
Very selective, there, Jack. I made the point about differentials between localities. You might do well to have a look at Australia wide stats and not just cherry pick one year while you’re at it. There is more recent data. I’d go hunt around for it, but I can’t be bothered, because it’s very tangential to the topic.
Good link, ETR. I think he’s right on the money on pretty much all counts.
The government (both Howard and Rudd) are to blame for making a free-for-all on international students with no governance or oversite to speak, and turning a blind eye because
a) uni’s need the money
b) we need the indentured labour at bargain-basement prices
Partly, this is a result of workchoices, and education policy decisions from Howard’s time, but Rudd is equally culpable imho for not rolling it back.
I suspect the only reasons we have not heard a similar outcry from Chinese students is that the English ability is not ncessarily there, and I believe Chinese students are mainly ending up at universities rather than the dodgiest tafe-ish ‘colleges’ imaginable.
Thus, they have better support (not good, mind you, but better), and more importantly are unable to participate in the “industry experience” slavery that especially hospitality courses put their students through, and the uni student visa makes working on the books almost impossible. The effect is to take a higher proportion out of many of the risk categories mentioned.
The whole thing’s an embarrassment. Insight did a great episode on it last year, and I think maybe 4 corners did something too?
@33 – thanks for the link, Eat the Rich. I haven’t read the Baird preliminary report, but presumably the writer, as a former VC of La Trobe, knows what he’s talking about.
It’s worthwhile recalling that it’s not just “shonky operators” who treat international students as primarily a source of income, and skimp as much as possible on services and support. A lot of universities do too.
For Jack Strocchi:
http://www.omi.wa.gov.au/publications/seminar/Ethnic_Minorities_and_Crime.pdf
So I’d reiterate what I said about crime stats @28 – they should be used with great caution.
lol, Mark, I don’t know whether I admire you bothering to respond, or pity you!
Don’t want to wade too deeply into the murky waters of crime stats (which you are right, very problematic, even with good faith effort), but when I was studying welfare I seem to recall that income is a far bigger predictor of crime (or at least, being arrested) than virtually anything else, and that migrants are generally under the median (perhaps because they are so upwardly mobile. Perhaps for a million other reasons) – so we’re in firm agreement there.
I wasn’t sure whether to respond, patrickg, but I decided I didn’t want the Strocchidiscourse to go unchallenged. Having said that, I think it’s very much a side issue for this thread, so I’ll be carefully considering whether future comments are on topic!
The Indian students are no saints themselves. They have been involved in rapes, pedophilia plus women are aware they are gropers, sleazy types. But only a small percentage. So what do we do? Claim they are sex craved perverts and pedophiles based on the actions of a few? Do we analyse the data to see if these sex attacks are within normal parameters? Do we then add an assumption that not all sex attacks are recorded?
No. We leave it police and the courts. It is all we have, we are not crime stat experts same as Indian students are not. Indian students should also just allow the procedure to be followed. And move house.
I do think what we can question is the exploitation of their labour. This can cause resentment when they agree to work at half rate. They get abuse for this but really the target of this resentment should be the employer. If we are seen to do this then some hostility maybe reduced.
Otherwise, nothing can be done and it is a shame Indians have totally over reacted as they are not saints, not at all.
I’m gonna have to challenge some of Jack’s decidedly poor quantitative analysis @ 26.
For starters, his “rate of crime victimization for Indians in VIC is thus about 1/5 of the rate one would predict for the state’s general population”, is miles off.
It actually works out roughly even. He can confirm this for himself here.
It’s also irrelevant to the issue.
The number of assaults and robberies against Victorians of Indian origin have increased by something like 40% in the last few years.
That’s compared to maybe a 6-7% increase in the statewide total in the same period.
It’s the recent trend that’s so worrying (duh!), not Jack’s cherry-picking (wrongly…since the Age figure obviously included property damage and motor vehicle theft figures, it’s completely useless) a single point in time.
That trend is a fact.
Good link ETR – Unis have not provided level of support services to int. students commensurate with the income received, primarily – as the author notes – since that income is merely covering up other budget cuts since Howard, and beyond.
I think its clear that Indian students’ vulnerability (as many are outside visa work restriction to get by) is making them attractive to certain industries, and creating a new and racialised economic underclass in urban centres – less protected by law and regulation than permanent residents.
SO there they are, working jobs no one else wants, late at night, soft targets for crime and resentment from unemployed or otherwise disgruntled permanent residents. If that isn’t a form of structural racism, I dont know what is.
You dont actually need to establish individual racist motives (though some will be that too) to see this is a new structure of social apartheid – putting the black guy back on point during patrol.
Patrickg @ 32,
I never intended for it to look like I was insinuating that Indian students were “bringing it on themselves”. I find it hard to believe that Indian students are being racially targeted. There are a lot of them here in Adelaide and you don’t hear about this stuff here and I doubt Adelaide is much different to Melbourne. I have no doubt people are being targeted in opportunistic crimes but obviously this is not exclusive to Indian students, as many have said.
I’m not going to bother with the rest of what I was trying to say. I disappointingly got jumped on by a few people here the last time this came up and I dare say it will happen again.
“If that isn’t a form of structural racism, I dont know what is.”
Oh, tosh. Can we not be so quick to throw around the r-word, please? Since when was giving someone a job evidence of racism? If the companies concerned had a “no Indians” policy on hiring, that would be racism!
In any event, what would you do about this ‘racism’, LE? Change student visa conditions to prevent them accepting such jobs — thereby condemning them to even worse poverty than they already face? Mmm, they’d really thank you for that.
Or maybe we could force more skips to take such jobs, perhaps by intensifying work for the dole and throwing people off welfare? Somehow, I don’t think that was what you intended.
Any other suggestions?
patrickg@#32
patrickg I am sure you are a nice, well-educated person. But your comment appears to have been composed in another universe, one where our Earth’s rules of logic are only casually observed. For a start many of the assaults on “Indian students” are not perpetrated by “white Australians”. A fact endlessly remarked on by those at the scene but ignored by Left-liberals whose heads would explode at the thought of the racist boot being on the other foot, so to speak.
You are quite right, “no one here is blaming the students for somehow bringing it on themselves”. So why bother introducing this “ridiculous assertion”? Are you just endeavouring to scramble to the highest moral ground? Congratulations on achieving this modest ambition.
conrad did “doubt Indians students cause much serious crime at all, they probably do have a right to complain”. What this (irrelevant) concern has to do with my point that Indians are not being singled out for racist attacks is anyones guess.
To repeat the bleeding obvious: In cases of genuine racism the perpetrators offense is independent of the victims behaviour should. Any other interpretation is “blaming the victim”.
patrickg said:
I am not surprised that you (and no doubt others) find my “comments racist, unfair and offensive”. No discussion of ethnic crime patterns would be complete without ritualistic denunciation of ethnic realists. As Steve Sailer once remarked: “counting is racist”.
Maybe part of the solution, here, could be to crack down on not just the dodgy, so called, education providers but employers prepared to exploit workers in the bottom end service industries.
With the focus firmly on the cashie provider and work experience manipulator, instead of the desperate casuals trying to survive, real issues of anger and frustration might be addressed. And that would not just be a solution for Indians, but all who battle in the worst paying, and sometimes not paying, jobs.
Jack,
if I replaced “Indians” in your argment with “grandmothers” it would hold similar validity. Try doing it and then see what you are saying. In addition, I agree with Mark that you are cherry picking stuff (including from the report you reference). As you’ll notice, most migrant groups, excluding the ones you mention, commit less crime (often massively so) than Australians. This of course isn’t very surprising since by OECD standards, Australians commit more crime than anyone else, and one would expect some of the social attitudes of many immigrant groups to be brought along with them.
Nick@#43
It would help if Nick actually quoted the relevant stats rather than make vague hand-waving gestures in the direction of the report.
I had a look and if anything this report strengthens my case. On p5 it records that VIC in 2008/09 had “7,087.9 offences recorded in 2008/2009″, per 100,000 population. In fact that is an eye-popping ~ 40% higher rate than the 5,000 offences per 100,000 one I quoted from the Age (2003). VICs are, in general, more criminal than I thought.
But this high general population crime rate only makes the relatively low Indian crime victimization rate (~ 1,500 per 100,000) look all the more benign, at least from the pov of those anxious to sniff out possible hate-crime waves.
More specifically, this report does not breakdown crime victimization by self-identified ethnicity. So there is no way that Nick could conclude from it that the Indian crime victimization rate “works out roughly even” to the comparable ESB rate.
Nick said:
The figure quoted by the WSJ covered all Indian “victims of crimes such as robberies and assaults”. So it appears to be comparable to the general populations total crime victimization rate, which we have seen is 7,000 per 100,000.
Now there are at least 100,000 Indians (probably more) residing in VIC. That means the VIC Indian crime victimization rate for 2008/09 is no more than ~1400 per 100,0000. So my original conclusion – that the Indian crime victimization rate is ~ 1/5 of the general population rate – is in the correct part of the ball park. (With some fudge factor depending on how one counts Indians and what crimes are included in respective rates.)
Nick said:
This is a worrying trend but it is not worrying on account of its alleged “racist” implications. That is the (falsified) implication of Mark’s post.
Indians maybe more susceptible to opportunistic attacks on account of their risk-prone moonlighting occupation (taxi drivers, convenience store clerks). Their rising crime victimization rate may well reflect the criminal under-class belated realisation of this fact, and not some upswell of race hatred.
Crooks waking up to the fact that there is some low-hanging fruit to be picked is not racism.
Mark@#38 quoted:
It turns out that Italians are law-abiding and god-fearing after all. So much for Underbelly!
Mark quoted:
She is saying “Cops are racist” or at least “provide space…for racism”. Maybe they are, although my impression is that these days they bend over backwards to be politically correct (Christine Nixon is a red-neck only in appearance.)
In reality the official crime stats probably under-report the prevalence of ethnic crime. Ethnic gangs tend to predominate in organized crime because nepotism works well in industries where one cannot rely on judicial enforcement of contracts eg drug dealing or fencing stolen goods.
That is why NSW government has seen fit to create ethnic-specific crime squads, so that they can penetrate these gangs directly rather than waiting for the unlikely event of members defying the local version of omerta.
Really mark, rather than quoting vast swathes of the sociological wasteland you need to watch more episodes of the Sopranos and Gangs of Oz if you want to get a handle on this.
Its not even remotely Tosh, Im afraid, Paulus. We’re are most definitely letting certain employers get away with murder in relation to international students. Like Joe 2 says, they’re dodgy as hell, and Indian students are in the loophole – cant complain cos they need the dough, and are often outside their own visa conditions. Im afraid this part of it it simply a fact.
What Im then suggesting with this fact is is leading to a form racialised economic underclass in urban centres, and the racialisation of economic resentment at the bottom of the heap.
Many Kanakas were grateful for what they earnt on the 19th c. canefields doing indentured labor too – that didnt make them any less of a racialised labour underclass.
conrad@#49
If “I replaced “Indians”” in “my argment with “grandmothers”” then my point would be that VIC is not in the grip of a “grannyist” hate-crime wave. The validity of which point I do not need a sociological treatise to grasp.
Of course even this understates my case since when was the last time you saw grannys driving taxis, staffing convenience stores, taking the last train home to Broadmeadows or engaged in other high-risk activities? Just being young and male is a high-risk activity, whatever the stereotypes about Indians are.
Try to keep in mind here that the null hypothesis (by default) is that “there is no racist incidence of hate crimes against Indians”. People like Mark and conrad are trying to argue the contrary. They have yet to show a single piece of hard evidence that proves Indians are being singled out for racist attacks as part of general social pattern. It seems the “Indians are victims of racism” meme is an article of faith amongst those whose fingers itch on the hate-crime regulation trigger.
conrad said:
I am not cherry-picking data. I am comparing apples-to-apples.
The report I referenced indicated that, whilst some NESB adoptives had crime rates much lower than ESB natives, other NESB adoptives had crime rates much higher than ESB natives. Which conclusion mark’s sociological chatterbox was at great pains to minimize.
A constructive criticism: when you wish to make a point about anothers argument you should take the trouble to quote the exact words of that argument. And you need to specify the facts that contradict that argument, not just introduce red-herrings or gesture towards alleged friendly source. Best of luck.
THe raw per capita figures don’t tell the real story on crime rates. We saw this last year with certain media types going hysterical on Somilian crime and how they were over-represented in the stats.
But, given the propensity for younger people to be much over-represented in criminal activity, if you don’t account for the younger age-profile within some of these groups, you certainly aren’t comparing “apples-to-apples”.
Jack, I wasn’t talking to you.
Jacques, I suspect the reason people jumped on you last time was the reason I jumped on you this time: you basically said is that Indians are rapists and murderers, using 2 incidents that have absolutely no bearing on what we are discussing, except the people involved happen to be Indian. Come on, if that’s not racist, what the hell is?
Jack @ 50, this SMH article also reported the 1,447 figure you quoted from the WSJ above:
Which puts the total statewide victims of crimes such as robberies and assaults at ~750 per 100,000 people.
There are roughly 200,000 Victorians of Indian of Origin, which also equates to ~750 per 100,000 people.
Victoria Police records the ethnicity of both victims and perpetrators. That’s why they can and do (occasionally) release stats like the one you quoted earlier above.
belated follow-up
– Mark (and patrickg)I managed to miss the point I was trying to make, which is that the proportion of Indian students who come here from that more aspirational background are in general lacking the experience and knowledge of the more long-term wealthy Indian students of the kind Jacques described in Adelaide. So they often have very little knowledge of Australia and western culture in general beyond what they’ve absorbed from pop culture; and are consequently naive and unprepared, having a glowing optimistic view of Australia (it’s completely safe, everyone gets paid well etc.).
I saw this a great deal here in Tas with international students and it was confirmed by the Uni’s international student staff over again as a key problem. Provision of brochures does nothing to penetrate this.
And Jacques there’s certainly a subset of the Indian student population here that is well-heeled and cosmopolitan but who you meet at most universities in particular is not representative of the Indian student demographic as a whole. Particularly in Melbourne far more are there for PR path (often shonky) courses and are receiving absolutely minimal services, compared to the much better orientation and support (not to mention more wealthy and worldly wise) students that the unis are on the whole attracting.
The other unspoken here in terms of work exploitation is that certainly among Indian and Chinese students in particular, you find students here being exploited by members of the permanent Indian / Chinese Australian populations. So it’s Raji working in Uncle Nitin’s Indian restaurant for a pittance etc. It’s a hard one to unpick, but imperative to do so as that’s a key area where students end up breaching their visa conditions and getting into a serious spiral of all sorts of trouble.
Eat The Rich’s article link is spot on.
Reb of Hobart, I am not sure of statistics regarding women students here (I am one) but the likelihood of encountering an educated Indian woman is very high. Most middle class Indian women hold at least a graduate degree because education is highly valued amongst the demographic irrespective of gender. IMO, India has women who are treated shabbily and badly but also women who are far more on the feminist end of the spectrum than anyone here. These stereotypes about Indian women are really tiresome, simplistic statements about a complex country betray your own ignorance.
IMO there is an element of racism – or at least the feeling that Indians are easy pickings. It is not helped by the hysteria in India nor the “we are not racists”, “this is general crime”, “it’s all good”, “dodgy neighbourhood” attitude here.But I don’t see any action being taken – about all that is going to happen is Indians will take their student dollars to other Australian cities or other countries.
Re Brisbane v Melbourne, I believe Brisbane is in general a lot safer. But there is also less of the vocational crowd, most students there seem to be at the Unis.
patrickg @36 Incorrect. The evidence is clear that the present government is attempting to clean up some of the mess the open slather policy of Howard and co, brought. This can be seen from the results of the more stringent regulation of the student visa program. I believe they are moving to supervise education providers more stringently. Some have already gone to the wall possibly as a result of this, as well as incompetance and finacial woes.
I think it is silly to suggest that no action is being taken. Some interesting stuff in the following link that probably just highlights why this whole mess cannot be just focused on the issue of racism. It would crazy to say that it does not exist but I do not think it helps to rush to easy conclusions about whether people are or not.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/07/2787257.htm?section=business
I wish to endorse SD’s perceptions.
It is true that violence suffered by Indians in Melbourne is motivated by a number of factors, including racism.
The question is how prevalent is the racist motive? As I suggested on another thread, the odd feature of any alleged specifically anti-Indian racism in Melbourne is the absence of any verbal or symbolic equivalent. Most minorities that have suffered racist violence are also victims of hate speech, racist jokes and insulting stereotyping. So far as I know, Indians have not suffered in any appreciable form from this type of racism.
The other question of interest to me is the nature of the racism expressed by assailants. It appears to me that Indians are being picked on and victimised in many cases not because they are Indian but because they are dark-complected and thus represent the generalised despised other rather than because they are Indian. An interesting parallel to this phenomenon are Sikhs who were molested on the misapprehension that they were Muslim. If the assailants had known anything about world religions, the Sikh would have been left alone.
Recognition of the nature of thugs’ misidentification of their victims doesn’t soften the blows but it does help victims and others to understand what might be going on in the heads of the perpetrators — generalised ignorant prejudice rather than well-targetted antagonism.
This is an issue which is much broader than Indian/Australian relations. It is about a pervasive culture of violence in certain sub-cultures in Australian society.
Lefty E,
Are you arguing that student visa work restrictions should be relaxed, thereby enabling students to get the benefit of workplace laws and regulators? If so, I’m 100% in agreement with you.
But note that this would lead to even more foreign students working in late-night service jobs — the thing you call ‘structural racism’.
There are a few things that are statistically certain, that a number of Indian students in Melbourne have become victims of attacks, and some have succumbed to them. This could have happened anywhere in the world, but in this instance, it happened in Australia. To analyse why it happens is not the question of the hour, but what one needs to wait and see is how the Australian society reacts to it. I am alluding to the Australian Police and judicial system. One hopes that investigations commence and the culprits are brought to justice. There needs to be a visible and proactive effort to curb violence that can be construed as racial. We hear very little about such efforts, or perhaps they just don’t appear in the media. Police apathy? I hope not!
The repetitive nature of the crime lends itself to being one with racist overtures. The reasons perhaps lie in the degree of acceptance of others by the local society, frustrating economic conditions, perceptions of outsiders, local gang culture and last but not the least, just hatred. The very local nature of the attacks is not a reflection of Australian society, but is not far away from being so if nothing is done to address the issue.
Immigration policies the world over have gone through phases of discrimination, and they tend to be discriminatory by nature. Societies see themselves as homogeneous groups of one race or colour and reluctantly accept outsiders.
I am an Indian.
India is a union of several countries and multitudes of cultures. Discrimination, racism or casteism , call it by any other name has existed for centuries. Despite all, we have been a land that has been accepting of other cultures, religions, refugees, invaders, languages, colour and creed. Considering its history and size of population, Indian societies have lived in relative harmony for centuries. It will not be fair to draw any comparisons with Australian society merely because of size, demography and cultural perceptions. Further, it is always a hope that every society has a greater rational side to it that responds to human appeal.
For most migrants hailing from strong cultures, soon after migrating, they settle down to create their own world, sometimes oblivious to their hosts. Indians and Chinese being the largest groups are such examples. Besides, they are generally economically better off than some sections of the host societies and face their wrath for these reasons. History is replete with examples.
The point is that the world has moved on and muti culturalism is the way forward in a global economy.
Australia has been at the fore front of a developed international education based economy. Either with an increasing demand for skilled migrants or increased international student revenues, new immigration products have made it possible for international students to work. There is an opportunity in the system which allows many Indians amongst others, and mostly from the Punjab, to enroll in courses with low entry standards, a level which also qualifies them to work. Hence Melbourne abounds with Punjabi student cab drivers. It provides a good income and is advantageous in terms of the exchange rate back home. Unfortunately, the victims almost all hail from the Punjab and perhaps live in low socio-economic areas where such crime may be commonplace.
University students are not entirely safe either. Though they come from middle to upper middle class back grounds and live in the safer environments of the campus, they too have been the victims of such attacks. In their case it was slighted that they carried expensive laptops and mobile phones and thus attracted attention. Unfortunately, they have mostly been Indians.
Furthermore, there have been attacks in NSW. A clear pattern emerges however much we try to deny the racial nature of these attacks. Culprits have to be booked and brought to justice. I hope the Australian government and society quickly comes to grips with the issue before it slides back in time when racism was the norm, and not the exception.
Conrad @8: “To me, it’s more the you-are-a-monkey type racism, versus, the we-really-hate-you type racism.”
I have been wondering about this aspect also, and thinking about the neo-Nazis in Europe and the UK (yeah, OK it is a part of Europe too). In Germany, it seems the neo-Nazis have it in for Jews and Turks. In the UK, the targets are a different set of nationalities. Neo-nazi seems to be simply a mustering point for thugs.
As such, I wonder if the guys who attack other nationalities are just groups of nasty thugs, or lone malcontents, who are not particularly well accepted by our society themselves?
Perhaps these thugs are not particular about who they pick on, as long as the person is defenceless, easily attacked, and not well connected or defended by the rest of society? Typical bully strategy, I suppose.
Has anyone studied these creeps, to see if they have any good reason for their targets, other than vulnerability?
I wonder if the thugs, perhaps being bears of rather small brain, simply cast about for any target. “Who can we beat up on? Turks? Right. Let’s go get ‘em. Lebanese? Right. Let’s get ‘em too.” If this is the case, then it is perhaps more a case of opportunistic nastiness, rather than an expression of a racist society?
Regardless, I reckon the police need to stamp on these thugs hard, especially if they are operating in mutually-reinforcing gangs. No consequences, or negligable negative consequences compared with the intrinsic rewards of the behaviour, means repeat bad behaviour, as any dog trainer can tell you.
There is obviously something wrong with the mental wiring of these types. They need to be taken out of society, and not released until they are prepared to undergo counselling. There may not be many of them in any decent society, but they need to be taken out of circulation until they reform.
Elsewhere: Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at GreensBlog.
“But note that this would lead to even more foreign students working in late-night service jobs — the thing you call ’structural racism’.”
What makes you conclude that Paulus? My guess is it would lead to less, as once they can no longer be ripped off as a class of people who fall through regulatory cracks, employers will cease to favour OS students in some of these areas.
I agree that will clearly come with some negatives for those students – but then again, the employment they do get will be better paid, and it will also make the unis, parents and students themselves rethink how OS students are supported while here.
The whole thing has become a bit of a rotten borough, from colleges, to visa regs, to exploitative employment traps – and i suspect some of these issues with colleges collapsing and then these assaults are shining a light on it all.
Senator Hanson-Young would do well to get her facts straight. She says..
All they have said is simply that it is best to wait till the evidence is in, before judging the motive. In particular, Julia Gillard did not rule out racism but was “concerned” that it might be.
Hulls is not the kind of guy to try and spin this for any reason, either. Not much point, anyway, because most likely the truth will out on this horrible murder, eventually, and he would look pretty silly.
@ Elise
You raise some interesting points Elise but I think you are incorrect. One thing Australians can be relieved about is the relative absence of Australian neo-nazi right wing groups.
The really scary thing about these groups in Europe that they aren’t thugs who pick a random target and strike (though I’m sure this can be the case sometimes). On the contary these groups are often run by quite scary pseudo-intellectuals who know how to garner support from people of low self-esteem and low socio-economic backgrounds. For example there are Russian racial gangs who have full military style training grounds and programs. They will actively torment ethric communities with well organized terror campaigns.
This is real racism. Australia’s issues are much more complex and cultural. Once the ol’ ‘racist’ stamp is applied, to these issues the general community scoffs and moves on ‘We’re not racist’. This is a deep issue and not simple skin colour style racism. /rant
Glenn @ 67, I wasn’t suggesting that the person/people who killed that Indian lad were neo-nazi. I wasn’t even suggesting that Australia had a neo-nazi movement.
You say: “On the contary these groups are often run by quite scary pseudo-intellectuals who know how to garner support from people of low self-esteem and low socio-economic backgrounds…They will actively torment ethric communities with well organized terror campaigns.”
I think your comment bears out what I was suggesting, about social misfits and malcontents, about bears of rather small brain, and about arbitrary targeting of vulnerable people in a particular society.
Anyway, I don’t really care what their “reasons” are, murder is violent criminal behaviour, and must be dealt with very firmly.
The race of the victim may be a factor. As in alone, in a dodgy suburb, late at night AND Indian looking means the “target” is unlikey to put up much of a fight, AND is likely to yield a mobile phone, possibly an ipod, & perhaps a bit of cash.
Simple risk/benefit analysis.
The hoodlums who roll them are less likely to take on, say someone in the same situation but wearing a Hell’s Angels jacket. A Vietnamese would be more safe, as attacking one may unleash a world-of-pain payback.
I agree the baddies should be taken out of society. Someone with the balls to take on an unarmed & unsuspecting Indian deserves 10 years minimum.
No amount of bleating by pussyified politicians about how “diverse” & “multicultural” or “tolerant” Australia is will help one bit. It just makes us look like dickheads. Grow some legislative balls, & let the cops off the chain so they can sort out some muggings.
What prospective Indian students want to see is some serious penalties (hint: NOT a country club prison & a “bond” of some sort) and a sharp drop in the number of attacks.
Some Indian reactions at: Australia: Indian Homicide Reignites Racism Ruckus
Elise @68 sorry if I came accorss as rude or condescening, that wasn’t my intention. It was just bad grammar (I’m great at bad grammar D: ). I was just making the point that we are lucky to not have true organized racist groups in Aus.
Here’s another interesting article from what might be called a leftist Indian view: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/entry/we-re-even-more-racist
Nick@#56 quotes the SMH and then summarises:
We have a dispute over the correct figure to be used to measure and compare crime victimization rates. The figure I used is derived from the VIC police report that you referred to, which stated that for 2008/2009:
This figure is roughly ten times the figure of 36,765 victims of crime that the SMH article quotes, which explains our nearly ten-fold disparity in estimating VIC’s 2008/09 crime rates per 100,000 (JS : ~ 7,000 v C: ~ 750).
It is not clear from the article whether the 36,765 crime victims for the total population is comparable apples-to-apples with the 1,447 crime victims for Indians. Lets accept, for the sake of your Conrad’s argument, the SMH’s selection of crime stats. That gives the same rate of crime victimization for both Indians and the general population.
That still does not greatly weaken my point, which is that Indians are not being singled out according to race, above and beyond their ratio in the at-risk population. They are being victimized in after the equal opportunity fashion.
They may even be getting off lightly. Indian students, who seem to comprise the majority of VIC’s Indian population these days, are at a much higher risk than the general population owing to their demographic, economic and geographic circumstances. So one would expect them to suffer a higher crime victimization rate than for a randomly selected individual.
Tim Coleabach introduce some valuable comparative international perspective. He points out that the comparable Indian violent crime rate is at least five times the rate found in Australia:
Indians are much safer in race-hateful Melbourne than they are in…India. By the logic of the race-hate crime hysterics India must be filled with self-hating Indians.
Well, we do have racist groups, but yeah they suck at organisation. Usually because they wind themselves up in muddles unable to find a leader ‘pure’ enough. Poor Jack and Jim didn’t make the purity test.
“It is not clear from the article whether the 36,765 crime victims for the total population is comparable apples-to-apples with the 1,447 crime victims for Indians.”
Jack @ 73, see:
http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/our-say/547-our-say-chief-commissioner-discusses-assaults-on-indian-students.html
Hopefully that clears up your remaining confusion.
“That still does not greatly weaken my point, which is that Indians are not being singled out according to race, above and beyond their ratio in the at-risk population. They are being victimized in after the equal opportunity fashion.”
As previously mentioned, the number of attacks on Indians has increased by more than 40% in the last few years, as compared with about 6% for the entire Victorian population.
The increase in the number of attacks on Indians far and away outstrips the increase in Victoria’s Indian population and/or Victoria’s Indian student population.
Any qualitative questions/discussions of ‘hate-crime vs opportunism’ aside, it is false of you to assert, “Indians are not being singled out according to race, above and beyond their ratio in the at-risk population”, when, since 2006, that is exactly what has occurred.
Caucasians have *not* been increasingly singled out according to race.
Indians have been increasingly singled out according to race (ie. have been singled out, “above and beyond their ratio in the at-risk population”) – and those singled out were certainly not victimised in any kind of “equal opportunity fashion”.
Speaking of racist, publishing a cartoon portraying Aussie police as KKK could be deemed a racist slur of Australians by the Indians, in suggesting that “white = supremicist murderers”. That Indian cartoonist might like to take a look in the mirror?
We currently have a case in WA of a woman of indian descent killed in Kings Park; with a good deal of suspicion surrounding her husband, of similar background. During the earlier drama over the closure of dodgy english schools, I seem to recall that an indian person was threatened by one of their own kind for spilling the beans.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the murder of that young indian man turned out to be from one of their own? Would sort of make a mess of that claim of proof of racism in Australia…
Nick@75
The Victoria police site says in 2007/2008 the number of assaults on Indians increased just over 40% from the year before (1,447 vs 1,082).
However, as I understand it, after the changes to student visa’s late in the Howard government, student numbers have increased significantly from India (also for other countries, but not as much). Not sure the best place to find the data, but for instance, see figure here (which I think reproduces the data from here but is easier to see). Reading off the graph (which will give some error), I’d say the Indian student population has increased from ~62,000 in 2007 to ~96,000 in 2008, which is about a bit over 50% increase in 1 year.
We don’t have a breakdown of student vs non-students for the indian assault data, but if they are focused amongst the student population, then the crime rate on indian students (per 100,000) may not be changing that much i.e. Jack’s main argument could still be valid.
although, those indian student population numbers are national, and not for Victoria only, so not sure how the victoria numbers have changed.
Nick@#75 bangs on regardless:
No, my statistically clarified statement about the equivalence of Indian and general population crime victimization rates is true as it stands, as you admitted yourself. You need to address glaring deficiencies in your methodological approach – particularly cherry picking trends, rash generalisations drawn from misleading bases and ignorance of apples-to-apples comparative method – before attempting to draw grand ideological conclusions.
The key fact in assessing whether Victoria is a haven for racist hate crime is to determine the average crime victimization rate of Indians versus that of comparable sections of the general population, apples-to-apples over the longer term. By your own admission the two rates are roughly the same.
It is misleading to cherry-pick one phase of a trend in order to prove a general ideological point. The recent uptick in attacks on Indians might reflect any number of other factors – increased student inflow, higher-risk occupations, belated awareness of soft targets or even statistical noise – rather than some quasi-mythical racist upsurge. The most one can do, from a scientific point of view, is consider the long term pattern and then average the values from peak to trough, rather than leap onto the peak and proclaim it to be the final word.
It is also fallacious to make sweeping generalisations when considering increases off a relatively low base. If I am earning $10 a day and suddenly get a $5 pd pay rise I have experienced a 50% pay increase. That does not mean I am suddenly rich. Talk of 40% increases in Indian crime victimization is misleading when taken off the relatively low base rate.
It is also faulty method to assume that Indian students are in typical situations comparable to whites. A de-composition of the Indian population reveals that the social situation of many of those being victimized is not typical. They are young males, working in high-risk occupations and living in crime-prone suburbs. Any of these factors could account for the “normalization” of their crime victimization rate, without resorting to race hate-crime hysterics. In fact it would be rational to expect Indians to suffer a higher rate of crime victimization. The fact that they have not completely undermines the race hate crime meme.
Nick said:
Your continued assertion of a race-hate crime wave against Indians is baseless until the facts show that the Indian crime victimization rate is significantly worse for comparable sections of the population. I have shown that it is not and that your attempts to construct such a conclusion are fallacious and baseless.
Hopefully this clears up your confusion.
Sure, Jack. That doesn’t encompass any ESB people.
Don’t know how it explains bashings in night club districts, either…
pheonix, in the press release linked to above, the Vic Police reported ’46,000 Indian students in Victoria in 2008, which is more than double the amount there were in 2006′.
Even if that meant, say, 26,000 more Indian students than in 2006, it would still only represent a ~15% increase to the total Indian population of Victoria.
Mark@#80
I will bet you $100 that the typical Indians student will have a greater propensity to:
– be a more violence-prone identity (younger, maler),
– work in at-risk occupations (taxi driving, convenience store clerk),
– live in crime prone suburbs (norther, wester) than the typical ESB citizen.
For this I don’t need any statistical abstracts, merely evidence of my own ‘lyin eyes.
Mark said:
Anyone who goes into a night-club district enters at their own risk. ESBs get bashed in those precincts with monotonous regularity there too you know.
One kind of Stuff that White Liberals Like over all others is ostentatiously fretting over possible offences or injuries caused to members of the colored community. This is undoubtedly a worthwhile endeavour, up to a point as Evelyn Waugh used to say.
We have long since passed that point. Those of a scientific mind-set should consider themselves guilt free in consigning the Indian race-hate crime wave meme to the same dustbin that currently houses the “Hey Hey its Saturday Blackface skit” and the “KFC soul food ad” moral panics.
Indeed, because you’re not comparing like with like in respect of different segments of a population.
I think you’re demonstrating on this thread, Jack, just how little you understand of the statistical method which you constantly claim backs up whatever position you want to argue.
Nick@#81
But of course a 15% in a sub-population that is say twice as likely to be victimized (on non-race related grounds) as a random individual would add up to a 30% increase in total victimizations. Which is not far off we have actually got.
I do not know for sure that young, male night-shift working, mean streets walking dudes are actually twice as likely to be crime victims as any other citizens. But I would not be surprised. (I used to get out alot.) Does any one have the actual data on this?
If that is in fact the case then my model has more or less correctly anticipated the full, disaggregated data. [chuckles self-indulgently to self]
PS I should not be so eager to proffer myself such gruesome self-congratulation. Credit goes to the LP hive mind for digging up the data and putting it to meaningful test. Compare this to the utter tosh served up in the Fairfax press (ex-Colebatch) by its Indian victimology brigade. Phew!, the smell of burning martyr is overwhelming from that quarter.
Jack @ 79, I’m quite content that I did none of what you claimed, so I’m going to ignore the bulk of your post.
I challenged your frankly absurd assertion that Victorian Indians were only 1/5 as likely to be attacked as any other Victorian, and explained how you arrived at this by failing to check the equivalency of the two sets of data you compared.
I quantitatively confirmed the well-established recent increase in attacks against Victorian Indians far above the state-wide norm.
Beyond that, I’m open to and interested in the range of views being presented here, as to:
1) What factors may have led to the increase in attacks against Victorian Indians?
2) What might be done to curb them?
Umm, while you guys are busy thrashing out the statistics, could you consider one extra statistic?
What is the number of assaults and murders committed by persons of indian descent in Australia? Percentage basis, to compare with the reverse case.
Would those indians claiming racial motivation then also suggest that violence BY indians towards others is racially motivated? Or would they be wonderfully exempt?
Elise, you’re trolling with that last comment.
Your use of the word ‘wonderfully’ in particular, and given the subject matter, is depressingly pejorative.
Not necessarily, Nick.
The Indian community was out very quickly with a pejorative generalisation of one unsolved crime to an unproven claim of a negative Aussie trait. Without any facts.
The Indian community would presumably not agree that the Indian taxi driver who was recently convicted of molesting a young girl in Brisbane indicates a negative Indian trait. That would be a single incident.
It is not trolling, to argue that one-sided generalisation is unwarranted.
Nick#@85
May I suggest that your state of “contentedness” is not the last word on matters of scientific method. More generally, oN the internet you can run but you can’t hide.
Nick said:
I acknowledged that my initial data comparisons were not equivalent. And made the appropriate correction. When I am wrong I immediately acknowledge it and fix it.
But even that error does not effect the validity of my more general point since the you conceded that, at worst, there is now parity between Indian and general population crime victimization rates. Parity = no statistical evidence of racism.
Nick said:
Right there, you have methodologically shot yourself in the foot (again). An increase over time (“recent increase”) does not compare to a snap-shot at a point in time (“state-wide norm”). Sort of like comparing flows with stocks, a big No-No in economics. Particularly when the increase only brings a value up to a norm.
To reiterate: simply establishing a large increase in the incidence of some event does not prove that it has passed some critical threshold or is bound to reach it. That water in one pot increases in temp from 5 deg to 20 deg (ie 400%) does not mean that it has reached or is going to reach boiling point. Particularly if water in another jug has long since reached 20 deg. The most rational conclusion to draw is that they have both reached room temperature, albeit at different speeds. I hope this homespun analogy makes things clearer.
Beyond that you have not addressed the idiosyncrasies of the Indian student population which tend to make it more likely to suffer crime victimization. Your continued failure to even address this critical point calls into question your intellectual good faith.
Nick said:
How about phoenix@#77 who discovered a 26,000 increase in Indian student numbers in the period under consideration:
Given the “well established” higher-risk profile of Indians this increase easily accounts for the bulk of the increase in their total crime victimizations during this period. A race-neutral criminal class will naturally inflict more crimes on any increasing population that is within its sights.
There is no need to invoke the race hate crime bogey man.
Mark@#83
I am guessing, based on observation and common sense, that Indians are not like-to-like with the general population. They are obviously more at risk than the general population (a point remarked on by Vic Police officials and Andrew Norton) which strengthens my “no racist-hate crime wave” point.
People, like Indian students, who work with cash (taxi drivers convenience store clerks) have always been more at-risk. As are people who take late trains home to Broadmeadows.
So to compare apples-to-apples one would have to find a comparable group of young white males. Show me a randomly selected group of young, white male that lives, works and travels in the same situations as the Indian student population and that suffers a significantly lower crime rate and I will admit that I am wrong.
So I am quite happy to lay $100 down on that one, without the benefit of statistical peeking.
mark said:
The “position” I “want to argue” has been the same from first comment: there is no evidence of a general anti-Indian race-hate crime wave in Victoria or any other state of Australia. The only error I made is in initially selecting an incorrect general population crime victimization rate. (Which I qualified in any case by noting “some fudge factor depending on…what crimes are included in respective rates”.) But that error does not lead to amending the general conclusion.
And if I “understand the statistical method…so little” how come I whupped’ every body’s ass (on this blog at least) by predicting both the margins in the past few federal elections and the (low) magnitude of the current recession? Beginners luck, you sniff haughtily. “The more I practise, the luckier I get.”
Mark, you need to get some quantitative runs on the board before you go mouthing off in the “qualitative” commentary box.
Not necessarily so Jack. Racism can be manifested in many ways. Violence is just one of them.
BTW, I agree with your broader point that the statistics indicate that there is no detectable greater likelihood that Indians in Victoria are more likely to be victims of violence than any randomly selected sample of Victorians.
But statistics aren’t he only story. Those statistics, for example, do not indicate the propensity of Indians to put themselves in harm’s way in comparison with that randomly selected sample of Victorians.
There appears to be an assumption that Indians are doing dangerous things more often than the average. That assumption is the bastard offspring of anecdote and groupthink.
Remove that assumption and the whole edifice crumbles into dust.
Elise, it was not a one-off attack. It was the *latest* attack in what’s long been identified as a growing trend.
Your other give-away, btw, was your unqualified presumption that the answers to your questions would paint Victorian Indians in general in a violently negative light: “Would those indians claiming racial motivation *then* also suggest [...]“.
For the record, and if I remember correctly, Indians are the 2nd least likely group by country of birth (after Italians) to commit violent crime in Victoria.
No, Jack, I didn’t. I compared the *increase over time* of the state-wide norm. I hedged at ‘around 6%’, which is admittedly too low. It was probably more like 7-9%, but that’s the ballpark we’re in.
As I acknowleged, the increase in student numbers alone should certainly account for some of the increase in attacks against Victorian Indians, but by no means all. There are clearly other qualitative factors, hence the issue and its discussion.
There is no critical threshold that must be reached, Jack.
We decide as a state whether we want to attempt seriously to curb an identified growing trend over the last few years, or, as you seem intent on advocating, do nothing, and explain it all away, until such time it passes a statewide norm.
It’s not really the kind of thing I’d be interested at all in placing bets on, thanks.
Katz@#91 said:
I dare say that Indians are not noticeably absent from out institutions of higher learning, are not being picked up and bundled into the lock-up by racist profiling police and are probably doing alright for themselves in the business of making a living. So I can’t see much evidence of either positive (invasive) or negative (exclusive) racism against Indians.
I have noticed, alas, that Indians tend to be neurotically sensitive to real or perceived slights to their dignity. This can be quite charming sometimes, especially when they formulate their protests in delightfully archaic sentence construction. But it can become hysterical when white people wade in with their own ideological agendas.
Everyone needs to take a cold shower over this whole “Indian race-hate crime wave” meme. They are one of our immigrant success stories and whipping up phantom bogey men does no one any real good.
Nick @ 92: “For the record, and if I remember correctly, Indians are the 2nd least likely group by country…”
For the record, the country statistics for violent crime are:
India: 0.034 per 1,000 people
Australia: 0.015 per 1,000 people
What is all this about least likely groups of people?
I’m curious whether you folks have a common working definition of what you mean by “racism”.
But then, I’m also curious whether the candle-wax from the candle atop this tiny decorative porcelain frog will melt into the little green cutie’s eyes or not.
j-p-z, interesting point about the definition of “racism”.
I have a bit of an interest in this, having lived in a number of different countries and watched how others handle the topic.
Speaking in lay terms, I would have said that “racism” is the application of very negative stereotypes to a population at large, based on limited examples.
As such, you could say that the Indian representatives and the KKK cartoonist are indeed being “racist” themselves towards Aussies.
How interesting, this thread has gotten into what percentage of Indian students are…. Zzzzzz……
(After that)
This is real simple:
Who is doing this to internation students from India?
What will it take to stop them?
Why do you ask that J_P_Z?
And then, why don’t you give us your ‘common working definition’?
Elise, can you please provide your source for those figures?
Racist ideas are customarily associated with deprecation of the other.
But this isn’t necessarily the case.
For example, at the end of the 19th century the Paraguayan government encouraged the settlement in their country of Anglo Saxons on the supposition that their native population was degenerate and therefore incapable of modernising Paraguay.
The infamous New Australia colony headed by William Lane was admitted to Paraguay on the basis that they may improve the bloodstock of the country.
This is one of the many ways in which racist ideas find expression.
Nick@#100
From the ABC:
FTR the most murderous countries seem to be ex-African, Mezo-American and ex-Soviet Union:
The best evidence I can find for comparing ethnic crime rates in this country is the study I referred to earlier on ethnic crime in Australia. Table 4.19 p 83 breaks down the age-standardized crime rates per 1,000 for distinct by country of birth of offenders (VIC 1997/98). It shows that Australian ethnics were roughly twice as likely to be crime perpetrators as Indian ethnics.
It is not surprising that AUS-domiciled Indians have a crime rate in the region of four times lower than their INDIA-domiciled countrymen (assuming stability of rates over the past decade and proportionality between violent and non-violent offender rates). The are a select bunch.
Most Indian immigrants to this country are high-IQ having arrived here with some qualification or seeking some qualification. They typically speak the English language, are religiously observant and are almost stereotypically Anglomorphic (ie play cricket).
j_p_z@#96
According to Steve Sailer:
Agreed Steve…zzzzz..All that really matters is “Who is doing this to students from India? What will it take to stop them?”
Answer to your second question is easy. Everyone has to shut the f..k up about racism and Indian students. I get the impression that’s what the powers that be would like as they make as conciliatory noises as possible but downplay the idea of racism. And then idiots like Sarah Hansen Young jump up and complain that that’s not good enough! We should all admit that Oz is racist! So there’s another headline story out there pumping it all up again.
Emotive and irrational stories like that in the Herald Sun written by the Federation of Indian Students spokesperson Gautam Gupta also make things worse. They incite racist responses from some sections of the community and as well generate the very resentment with potential for violence of which they complains. There was a signicant comment on that story from someone claiming to be an Indian suggesting that Gautam Gupta who has spearheaded much of the protest movement has been and still is associated with the office of Ted Baillieu, Leader of the Victorian Opposition.
So perhaps we should be asking, not who is doing this to Indian students, but rather in whose interest is it to promote the story of racist attacks on Indian students? Cui bono?
So perhaps we should not be asking who is doing this to Indian students, since we are not sure that they are! We should instead be asking who is pushing this story about alleged racism in these attacks.
Sorry – sleepy. Meant to delete last para.
Y’know, I’m not always in accord with Steve At The Pub but I find it hard to argue with his comment at @98. ‘specially “What will it take to stop them?” which is the only question here that actually needs an answer.
Certainly makes a refreshing change from Strocchi’s endlessly self-stroking and pompous attempts to prove…what exactly?
Hi Casey. My “common working definition” wouldn’t be Australian, so it wouldn’t be common or working, and not of much value or interest. I’m just a bystander on this one. There’s way too much I don’t/can’t know about the situation.
My point is that “racism” is one of those big frightful words which everybody understands somewhat differently, and so should be approached with caution. Plato had Socrates show that everybody meant something different when they said “justice”. That of course doesn’t prove that “justice” doesn’t exist, but it warns us to at least be a little wary, right?
Jack Strocchi: don’t you know that quoting Sailer is a hatefact? I’m callin’ the coppers.
If I wasn’t pissed out of my tiny little mind now, then I wouldn’t suggest this cunning plan. Leak to all the MSM and social media that most Indian students are coming over here for military, police, security and martial arts training.
Or even better. As VicPol auxiliaries. Shoot first. Answer the questions afterwards.
And while I just had a passing swipe at Jack, again I find it hard to with argue with his point that Indian students here to tend to end up in generally high risk jobs like late night 7-11 counter staff and taxi drivers.
As immigrants always have – whether they’re here for just several semesters or for life.
But on the other hand, Indians aren’t getting knifed at nightclubs and they aren’t getting involved in pub brawls and they aren’t circulating the city in aggressive gangs. All of the above are the high-risk behaviours of young, non-Indian men.
Are the above behaviours inherently more risky than working in a 7/11? I would suggest that they are, although I have no evidence to support or to dispute that proposition.
So what?
If the above is true then it is problematic to assert that Indians do things that are inherently more risky things done by other members of our community.
And if that is true, then the race-hate cause of violence tends to rise in importance as a motive for violence.
The direct words of assailants underscore the fact that Indians are occasionally being targetted for their appearance and presumed identity.
That Knopfelmacher was right, of course!
(Warning: this is a TL;DR post. But sincere readers are encouraged to persevere!)
Japerz:
…
OK, I’ll bite…
Racism: A cognitive and/or affective bias to attribute greater significance to phenotypic and genotypic factors in the explanation of human behaviours; and by implication to derogate the explanatory significance of other factors (e.g. social, cultural, individual, political, economic). Often associated with a ‘deficit view’ of the artificial categories so created, such than one phenotypic/genotypic category is normalised and other categories are analysed in terms of perceived deficits of the idealised norm. Further associated with a tendency to seek explanations for misfortune that occur to individual group members as arising from their category’s previously-identified deficit behaviours.’
In academic-speak, racism is a syllogistic system for locating the origin of misfortune and the placement of blame upon a subaltern category, and away from the hegemonic category.
Here’s an example from the Strocchibot @94:
On its face, a relatively innocuous, if condescending, comment. Certainly no whiff of ‘essentialism’ here. But nor is there any effort on Strocchi’s part to consider whether a cultural/social/economic/political memory of 3 centuries of colonisation might make people a little ‘sensitive’ about ‘slights to their dignity’. That is, placing the category ‘Indian’ at the head of the sentence encourages a view that the category ‘Indian’ is a significant correlational or causal factor for the tail of the sentence. Even if (as I suspect) the author intended the term ‘Indian’ to be a descriptive label only, a benign placeholder for convenience’ sake, it still shows analytic bias. For example, consider these alternative ways to construct the sentence, which bring in non-phenotype/genotype considerations:
or
Ahhhh, but why bother with such cumbersome and messy constructions, when I can use a benign little placeholder like ‘Indian’? ‘Cos, of course, my interlocuter knows what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.
Strocchi also set up an idealised norm about how sensitive one ought to be, and constructed a deficit view of the category ‘Indian’ in this regard.
The category ‘Indian’ of course is a false placeholder, a mirage that disappears close-up. But this is no obstacle to racist thinking. The Indians I personally know grew up in Hong Kong as well-off members of the business and entrepreneurial community. They exhibit none of the ‘neurotic sensitivity’ that Strocchi mentions. I wonder why not?
To bring this example into sharper focus: why did the author raise this point at all? It encourages a negative view of the ‘category’ under discussion, when it is of no relevance to the specific event. What has the identified deficit behaviour (‘neurotic sensitivity’) to do with the discussion at hand, which is about criminals murdering passers-by? The hegemonic commentator has brought in a vector that biases the discussion towards an explanation of misfortune/apportioning of blame within membership of an identified ‘deficit category’. In other words, racist thinking.
Notice that the headline of this topic is ‘Indian students and criminal violence. Our host, to his credit, has not pre-supposed the motivation…
Elegant, Mercurius.
@Katz #110
I’d hesitate to put too much emphasis on attackers using pejorative group-slurs against victims. Attackers reportedly like to verbalise while they attack, and they choose words that belittle the victim to do so: if the victim is fat they’ll be abused as a salad-dodger while they’re being kicked, if they are a Collingwood supporter they’ll be abused as a f*cking Magpie, if it’s a domestic partner they’ll be abused for being weak and worthless and look-what-you-are-making-me-do.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that particular animosity towards the group to which the victim identifiably belongs motivated the attack per se. Just that verbalising whatever Other-ness they perceive as snarling abuse helps the attackers wind up to the necessary level of brutality to go through with the attack.
Yes, Tigtog, I already have hesitated.
These attacks have no simple explanation.
As I have suggested elsewhere, they point to a deeply entrenched culture of violence whose manifestations are mercurial and hydra-headed.
There is no single silver bullet that will kill this culture.
Mercurius@#112
Cripes, I mention in passing that Indians are a little touchy which earns me a 665 word lecture on my vicious tendency to racist strereotyping. Including the following priceless gem, uttered with face un-erringly straight:
No, this was not an Onion-like spoof on academic crimes against language. I searched in vain for the punchline later on in the comment, but alas its more of the same all the way down.
This is an example, as good as one can get, of the “bot” calling the kettle black.
It’s more of a reflexive rationalisation than a “vicious tendency to racist stereotyping”, Jack, but the result appears inevitable in the Strocchiverse – it couldn’t possibly be that you ever say something to which others might justifiably take affront due to your own insensitivity, inconsideration, ignorance and/or laziness. No, it’s just those neurotically sensitive Others getting touchy at you! So there’s no reason at all for you to change anything about the way you do things!
@116:
No, it wasn’t. I read your comment charitably. I presumed your intent was innocuous and was at pains to point that out, several times. I don’t think you’re being vicious, and I don’t think you’re stereotyping. I do think you have a cognitive or perhaps just analytic bias towards constructing idealised norms based on categories defined by phenotype/genotype, and then attributing behaviours to those factors that are better explained by cultural/social/economic/educational etc. factors, and then syllogistically seeking to apportion blame and attribute misfortune to the categories you defined. Mmmmkay?
A corollary of my earlier definition might be that the postmodern right has defined racism by their partisan group to be impossible, in principle. That is, any utterance made by their partisans cannot be racist, by definition, because racism is defined as a construct of the left aimed at silencing any attempt at ‘debate’ (where ‘debate’ is defined as the unfettered ability of partisans of the right to broadcast their views on all channels, in all media, without opposition).
Heck, let’s keep this simple: Your response at @116 was the universal rallying cry of the wilfully ignorant: ‘I don’t understand what he just said, but it made me feel uncomfortable, for reasons I find difficult to articulate. Quick! Kill it with ridicule! Who’s with me?!‘
Jack, as I said – ‘sincere readers are encouraged to persevere.’ You, however…
Nabakov@#106
To prove…that Indians are not being especially singled out for racist hate-crime attacks, thats what.
Its not a proposition from Wittgenstein. [bangs head futilely against wall]
@ Strocchi #119
Then why wrap it in such densely verbose paragraphs that people either cannot see your point hiding in there, or else simply refuse to read your lines and lines and lines of screed at all because they are utterly, utterly sick of them?
Look what you did just there – a precise and concise response to an argument from someone else! Why don’t you do that all the time?
Get your own blog for the essays.
Was I not clear in my suggestion at 104 that this is not about race but possibly someone playing politics at a local level through a convenient Indian mouthpiece?
Was I too tired to express myself well? Or is that idea too simplistic to invite comment? After all, mine was hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein either.
Here we go.
– Samuel Beckett
tigtog@#120
In science one must cover all bases. In polemics, one just hits and runs.
Unfortunately in social science blogs these two activities get tangled up with each other.
My readability statistics are not abysmal. For a typical comment:
Gunning Fog Index: usually 12-14 (around the Guardian level)
Flesch Reading Ease Score: mid-50s substantially lower than 70-80 for easy reading. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score: usually 10 implying Year 10 minimum education
Generally I prefer to use numbers rather than words to make the decisive point. There is no arguing with arithmetic.
What I really despise is ostentatious moral grandstanding posing as analysis. Particularly from liberals eager to play the status-game of pretending to be holier-than-thou on behalf of some “other” group of whom they only have a fanciful picture.
In any case, in this blog we (meaning me and fellow quants) have made some intellectual progress in figuring out the actual state of crime victimization play and various ethnic groups criminal susceptibilities/propensities. Given the enormous amount of worthless “point and splutter” pumped out by the MSM on this topic I see no reason to feel ashamed.
Here we go,
here we go,
here we go.
-Millwall F.C.
j_p_z,
A good working definition of Australian racism is in F. S. Stevens (ed.) Racism. The Australian Experience. A study of Race Prejudice in Australia. Vol 3, 1972.
It was the first attempt to define racism in the Australian context. I’ve been surfing the net for the past 10 minutes or so trying to find if its on-line anywhere, with no success.
As I recall, and its a very long time since I read the book, Stevens went to some pains to distinguish between racialism and racism, and defined racism as prejuduce against a person solely on terms of race, that is, their racial origin.. Among his examples were Asians, Aborigines, Jews, Germans, etc. if I recall.
If you can find it in a library over there, it might be helpful to you.
“Australia is a deeply racist nation”
–Frank Knopfelmacher
Japerz,
Andrew Markus, Fear and hatred : purifying Australia and California, 1850-1901, is the definitive account of how Australian racism conformed to the pre-existing American model by the end of the 19th century.
You Americans tend to be very modest these days about how influential your Jim Crow laws were in the world decades before the first American soldier planted his boot on foreign soil.
See how effective moral suasion is?
“Here we *go*!”
(the particular inflection kind of counts)
– Perry Farrell/Jane’s, “Start!”
Like ya didn’t know.
Katz: yeah, uh huh. Maybe you need to go back to Casey @#99, or even earlier.
Cheers!
#99 appears to be addressed to you Japerz.
Have I missed your reply?
“Like ya didn’t know.”
I didn’t know it was called anything other than ‘Stop!’, but this could be another of your sometimes opaque gags.
No takers for my theory so far. Is it worth trying to answer another question raised by Mark in opening this thread? Why do these attacks seem to be happening in Melbourne?
It may be simply because of the presence there of Mr. Gautam Gupta, associated I understand with the office of the Victorian Opposition leader. Mr Gupta proudly proclaimed in the Sun Herald that he has left paid employment simply to give his time to the Melbourne branch of the Federation of Indian Students in Australia to ensure that what he thinks are racist attacks on Indian students are widely publicised and acknowledged.
Was I not clear in my suggestion at 104 that this is not about race but possibly someone playing politics at a local level through a convenient Indian mouthpiece?
Was I too tired to express myself well? Or is that idea too simplistic to invite comment?
Are you ignoring the trend towards attacks on indian students, or denying it? Are you ignoring the evidence in subsequent court cases that such attacks have been accompanied by phrases like “curry bashing” (before the event, not, as TT suggests, not exclusively during.)
I’m no friend of the Victorian Liberals but I don’t see why someone aligned with the State Opposition shouldn’t put his head up and talk about his countrymen being attacked. To dismiss this social trend simply as smoke and mirrors designed to feather someone’s nest is insulting to the kids who are afraid to go out at night and the parents whose sons have come home in a box.
I think that, and your description of a Green politician as an “idiot” when she speaks up about it is just as much about your political tribalism as it is about theirs.
Oook yes, quite so, FDB is quite right (viz. re Janes it’s Stop! and not Start!,) just goes to show it’s been quite a while since I was a young man!
Even Katz quite possibly is owed a correction as well (tho’ not necessarily, since it’s more often the case that boomers owe all humankind, and almost certainly so, even if this’un pans out badly).
But then again Oops, what can ya sometimes do. Family dining can be messy etc etc.
Good vibes all! (minus of course nitwit falling out of chair, and insisting on paying for next table’s Scotch to make up for clumsy travesty etc, use your imagination…You get the idea… j.
another attack in Melbourne – an indian man had a flammable liquid poured on him, and was set on fire!!! That’s pretty awful.
The article quotes: “Police do not know why he was targeted, but they do not think the attack was racially motivated.” – it’s going to be pretty hard to stick with that explanation for this case, I would have thought. The stastistics for being set on fire must be pretty bloody low.
Katz@#127
Andrew Markus has made a long and profitable career as a Black Arm-bander, professional multiculturalist and now mass immigration booster. Given his personal background I can perhaps forgive him for that.
But he would not be the first person I would go to for a clear and cold-eyed view for the problems and prospects of ethnic diversification. Too invested.
@135
Actually, I think its not that uncommon for homeless people to be set on fire. I can recall cases from Sydney to Townsville. Don’t have any stats though.
Thanks for your response, Helen. I am not dismissing “this social trend simply as smoke and mirrors designed to feather someone’s nest” Nor do I wish to insult “the kids who are afraid to go out at night and the parents whose sons have come home in a box.” The emotive language is yours.
I am simply questioning how a city with a far lower crime and murder rate than any Indian city could suddenly be sensationally highlighted as alarmingly racist when so far nothing more has been proven than opportunism and maybe random racism. I am also concerned that the fervent promotion of this idea could fuel overt or latent racist sentiment and so create the kind of mayhem Mr Gautam Gupta tries to portray as already existing.
The “trend towards attacks on Indian students” you consider as clear has yet to be confirmed as significant. Nor does one have to plan a political campaign of racist unrest to gain considerable political mileage by encouraging, or simply not restraining a hot headed partisan keen to promote a story which will embarrass authorities. Political shit stirring is a lot easier if other people do it for you, particularly if the local and international media join the band wagon.
My reference to Sarah Hanson Young as “idiotic” was wrong. Rather her comments were idiotic as so many of her comments have been on a range of issues. You can draw no inference about my political tribalism from this except perhaps to ask yourself why I like most Australians desperate for action on the environment and climate change can not support the Greens. After all they claim to be “a political party dedicated to conservation and responsible environmental management”. So why not focus on that instead of emotive and uninformed grandstanding on the latest “cause du jour”?
Well, Jack, read the book and provide a detailed historical critique.
I find Markus’ argument to be nuanced and convincing.
There is an awful lot of anguish going on here regarding Australia being labeled racist. You may recall the Red Faces incident. You will recall the defensiveness with which the media and the commentariat responded. You may remember the vociferousness with which some of us disavowed racist intent where the incident was concerned, while some of us pointed to the fact that conscious or unconscious, it was racist in intent. Some of us should have also said that ignorance of American history and its manifestations of racism, is not a benign space, and therefore not exempt from the label of racism because of that ignorance, as Anna Haebich has argued.
So, once again most of the argument raging here and elsewhere has to do with the painful aspects of this forced self examination of Australia as racist or not. Once again, we are defensively facing the outrage of another country telling us we are racist. Why does this happen? Don’t you wonder? The fact that both America and India have a highly questioning commentariat adds to this pressure not doubt, but why are we again being called to account? Again?
And how do we respond? Do we say, yes, assuredly some parts of our culture and country need to be called to account? or need to be examined, or need to be changed? No way baby, no we don’t. We have politicians, police, major parts of the commenariat and some of you again disavowing the presence of racism as a motivation in attacks upon Indian students. Period. And how can you know this? And what informs your knowing? A couple of stats which prove nothing much?
Do you see how the argument has moved beyond why the incidents in question are occurring and has now become a narcissistic exercise in maintaining a coherent self image of Australia as non racist in the face of the very obvious fact that yes we are, we have been and will continue to be racist in part, as does every other nation?
Sometimes Australia is racist. Sometimes Australia is not. Sometimes these incidents have been racist attacks. Assuredly, sometimes they have been not. Furthermore, sometimes every other nation on earth has displayed it’s racism, sometimes it has not.
What is so hard about this?
Why respond with infantile “don’t look at my shameful incidents, let’s look at yours India!” and “Im not racist, you are India!” or “Look at what this Indian did to this other Indian!” What a bunch of babies. This is what passes for thoughtful and critical analysis from some of us here?
All this anxiety proves to me, all that it proves, is that Australia and its public discourse is yet to reach the mirror stage and recognise it’s lack. Or if you like, Australians need to accept that there are parts of Australia and Australian behaviour that are quite simply and disgracefully racist at times. Or if you like, grow up will you?
Mercurious aka Barry: If you ever accuse me of swallowing a cultural studies text book again I will link straight back here to you thank you very much.
@Katz
Do the detail elsewhere* and just give us the edited highlights here, please.
*Alphabetical order:
http://www.blogger.com/
http://www.typepad.com/
http://wordpress.com/
I wasn’t going to post anything on this thread, but Casey – top shelf comment.
we have some racists in the joint, +61 over. roger +61.
Casey, I see very little anguish here about Australia’s accepting its racism. I’ve seen it as an acknowledged fact, engrained in our history and law as late as the Referendum of 1967, just a few years before I went to work in a rural community with 25% Aboriginal people, still an appallingly disadvantaged group. From the 1980′s on, acknowledging our ethnocentrism, there has been a national multicultural program aimed at educating ourselves to become a more tolerant and understanding society. Our politicians from both parties (maybe with more recent exceptions) have promoted migration from all over the world and followed a particularly generous policy of refugee intake from trouble spots in Africa and Asia. Local, state and federal governments work hard at fostering racial and ethnic harmony, all the time recognising pockets of resistance and ignorance.
This issue, however, can not simply be described as a manifestation of our racism.
The facts do not bear that out. There is frank acknowledgement of some elements of random acts of racism but we have no real evidence to justify what has become a hysterical campaign by some here and in the Indian media to paint us as anti-Indian racists. Not white supremacists mind, because otherwise we’d be attacking Chinese and Iraqis too. Understandable might be anti-Pakistani violence disguising anti-Moslem prejudice. We had a spate of what amounted to terrorist bomb attacks on Moslem mosques here some time back, and the white bigot perpetrators were brought to justice.
What we have here is a range of random attacks on vulnerable Indian individuals at various places and opportune times no more or less signicant in incidence than for other sections of the community. The distinguishing feature is the man with the hammer who sees as malign nails every one of these incidents directed at “his” people. He has made it his mission to tell this story of persecution and oppression as vociferously and widely as possible. Some Australians,so apologetic about our racist heritage and tendencies, have listened too hard to the message and have not been looking at the messenger and his motives.
I saw a discussion on Indian TV on the subject. The discussion steered away from anything to do with racism, and pointed to lack of response by the Australian Police and media. Why are the Australians aghast that a country such as India can raise the issue?
These crimes can be solved.
In India, crimes do take place against foreigners. There is a diplomatic hue and cry and the Police are under pressure to book criminals and bring them to justice. The media and people are sympathetic towards the victims. People can influence government action.
I can see the Australian people sympathizing with the Indians, but not the Government and definitely not the police. Are the Australians really aghast … I wonder if a different course of action would prevail if the victims were from the PRC. Perhaps justice will be at the cost of some economic coercion!
There is no point going into why they are victims, as it is not relevant to the crime. It may be useful to prevent further crimes, not without solving the current ones.
The blog has gone into semantics.
Perception eventually drives philosophy.
I geddit. It’s one of dem irregular verbs, innit?
I am coolly expounding sober, considered analysis.
You are moral grandstanding.
He is an obsessive partisan wanker with an axe to grind.
Now that, my friends, is good grammar!
Really, on what evidence do you come to that conclusion?
Of course. And will you be having eccy with your acid then? Why Patricia, that reads like one of those frakkin ridiculous paragraphs I used to make up when writing letters supposedly written by the MP I worked for. What were the history wars about exactly? One long orgasm of denial longing to definitively and irrevocably retract what the historians who became prominent in the 90′s had begun to articulate, is what they were, regardless of what happened before then. Regardless of the Al Grasby 1980′s Harmony Festivals. Regardless of Stanner’s Boyer lecture. Regardless of the referendum. Did you miss the long and onerous monocultural Howard years I suppose? When we were told to integrate, integrate, integrate? Where celebrations of difference were frowned upon and elisions of the multi in the culturalism began to take hold? In regards to Aboriginal people. It is one thing to give 1% of the nation the vote isn’t it? And may I say, Well good on us. A bunch of white people decided that black people were actually people and in 1967 no less! But still, it is quite another to give them their land back. And quite another again to mention that you killed off quite a few of them while taking their land, sorry our land. And that Mabo decision, ten years in total, which found that the notion of a treaty, even though we have historical evidence of treaties being formed, could not be accommodated within the law and the judges, trying as hard as they could with what they had, bending over backwards to find a compromise within that common law which would allow for native title. We are so good, yes of course. And then imagine, the struggle to apologise and how long that took? Just to say sorry. And then, imagine, to this day, the nation sorely split on whether the apology should have taken place. And then imagine, 10 years for an Aboriginal land claim to get through the courts even to this day, you know. Imagine how onerous it is to prove connection to land when you have been disenfranchised, removed and stolen. Pfft. Look at the excised zones of Australia still in place if you will. And the loads of people in Australia, SATP one of them who reports his pub patrons as advocating the shooting of the asylum seeker boats in the water?
Well they are the down sides. They are the downsides to your sunny side up sides I dare say.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure we have much to be proud of. I just don’t much feel like it today when the chef stuffs up and I get that big plate of denial when all I ordered was a balanced adult view.
So why don’t you just say what problem you have with this guy and be done with it. You keep on rabbiting on about conspiracies. Tell us what you know Patricia. So, did you have a run in with him or something?
You will note you misread what I said. I am speaking of a pattern, well established during the Howard years, of deflection and simplistic denial whenever charges of racism are raised against this country. Every time it comes up. No reflection, no contemplation, no examination. Shoot from the hip denial. Immediately. A narcissistic reflexive response indicative of a nation, parts of which wish to remain in an infantile state insisting on wholeness and perfection where there is none.
That is what I said.
And while we are at it, how do “the facts” not bear it out btw? Were you there during each and every attack? If you google, you will see students describing the racist taunts before the attacks in many of these incidents. As I said, some of these are racist attacks, some are not. As I said. That is what I said. What is so hard about that?
I absolutely find it extraordinary that it is white people who were not there, who have no idea what went on, who are reading media reports, who are unproblematically telling the Indians who have been attacked that their attacks were not racist. By the politicians, by the police. And the commentariat. And it is white people who are outraged at India for the questions rightly asked, given the high proportion of attacks on its citizens in Melbourne. That high proportion is beyond dispute right? You can essentialise and put it down to the Indian mindset, or the risky jobs or whatever, but it is there right? And still you go on about some guy with an agenda? He would have no agenda if there were no attacks right? Right?
I find all that just extraordinary and propose that it’s just the discourse of whiteness protecting is melanin deficient arse. I propose this confected outrage at the Indian media is hiding a sore spot in the national psyche where race is concerned. I have always argued this. I always will.
Come on, Mercurius, get your quotation marks in the right place! Don’t put words in other people’s posts that don’t exist!
You can take it from my comment @ 138, if that’s what you’re having a go at, that I am dismissive of Sarah Hanson Young for what I see as “uninformed grandstanding” but that’s all I said. Whatever else you read into it or however else you colour it is your invention.
Forget about my grammar, and my style. Have you read the article in the Sun Herald by Gautam Gupta and the subsequent comments? That and earlier similar statements by him and others happy to follow him have largely fuelled this debate here and in India. If this were a bush fire and a forensic review made of its causes I’ve no doubt he’d be named as an accelerant if not the cause.
*sigh* I wish I’d swalllowed some cultural studies books. I like the stuff you write, Casey. Thanks.
Thanks Furious. I like you too.
Speaking of, Patricia, listen to Gassan Hage for a minute cause it’s what I’m getting at:
“I argue that both white racists and white multiculturalists share in a conception of themselves as nationalists and of the nation as a space structured around a White culture, where Aboriginal people and non white ‘ethnics’ are merely national objects to be moved or removed according to a white national will. This white belief in one’s mastery over the nation, whether in the form of a white racism, or a white multiculturalism, is what I have called the white nation fantasy. It is a fantasy of an nation governed by white people, a fantasy of white supremacy”
Hage, White Nation 18.
That is, Patricia, and not necessarily speaking to you but, like, out there in general – whether you are a white racist or a white multiculturalist, you think it’s still your space to control – the public space where we argue about otherness, Australia, the nation and the existence of racism or not. The ‘ethnics’ in it are subject to what you say they are, the existence of racism or not, is subject to whether you say it’s there or not. Nothing to do with them. Even though they are the ones that experience it. You say that is not so. And so it is not. This is the fantasy. That you have the say on the basis of your whiteness.
And bullshit to that, you know.
No Patricia, the ‘moral grandstanding’ quote was from Strocchi @ 123. I never attributed the comment to you.
And it was a joke, Joyce.
Funny that you thought I was quoting you, however. Your sensitivity is…telling. Not that us Aussies have anything to be sensitive about when it comes to racism, of course. Of course.
Yes, Mercurius, I was touchy, wasn’t I! Perhaps I’m oversensitive, having recently experienced “agism” on LP where someone (I’ve forgotten who!) suggested my style was like something out of the fifties!
Whatever Professor Hage has to say about our innate sense of the supremacy of whiteness, Casey, I still think this issue of an anti-Indian Melbourne based progrom has been dangerously blown out of proportion. The sort of emotive and judgemental accusations being hurled around here and in India are likely to cause more frequent and tragic attacks which really will be organised by fired-up racist thugs.
“The sort of emotive and judgemental accusations being hurled around here and in India are likely to cause more frequent and tragic attacks which really will be organised by fired-up racist thugs.”
I agree, partly.
That’s why it’s vital we acknowledge the levels and types of racism that do exist in Australia, and attempt to deal with them openly. Denying it entirely is so ludicrous that an outsider would be forgiven for thinking we’re sweeping something much more serious than actually exists under the national carpet.
And that’s exactly the conclusion they are coming to, on the basis of our knee-jerk defensive denialism.
I get the impression that those who are merely calling for caution as to motives, in cases that have not even gone beyond the investigation stage, are unfairly being caught up in some kind of finger pointing dragnet.
As if you have to attribute a hasty motivation or else you are claimed to be putting your head in the sand about racism. Even if you are prepared to acknowledge the country has a big problem on that front.
The whole world is aware of the historical racism in Australia and the ‘white only’ policy that existed. There is no debate about it and if there is one in 2010, then I agree there is a huge problem and it justifies advisories by the Indian government to caution Indians to tread carefully in Australia.
I am sorry Joe, but is this the caution of which you speak? And why should we shut the fuck up about racism? Oh because it’s all a plot by Gautum Gupta who is a Liberal party lackey:
Or is this the caution of which you speak? Whereby someone tars someone else with shady and hazy allegations. I asked Patricia to substantiate her inferences, mouthed cleverly by citing a source which has nothing to do with her, and like, crickets. Please note that Patricia is advocating silence as a solution here, otherwise it may cause racist attacks. ???!!! Yes indeed. We should all shut the fuck up about the potential existence of racism in case it causes racism. I could cite you some other vested interests in the nation that have been well served where erasure and silence have been concerned, but in this instance, I will say again that this call to silence serves only to keep this nation in an infantile imaginary state with its white fantasy intact and how does this silence serve Indian students who are being attacked? .. To not even ask the question given the spike in the numbers. Unbelievable. Who is being emotive here?
Gautam Gupta on is TV now. He has been asked if he thinks the attacks are racially motivated. He has suggested that there must be an element of racism given the high figures, figures which no one disputes, and that that element has to be investigated. He is asking police not to dismiss racism as a motivation in their investigations. Oh yes, pogrom indeed. Emotional hysteria indeed.
Patricia needs to substantiate her so far unsubstatiated inference that Gautam Gupta is not at all interested in helping Indian students, but is rather serving the interests of the Liberal Party in Victoria in doing his job. This is his job Patricia! To represent the interests of Indian students!!! If they are being harmed in increasing numbers, he has to raise the issue of race because it is one of a number of probable factors that need to be looked at!!!
As for caution, how much caution would you like? Everybody so far – the pollies, the police, much of our media – has denied it’s racist while, as you say, the investigations have not even begun. And I for one am not tarring anyone here with a racist brush. I am merely raising the discomforting ways in which discourses of whiteness, as opposed to individual people within those discourses, function.
This latest case is very strange, if newspaper reports are to be believed. From the Age:
1. Why would four men be in the street at 2am carrying enough accelerant to do considerable harm to an adult male? I’m guessing at least a litre of petrol, or equivalent. The collateral damage to the car was quite considerable.
2. This was clearly a co-ordinated attack. Two probably held the victim, one doused him and his car with petrol and one set fire to him. What motivates such a plan?
3. The timing, location and MO suggest that the victim had been singled out for the attack. The attackers were prepared to lie in wait, knowing something about his movements. The assailants probably knew the victim. But were victim and assailants known to each other?
4. The detail about the missing burned clothing is very strange. Who would remove such items in the dead of night in a quiet suburban crescent?
@149 – Great quote from Hage, Casey.
I remember when I read that book when it first came out. The point made in the first bit you’ve cited struck me with incredible force.
I am sure there is nothing in what I have said that implies that, Casey. But you do rather prove my point that some are rounding on anybody who is not toeing ‘every Indian assault is necessarily a racist one’, line. And because they would prefer to wait for the actual evidence to come in, they somehow deny there is racist element in our society.
Yes Casey, it is incredible to me that anybody could, with a straight face, suggest that anybody but the perpetrators of these crimes are responsible for the up-tick in attacks.
And yet, the suggestions have been made upthread that responsibility for future hypothetical increase in attacks on Indians will be laid at our feet if:
a) People discuss whether the motive for attacks may be racist.
b) There is widespread reportage and discussion of possible motives.
c) Our response is to do anything other than put our hands over our ears and yell “La la la! We’re not racist!”
So, journalists, cartoonists, Indians under attack, politically well-connected Indian Australians, and gadfly commentators on blogs will bear the blame for future attacks. Look what you made those thugs do!
Silence kills. Ask any beaten spouse, Jew, or person of the homosexual persuasion.
Nice to be on the same side of the discussion with you, Casey.
Casey. It is not I who needs to substantiate my “so far unsubstantiated claim” about Mr. Gupta. It is Mr. Gupta and the outraged commentariat supporting him who need to substantiate their so far unsubstantiated claims that there is a targeted campaign of violence against Indian students in Melbourne.
I’m not normally given to expletives and seeing it quoted here somewhat out of context as a response to Steve atp and within a range of other comments it looks pretty damning of my stance on this issue. Perhaps I am more frustrated than I was aware!
My own position is not one of denial that racism is alive and well in Australia but rather a questioning of this particular brouhaha. Why Indians? Why only Melbourne? And why the outrage around an as yet unproven claim that the numbers involved were more than might be expected given locations, timing, opportunity
and vulnerability of this particular section of our community. Much has been made of the mention of “curry munching” in some of these incidents. This hardly amounts to an organised campaign of racial or group villification.
Mr Gupta has assumed a Pimpernel-like presence in the media, here there and everywhere, and is the most quoted source for the outraged reactions in the Indian MSM and overly conscience stricken liberals here. If his claims were indeed substantiated I too would be very concerned for my Indian friends, which I am becoming as attention is increasingly drawn to them. I was interested to read his material which is highly emotive and his self confessed determination to pursue this issue vigorously after leaving his paid employment to take up the unpaid role of FISA spokesman on this. There was a claim by an Indian person in the comments section of the Sun Herald article that Mr. Gupta’s was not an elected, but rather a self-appointed position. Mr. Gupta’s association with the Victorian Opposition office in Melbourne was mentioned at the same time. I think it is reasonable, given the gravity of the impact of Mr. Gupta’s claims that this aspect of the story should be considered.
I think the thing that struck me hardest in the whole episode was this comment by Jeff at the Overland Blog: http://web.overland.org.au/?p=3038&cpage=1#comment-2867
“The reaction to this murder has been quite astonishing.
The default position of almost every authority figure quoted seems to be a blanket assertion about Australia’s wonderfulness, even to the exclusion of conveying commiserations to the young man’s family.”
I haven’t heard a single pollie open whatever else they have to say with an expression of sympathy for the victim’s family. De rigeur in most other cases. Forfend we might suggest there’s something wrong with that, but … aint there something wrong with that?
Patricia, you, by quoting someone else, have inferred the man is not being sincere in his efforts to do his job, but is the puppet of the Liberal Party.
Repeating what some anonymous commenter said elsewhere as evidence of a lack of sincerity on his part is not particularly compelling evidence for whatever it is you are inferring. It’s pretty tacky actually. And it’s up to you to substantiate it given you have raised it in this thread. That is the way it works.
But if you can do nothing else but repeat the same vague inferences of political interference without any substantiation, and then advocate silence as a corrective to a no. of violent incidents, where racism may or may not be an issue, then that is my final comment to you. A debate is not conducted by mindlessly repeating the same stuff. It is conducted by addressing the points raised at every stage. YOU provide the evidence that Gupta is a Liberal Party stooge, given you are the one who inferred it. I am quite shocked you think it’s ok to smear someone like this on the basis of what an anonymous commenter said. Unless you know more. In which case, you know, put up or shut up.
Joe, if it is to me that you are addressing your comment, I think you misunderstand what I have been arguing, which most assuredly is not “youse that dont agree each incident was racially motivated are all racist by default”.
My point is about the discourse of whiteness and its attempt to control the conversation here. My comments are working to fracture the unquestioned, unexamined, and taken for granted racialised nature of this conversation. This bloggy, national and international conversation is raced, absolutely, whether people know it or not. And this stands quite apart from whether racism was involved in the incident or not. And that is what the Hassan Gage quote was about.
For example, to use a few words bandied about here. Say we put together “Indian, emotional, hysterical” together, as an example, then do you see what is happening. Do you see how the much this conversation is raced?
But the question is to what extent are statements inherently “raced” or “sexed” or any number of other past participles?
Is it possible for individuals to escape their identity or is their identity indelibly etched into their consciousness and/or modes of expression?
As a left-hander, for example, a member of a permanent and until recently a deprecated minority, I’m aware that my brain works differently from the general run of right-handers. Other studies have borne out the importance of handedness as a marker for mental process.
Even if I wanted to, could I think like a right-hander?
I’d argue that race is a social construct but that sex and handedness may have some powerful inherent qualities.
What do youse lefties think?
Katz@163, I think it’s a question that needs its own thread, is wot I think.
I can start one, with your comment as the jump-off point, if you like.
What I’m trying to say is that the subject you raise is interesting and valuable, but I don’t think it’s sufficiently germane to this thread..?
I had a ‘very spirited’ (read stand-up) argument with my son over this after commenting that I thought the Victoria Police comment over Mr Singh was stupid, given the circumstances of the past 12-18 months.
It was clear that my son was arguing reason, and I was arguing cause. (He had great sympathy but his point was over the categorization of motive). The acting sergeant was also arguing reason for the action as motive. That is, he is suggesting the attack was random and for it to be racially motivated, the four would have had to have gone abroad looking for a person of Indian appearance or Mr Singh himself because he is Indian.
However, if these four men are abroad looking to attack someone for whatever reasons – thrills and to raise their social standing with each other, for example, and they are likely to choose some visually identifiable groups of people over others, then the choice of who those groups are contains some level of underlying motivation. Indians, Somalis, women, Moslems. Race, race, gender, religion.
If so-called “random attacks” are occurring, and some of these are driven by pre-meditated violence, and certain groups are more likely to be attacked, and statistics being quoted suggest that is so (they need to be weighted for exposure – who is abroad, where and when), then the underlying motivations in the choice of those groups are sufficient cause to attribute some level of motive.
If I am Indian, and I perceive I am more likely to be attacked (and the stats support this), then my Indianness is a cause. Thus, I am going to make the call of racial motivation in the loss of my personal safety.
Keeping quiet will not help – even if attacking an Indian means that an attack is more likely to get on the news and gain the attacker added social credit. These things need to be confronted openly and visibly. The social cachet that some people get with each other by carrying out these crimes needs to be marginalised by censure and penalty. Also by support and acceptance of the general community, and of civil society, especially authority, of those most likely to be victims. That includes acknowlegement of the status quo openly and honestly and commitment to change. If certain common characteristics of those committing the violence can be identified, then some assessment of why, and also how people in those groups can be acknowledged by broader society would also help.
Flying politicians over to India to protect the student market while playing word games at home will help no-one.
Lefty E – thanks for the link to the Overland commentary. Again the article to which the comment relates is built around the case being made for racist malice against Indian students in particular by Gautam Gautari who is quoted at length.
Peter Mitchell who comments immediately after the “Jeff” to whom you refer and have quoted about uncaring spokespersons expresses exactly my own reservations about all this. Why only Indian students? Do racists attacking at night in lonely places ignore Chinese and Moslem Pakistanis until they find Indians, and even more specifically Indian students whose parents have saved to send them to study in Australia? As Peter Mitchell says “something does not add up here.”
Going to your particular point, this “Jeff” may not have heard commiserations being expressed to the victims’ families. I certainly have. Frequently and before the speakers then go on to question the idea that this is racism targeting Melbourne Indian students specifically. These are not white race supemacists refusing to accept reality or glossing over proven malign motives against a very specific group. These are politicians and officials responsible for public order seeking to defuse potentially explosive situations caused by wild speculation in the absence of real evidence. Which is why I became so frustrated by Sarah Hanson-Young who made what I felt was an uninformed and emotional statement which caused further MSM excitement and so again escalated the problem.
I am not denying that racism exists in Australia, or Melbourne, or in Perth or Sydney. I agree with many of our politicians and the police that racism is undoubtedly an element in some of these attacks in Victoria but it is irrational to claim without clearer evidence that they are targeted at Indian students in particular.
I am however stating my belief that most of the argument for this idea emanated and still does emanate from the statements of Mr. Gautam Gautari. This is not an unsubstantiated belief, Casey. It is supported in almost every MSM statement and commentary and it is the proud claim of Mr. Gautari himself that he has done a thorough job in bringing this issue to public awareness. I have not questioned the sincerity of his belief, but I do question his judgement and his bias. The damage caused by the promotion of his beliefs is immeasurable. I therefore think it reasonable to question his motives, and the motives of others who might have some influence in encouraging him, or preferably restraining him.
Although very much of the left persuasion myself I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Mitchell’s comment about this in Overland. “It seems that many Australians of whatever leftist political persuasion are blinded by their particular dogma, instead of using their analysis to unpack material reality in more attuned ways.”
Peter Mitchell writes immediately below the comment of “Jeff” linked by Lefty E @ 161.
“…then I agree there is a huge problem and it justifies advisories by the Indian government to caution Indians to tread carefully in Australia.”
Perhaps they need to warn that the prevailing discourse can be injurious to the health and wealth of foreigners?
Good old parochial aussieland – it never fails to be the same.
I understand your point of view Mercurius. Is flexibility a left-handed trait? Dunno.
I was merely trying to extend Casey’s interesting discussion about the sources of self-expression and perhaps consciousness.
Has there ever been a thread about left-handedness? If not, why not have one?
Katz, your left-handed thread is duly posted, here.
” … Indians tend to be neurotically sensitive to real or perceived slights to their dignity. This can be quite charming sometimes, especially when they formulate their protests in delightfully archaic sentence construction. … ”
*
That’s gold. That is a caricature of an Indian as portrayed by Peter Sellers. You could just as well have added that some Indians wear feathers down their backs, and say things like, “White man speak with forked tongue.”
*
As generalisations go, that one is a pearler, even with the words, “tend to be” in it.
*
Were you serious?
What I was referring to, as you well know, was your inference he was was a Liberal party stooge.
You raised that. Now you substantiate or you start to look like the raving irrational. emotional sensationalist fantasist you are claiming he is.
Up to you.
Casey – the inference is yours and the emotive language is yours. I simply repeated the comment published on the Sun Herald blog of Guatam Gupta’s article (in which he stated how determined he was to publicise this issue) that he was associated with the office of the Liberal Party in Victoria. This assertion was not denied at the time of publication of the Sun Herald article and of that comment. I also suggested that this could be a factor to consider when looking for answers as to why these targeted attacks on Indian students seemed to be only in Melbourne.
That is a reasonable issue to raise without my being accused of character assassination. I presume that as a visitor to this site I am free to make such comments as long as the moderator does not see the need to censor me. Meanwhile the burden of proof that he is correct in his assumptions is still on Mr. Gupta when his views are being widely publicised in the MSM here and overseas, creating huge unrest and anxiety for Indian families of students in Australia, as well as fomenting exactly the kind of targeted racial resentment of which complains.
Your inference in the second paragraph. Your inference. Yours to substantiate.
And now you’ve actually started to tick me off by disavowing your own inferences, let’s check this out:
And break it down:
1) you say you do not deny that racism exists and you agree with many pollies and police that racism is undoubtedly an element in some of these attacks in Victoria. Congrats. You agree with me and the person you have painted as a Liberal Party stooge.
2) HOWEVER, having agreed with me and the “liberal party stooge” that there is “undoubtedly an element of racism in some of these attacks” you then inexplicably categorically state that is tis “irrational to claim without evidence that they are targeted at Indian students in particular”
Eh?? You getting enough air???
So what your are saying is that there is undoubtedly an element of racism in some of these attacks but it is irrational that they are being targeted because they are Indian???
There has to be a race involved for there to be an element of racism right? I mean what are the attackers racistly attacking for there to be undoubtedly, in your own words, elements of racism?? Not their Indian identity??? Are they Indians from MARS perhaps???
I don’t suppose you understand how very badly you are doing here do you????
Casey, I think we have to agree to disagree on this.
@ Patricia
Whether the attacks are racially motivated per se,. and targeted against migrant groups in general (i.e. non-white, non-aussie) OR whether the attacks are racially motivated against Indians specifically….how does it make a difference??? The point still remains that the attacks are backed by racist, prejudicial and ethno-centric sentiments. Arguably, the latter is worse, from the Indian community’s perspective as they will naturally feel like the specific target of such sentiments from the perpetrators, but the former is also equally disturbing, from the perspective of cultural tolerance within aussie society. Either way Indians are totally right in feeling insecure.
Heck – I’d go onto say that given the huge variance in physical characteristics, names, religious affiliation, cultural practise, linguistic affinity aong the Indian community…..indians could possibly feel MORE threatened if they felt that aussies were racist in general against migrants (as opposed to specifically against indians)…as that impacts EVERY indian migrant to aus…even the ones who don’t (consciously, or naturally) stand out as being Indian (perhaps because they are fairer than most Indians and could therefore pass off as greek, Italian, middle-eastern, or even white, or because they have Christian/ non-indian names etc !!).
To pedantically hold onto the rather moot and semantically focussed point of whether these attacks are specifically targeted against Indians as a specific migrant community, is at best a severe lack of cultural objectivity and at worst a pathetic deficiency in the aussie government’s cultural stance, manifested as a lack of willingness to take appropriate local policing and international PR action in light of these crime attacks that are ethnically targeted enough to be justifiably labelled as ethno-centric in general.
This thread has been one of the more enlightening treatments of the assaults/murders of Indians in Melbourne. The first half was especially informative as the statistics were debated. I had not thought to compare what the media is currently fixated by compared to all the other violence that takes place in Melbourne and beyond. The fact that it seems there is inconclusive evidence to identify any trend for Indians being particularly susceptible is something the media does not comment on.
Reviewing the media treatment, Patricia WA is spot on about the ubiquity of Guatam Gupta. He is one person only. If his assertions (and let’s face it, they are only assertions) were taken out, the media coverage would be extremely thin on data, making its “racist” discourse impossible. Patricia WA is right to explore Gupta’s role in this “racism” trope, and she does not attribute Gupta’s involvement as merely cynical shilling for the Victorian Liberal Party. But I am surprised that others such as Casey so aggressively deny the circumstantial nuance his role demands.
Then the thread’s unpacking of the stats and the specific evidence of the context of the attacks abruptly stops with Casey disavowing the role of evidence in prosecuting the “racism” trope. Despite the media – Fairfax/News press, TV, radio, and blogosphere running the “racist Australians” and “Indian persecution” line, Casey makes this bizarre claim
There is an awful lot of anguish going on here regarding Australia being labeled racist. You may recall the Red Faces incident. You will recall the defensiveness with which the media and the commentariat responded.
But then she goes on to quote media appearances by Gupta and other Indians to bolster her agreement with the “racist Australians” trope. Very confusing and contradictory. Despite the entire thread up that point was discussing the “racist” trope in light of the data, Casey ignores that discussion, substituting this howler for the data.
while we are at it, how do “the facts” not bear it out btw?
See the first half of this thread. Not conclusive, but their is a tonne of facts there to mull over.
Then the profound irony of this
Were you there during each and every attack?
Tu quoque, anybody?
I absolutely find it extraordinary that it is white people who were not there, who have no idea what went on, who are reading media reports, who are unproblematically telling the Indians who have been attacked that their attacks were not racist.
Cough. Cough.
Then the pièce de résistance. A disavowal of facts and evidence for Cultural Studies assertions where quotes from Cultural Studies academics from years before the Indian attacks and not even mentioning Indians is privileged over evidence and data.
I find all that just extraordinary and propose that it’s just the discourse of whiteness protecting is melanin deficient arse. I propose this confected outrage at the Indian media is hiding a sore spot in the national psyche where race is concerned.
What is particularly ignorant and offensive about this is Australia is one of the three most multiracial nations on the planet. Among the group overwhelmingly most responsible for violence – 16 to 26 year old men – the proportion of non-”white” people in this country ESPECIALLY the western suburbs of Melbourne is incredibly high. We must call Cassy on her discursive wiping out of non-”white” people out of being Australian. Conveniently this allows her to deny the violent agencies of non-”white” (including indegenous) young males in the western suburbs of Melbourne. This discursive deletion of a large and growing proportion of our nation is so rejected by data on ethnic-based gangs and other violence in Melbourne’s western suburbs, that many of us (though clearly not enough on this thread) have seen with our own eyes,
We really must ask Casey why she is running this line?
Casey and Patricia: Gautam Gupta is a Liberal student from way back. He was a Swinburne student union figure. And Ted Bailieu has been writing about violence against students in the indian community papers for more than 2 years. I am a godless commie and not very well disposed towards either of them. None of this renders the claims of racialised violence a Liberal plot. The violence is real and I think that it is racialised violence tho not because I think all the perpetrators are whitey. Some of what I think is behind this is in the piece ben rosenzweig and I have in the latest overland if yr interested. But dismissing the claims of racialised violence just cos u don’t think much of Gupta seems pretty silly. The fear in the Indian student community is real mostly because of the daily assaults and incidents that don’t get reported not because the ones that do are amped up. What Gautum says makes sense to many Indian students who feel an underlying hostility towrds them at work, at school and in the world generally.
Casey Casey Casey. Cause, Casey can’t help it.
Casey takes it you don’t think much of whiteness studies then? Casey understands. Casey has noted with glee how it is often white people who disavow the existence of discourses of whiteness at work in national conversations, even as they hold and attempt to control those conversations. Of course, Casey has no idea if you are white or not. But perhaps you are Green. In which case, Casey sympathises.
At any rate, Casey suggests you read that book by Gassan Hage because Casey fears you have no frakkin idea what you are talking about.
Casey also sees you are referring to Casey in the third person. Casey likes how you do that. Casey understands how this omnicsient third person narration gig is an attempt to lend an appearance of distance and authority on behalf of the commenter gone all asplodey. Casey notes this is a favourite defensive strategy of the Jack Strochhi and congratulates you on the choice of the third person omniscience. It doesn’t work but what the hell, you made me laugh and in my world, that’s important.
Casey likes you for that.
But mostly, Casey thanks you for going to the trouble of reading Casey, then purposely misunderstanding everything Casey said, and then finishing that that beautiful flourish and returning to ‘look at de non white crime’ defense pose you big fat baby, and thereby proving what she has been saying all along.
Casey thinks you are an artist of great merit.
Casey wonders but, if you could, like, BRING the wine with you next time and share? Casey thinks one should never drink alone.
Strocchers I liked how you claimed that Italians are under represented in the criminal system up there. Except it discomforted me Jack, that you failed to distinguish between the thousands upon thousands of southerners and the seven northerners that came here? What gives? Not very Forza of you. I was looking forward to some Forza Jack. No fair.
Wapsu @ 176 – thanks! You’ve unpacked some of the faulty thinking I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Joe 2 @ 163 did express his concern that those of us who expressed doubts on this issue and called for caution when attributing motives in cases that had not even gone beyond the investigation stage were being finger pointed as having their head in the sand about racism.
I was surprised that there was not much follow up supporting his view from then on. I finally gave up when by Professor Hassan Gage’s definition I realized I was myself arguing from the perspective of the white supremacist.
If you’re not an academic what more can be said?
You aren’t being accused of being a white supremicist Patricia WA.
The challenge is to see that the parameters of the debate are being established by a dominant part of our society.
Having read a few of your contributions on other threads I might also guess that your pretty virulent dislike of the Liberal Party means all those associated with it are subject to a cynical review regardless of the merit of the particular argument they are advancing.
Patricia WA:
Because if we did we would attract the time-honoured snark that “we can’t vote fo the Greens because they’re only concerned about the environment and they don’t have an economic policy”.
We in the Greens will take heed of unsolicited advice from our ALP Left comrades if, and only if, they can demonstrate their own political prowess and acumen by demonstrably chalking up some substantial policy victories in their much-vaunted inner-party struggle.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Guatam Gupta is a Liberal Party shill and that the attacks are entirely racially motivated.
Plenty if you think about it. However, if you are too busy slagging someone off cause they are Liberal and therefore suspect then that makes your whole argument look dodgy from the start.
And then, when you advocate silence as a corrective to the elements of racism you yourself say are there in some cases, then that makes you look well, Patricia, it makes you look the same as you did last time you advocated silence, do you remember?
I might find the time one day to drag myself through this Cultural Studies stuff, but for now we are focused on the real world of murders and assaults in Melbourne. Perhaps a more productive investment would be for you to acquaint yourself with the facts, evidence, and data about this real world, rather than repeating the irrelevance of tendentious ideological academic assertions
Well, at least we’ve moved to second person narration now.
I don’t suppose I can ask for much more.
If you ever do choose to drag yourself through it, come chat with me again. But remember, bring half the bottle next time.
Murph the Surf, thanks, but I haven’t said I was accused of being a white supremacist, simply that I understood that by Professor Hage’s definition I was arguing from the perspective of one. Not being an academic I didn’t feel up to talking that through.
You say that the “challenge is to see that the parameters of the debate are being established by a dominant part of our society.” In this particular case the parameters of the debate seem to have been established by Mr Gupta and by the MSM strongly supporting his point of view.
Liz, I’m glad to understand the relationship between Gupta, Ted Bailieu and the Indian community generally. I can now see how their perspective on racial violence has developed as it has. I don’t doubt their sincerity. I have simply questioned the idea that the Indian community in Melbourne is being particularly targeted. Sadly racism has a broader brush.
Wapsu @ 186 Good advice.
And thank, Liz, for the info on Gupta
I was interested by your comment Casey – I have never slagged anyone off because they were a liberal
Casey – sorry, got interrupted in the middle of my response to you about “slagging off” at Liberals.
As I started to say I have never “slagged off” at Liberals.
As a rusted on true believer and Labour Party supporter for more than half a century I’ve certainly had my say about the right whether Tories in the UK or Liberals here.
I’ve criticised them, debated with them, disagreed with them, laughed at them, parodied them, satirised them, lectured them, shouted and bawled with frustration at them, waved banners at them, and I suppose generally had a go at them. And in that spirit received a lot of the same in return.
I have however never “slagged off” at them. Nor accused anyone else of doing so either.
Since visiting this site I’ve read many of your comments and much as I agree with a lot of what you have to say I’m often taken aback by your tone and loose use of language. It makes it hard sometimes to follow your reasoning and is often offensive. This is the first time I’ve been in a direct exchange with you myself. I found it very confronting and vexing trying to have a reasonable discussion with you. After reading your comment at 177 I decided to give up on you.
We all have our failings and I have my own issues about pedantry I struggle with, which was why I reacted so touchily to Mercurius about my “grandstanding” quote. So rather than tackle you head on about this I decided simply to avoid debate with you in future.
Then your lovely rational friend “Wapsu @ 186″ gave you some straight from the shoulder advice and I decided he must know you well enough to know you were big enough to accept criticism.
Cheers. And Pax!
What, you don’t like my Ikean?
Well okay, I take your point. Too much Ikean.
but:
A man represents the interests of a minority group, which you yourself admit is being targetted on the basis of race at least some of the time, and you make an inference, you do, you cant get out of that, that he is doing so in the interests of the liberal party. “In cui bono” you say. That’s an inference and an unsubstantiated one.
And I don’t understand why you then resile from the fact you have made that inference.
Patricia, I don’t get why you dislike what he is doing. He is doing what any lobbyist does. He is doing his job. His job is to promote the interests of his constituents. did I say this already? I can’t remember. He is doing his job so well any other lobbyist would take note and give him a job in a heartbeat. This is democracy. This is how it works. If he is using Ballieu’s office then that too is democracy. There is no better mouthpiece than a hungry opposition. Now that happens all the time.
But you don’t like him and try to infer he is doing this for the Liberal party. Well I was rather shocked to tell you the truth and I find that more offensive than my Ikean, but each to their own. I will understand if you ignore me from now on and I will try to forebear the loss of your calls to silence.
and Pax out to you too. I’m sorry if you were upset. I was upset too.
Nick @75 and onwards:
You use the statement from Simon Overland, Vic. Police Chief Commissioner, to (correctly) state a 40% increase in attacks on Indian nationals from 2006 to 2008, but you go on to ascribe this trend to racist targeting of Indian nationals which Mr. Overland does not do.
Overland ascribes the increase in attacks on Indian nationals to opportunistic attacks on ‘soft targets’ not race
Overland notes that the number of Indian students has more than doubled since 2006 and plainly lets us to understand that Indian students commonly carry the easily saleable and portable electronic items he mentions.
He does not exclude race as a factor, but plainly attributes the bulk of the increase to opportunistic attacks on soft targets.
I agree with Strocchi and others that a great deal of this thread has wandered into intellectual theorizing and repetition of leftist sacred mantras. There are some here over-eager to spot racism.
Gautam Gupta appears to be more of your ‘retail politician’ than your considered community advocate. Gupta likes to itemize attacks on Indian persons and after each one say ‘see Racist, Racist’. Alan Jones likes to itemize crimes of Lebanese Muslims and after each one say ‘See, terrorist, terrorist”. both get a lot of attention, but both are aiming for an emotional response rather than a rational one.
Oz is full of latent racism, like most parts of the world. India as it happens is far worse. Cricket tragics here will recall the vile treatment (monkey chants) handed out by Indian cricket fans to Andrew Symonds on the basis of his black skin and overall appearance which Indian authorities did precisely zero about. In Oz serious action would have been taken to identify charge and convict the racists responsible.
Yes, we have plently of racism here, but the Vic Police are not ascribing that as a motive in the two-year trend to attack and rob Indians for mobile phones etc. which, as they say, merely represents a community trend and recent changes in Indian demographics in Victoria.
Re: #5 Patrickg
” I can’t also help but see this is an inevitable result of our govt shamelessly unregulating this industry, allowing anyone to call themselves an institution and letting said ‘institutions’ whore themselves out to foreign students with ridiculous promises (both of education, and life in Australia) and rank exploitation when the kids do arrive.”
Catch a taxi…the driver is a graduate..an engineer..accountant,,,teacher (with masters). We promise entry through hairdressing, cookery.. after so many undergraduate/graduate years of study… one year of TAFE etc is not onerous for the ‘dubious’ prize of western residency. Its the exploitation thats not right.. thats not for our mates – just the newbies. Work at Maccas, as taxi drivers, sleep in shifts – thats what the prize has to be worth. Pay $8-10 hour (if at all), dont say any thing, you will lose your chance.
We have a skills shortage, not enough teachers, doctors yet we have so many well qualified, modern, young, graduates (from overseas) available now. Call an amnesty, get them into jobs, let them work 20plus hours (why does it matter – then they will spend and save what they earn). I am so sick of the despicable charade – money first, morals (later), respect last.
@191 –
As opposed to Strocchi’s ignorance of how to interpret statistics? That’s not based on a ‘theory’?
There is no ‘empirical’ data outside some latent perspective which has shaped what is counted as a datum. Just isn’t.
“Cricket tragics here will recall the vile treatment (monkey chants) handed out by Indian cricket fans to Andrew Symonds on the basis of his black skin and overall appearance which Indian authorities did precisely zero about.”
As a cricket tragic, I remember being a little confused by those chants, and coming to the tentative conclusion that they were more to do with Symonds’ individual appearance than the colour of his skin. Firstly, he was lighter-skinned than pretty much everyone on the Indian team, secondly he does have somewhat simian features (NTTAWRT), and thirdly his zinc-ed up lips made him look like a black and white minstrel – making the chants a meta-comment about racism more than overtly racist.
/2c
Casey – Thanks for your cheerful response. I was hoping you’d agree to disagree,and then there’d be pax! Your response does need more than that, so I’ll do my best to respond without opening up old wounds.
I wasn’t so much upset as bothered by your being upset, i.e. you seemed overly emotional about this issue. I think we can be passionate about issues without becoming too emotional which gets in the way of our judgement and logic. We then attack the messenger and not the message, as I did when I said Sarah H-Y was an idiot, rather than her speech idiotic, and then needing to apologise.
Similarly we can’t hear the message being criticised without thinking the messenger is being attacked. So you assumed I was attacking Gautam Gupta personally when I questioned his judgement about fellow Indians being particularly targetted when there was no real proof that was so. Asking a question about someone’s motives for saying things which may well not be true, no matter how sincerely they believe them, is not the same as accusing them of lying.
You are also under the impression that I have admitted the things he was saying are true, i.e. Indians in Melbourne particularly are being attacked, simply because of their race. I only concede that many Indians, among others, have been attacked and for a range of reasons one of which could be racism. See Baraholka’s comment on this above @ 191.
You took great offence when I questioned Gupta’s motives for insisting that Indian students were a special target, especially since he was closely aligned with the Liberal Party. That doesn’t mean I called him a Liberal party stooge, or even inferred he was one. I’m more careful than that. This political connection had been commented on in a national newspaper beneath his own article and was not refuted. Liz @ 178 has again confirmed that it’s common knowledge. Knowing how close Ted Bailieu is to Gupta and seeing how much mayhem has been caused by this media frenzy I am astonished that Bailieu seems to have made no effort to restrain him. Note, I say “seems”. Someone will perhaps enlighten me on that.
I’m sorry you don’t get why I dislike what Gupta is doing. I am not quite sure if FISA has defined his role. He seems to have defined that for himself and sees it as his job to publicise the high rate of racist attacks on Indian students in Melbourne. He is unpaid and he is certainly not a lobbyist. That would be a scandal indeed with his Liberal Party connections! See Baraholka @ 191 on Gupta’s role hardly being that of a “community advocate”.
As for my not liking him, as you claim, that’s not true. I don’t know him. It’s what he does I don’t like. He’s certainly not helping his community who need all the support and friends they can get in this democracy of ours. You’re right. It’s a democracy, and a good one too. Frightening people with stories which have no real basis so they don’t feel safe here doesn’t feel like good citizenship to me. He’s hurting our reputation, yours and mine, and that of all the families of Indian origin who’ve been happy to live here for generations.
Goodnight, Casey.
Way to destroy my cheerful response. Wow how patronising you are. And you accuse me of emotionality. What was “everyone should shut the fuck up about racism and Indians?” Look at the words you use. Cool reasoned debate I suppose? Certainly not loose language, no. You have thrown that word emotional about with great abandon on this thread. Which is analogous to my original point. Which you don’t get anyway so forget about that. The amount of essentialising you have done in your choice of words, eg) mayhem, media frenzy, emotional, progrom. Not emotional there I suppose. I did not call him a lobbyist but said that a lobbyist would hire him he is doing such a good job. He has a an official role on the FISA Advisory Board I believe. Maybe you might want to check that out before you downgrade his role into nothingness?
I’m can’t be bothered anymore.
It’s a shame that a blog founded by an academic which is known for its theoretical bent can not accommodate the introduction of critical whitenes studies into a discussion about racism.
I think that signals my exit from this discussion.
Except let me provide you with a link to FIFA.
http://www.fisa.org.au/node/111
Yes, Ballieu has to “restrain’ him. The Indian that needs to be “restrained”.
God, all this emotion makes my ovaries twitch.
Mark @193
There is no ‘empirical’ data outside some latent perspective which has shaped what is counted as a datum. Just isn’t.
I would say this is an attempt by you to elide the data from the debate. This allowa the debate to continue entirely within the domain of a Cultural Studies or similar viewpoint. I would guess this is your preferred mode for discussing this topic.
The data may be imperfect but this is not to say it cannot be profitably and sensibly examined with appropriate caveats.
“Hysteria over Indian student fuels ignorance and bigotry” by Surendra Verma.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hysteria-over-indian-student-fuels-ignorance-and-bigotry-20100108-lxkf.html
I think Casey is correct. The hysteria an over-reaction that most concerns me on this discussion is people who seem so sensitive to a critical discussion of race. Patricia I have not provided u with an understanding of where bailieu and Gupta are coming from in their understanding of te violence. To get that, u might need to read the columns that both FISA reps and bailieu have written in Indian community papers over a period of years. U don’t understand anything about why their perspective on the violence is is it is simply because I have told u that Gautam is a Liberal. That is the problem with your entire argument. U know nothing about the number of assault victims who have contacted Gautum or Bailieu or Indian community paper newspaper editors with their stories that have gone unreported in the mainstream press. As a columnist with one of the Indian community papers I am privy to a tiny bit of this type of information. U also credit Gautam with a role in organising the student demonstrations. In fact, when FISA found out that students out west were organising a mass demo after the screwdriver attack, FISA hastily organised their own demonstration outside the hospital for the same time. The sheer force of number at the other demonstration forced FISA to march their fewer than 100 people – mostly white lefties and the FISA exec – up to meet the other demonstration.
I think that your attempt to suggest that the real problem is Gupta is, well, it’s hard to understand what that is. Tho I think Casey has some pretty good ideas
@198 –
Well, if you would say that, then you have not grasped my intention at all.
I made a point way up the thread about how criminological data should be used with extreme caution, and quoted a Professor of Economics who sustained that point with a cogent reasons in a report for the Australian Institute of Criminology on the specific topic of data about ‘ethnic crime’.
Most, if not, all social scientific papers will note weaknesses in data, ambiguities about constructs, etc. It’s fundamental to research method and ethics.
To ignore that, and to argue as if it’s transparent and obvious, is just wrong.
Secondly, it does matter what people conceive of as being racism or racist, and it’s impossible to discuss it without having such a conception. Perhaps the difference between ‘intellectual’ theorising and other theorising about it is that the first is at least reflective and upfront about what the basis for particular arguments is.
Thirdly, I am generally very unimpressed with anti-intellectual arguments.
Mark @201
I made a point way up the thread about how criminological data should be used with extreme caution
Fine. Let’s do so.
Has there been an increase in attacks on Indian nationals in Victoria over the past two years or not ?
That question’s already been answered.
Not sure if this was your intent, but yes, joe2 @ 199, I had read Surendra Verma’s article in the SMH of the Jan 8th before before I made that injudicious comment of mine in response to Steve at the Pub on the 9th. I knew those expletives had not come unbidden from this lil ol white haired head of mine! Were I more adept at linking I would have done as you have and not paraphrased what I had read there.
I could, of course, have quoted and ascribed as I usually try to do. I think I was just so frustrated that many of us at LP who are so good at debating with and listening to each other had been carried away not with racist hysteria, but with anti-racist hysteria!
So thanks joe2, I will learn to link effectively and meanwhile here is that heartfelt plea quoted in Surendra Verma’s excellent article.
“The 563rd commentator (on the ABC blog after a Gupta contribution) had had enough: “Dammit . . . Will each one of us shut the f— up with this racist banter, yeah, both Indians and Australians. This back and forth is not helping anyone and resolving the problems but reinforcing untrue stereotypes.”
@202 – By you, in fact.
But you seem to want to contest the notion that such attacks are racist, which means you must have a definition of racism (or perhaps you adopt that of the Victorian Police Commissioner, because, of course, he would know). Care to share?
I’ll make one other point, and it’s not to be taken as a reference to anyone on this thread.
It’s interesting to think about the structure of the ‘official’ response.
First, there’s a statement of ‘fact’ – we don’t know whether this 1 or these 2 incidents was/were ‘racially motivated’. That’s coupled with ‘it is giving Australia a bad name!!!1!!1′; it’s not hard to see how that immediately puts the blame on the aforesaid Indian students for disturbing ‘us’. In other words, there is an incitement in the way this issue is discussed by the authorities and the media to do a hell of a lot of victim blaming.
@204 –
Whatever does that mean?
That it’s hysterical to be anti-racist?
I assume the answer is yes based on Nicks data @56 and onwards.
What is the cause of the increased attacks on Indian nations ?
And what would happen if we agreed with you, Patricia WA? Leave it all to the cops… we’ve got nothing to worry about. ‘Australians’ (who obviously aren’t Indian students) can just give ourselves a pat on the back and forget about the violence… perhaps there’s worse violence in India?
The logic of these arguments is non-existent.
It’s about disavowal, nothing more.
this thread runs the gamut. I’ve refrained from commenting mainly because of lack of time, but wanted to say firstly, bravo Casey.
Also a couple of points:
It’s not just confined to Melbourne, but the latter is a hotspot. When the whole issue initially blew up last year, there were reports from Sydney and other capitals of similar assaults taking place. I know this because I was working at Dept. Immigration at the time as a community liaison officer and we were specically tasked with going out to talk to Indian community reps and student reps to see what community perceptions were, at the same time we were getting information from the police.
I’m not for a moment suggesting there is a nation-wide concerted effort to target Indians (particularly young Indian students). I am suggesting that in virtually every capital Indian students had experienced assaults, and many of those assaults were accompanied by racial vilification.
Why is Melbourne in the spotlight? – most likely occam’s razor, highest indian student population = more assaults etc.
Which brings me to my next point, and why the statemens of Overland and others are simplistic and problematic.
None of the Indians I’ve talked to in Australia who have a grain of sense think that it’s some vast conspiracy. Many recognise that there are a lot of Indian students working in industries / live in areas that increase the vulnerability to opportunistic street crime.
What they do assert quite reasonably though is that there’s a difference between being bailed up and robbed, and being bailed up, bashed while racial abuse is screamed at you & you’re bashed well past the point of it being part of a normal ‘snatch and grab’ and then at times the attacks go even further.
In other words the crime might be starting from an opportunistic place, but the expression of it as Indians are experiencing it is reasonably labelled as racist.
For example – a good Indian friend of mine here in Hobart who was accosted outside a nightclub on the Hobart waterfront in the early morning hours by a group of about 12 youths. In full view of bouncers they grabbed him, held him and took it in turns to head-butt him while chanting ‘fuck off monkey go home’ and similar. As an afterthought they took his wallet. He had to call the police himself. Despite many people being about no-one called. His experience is far from isolated – he knows this because he runs the Indian student society down here.
Second point – poorly planned significant social change leads to tensions. So for example when a senior government figure tells me about a lebanese-dominated suburb that over 5,000 Indians have moved into in less than 3 years because it’s the area where the dodgy PR-fast track ‘colleges’ are located, it’s not particularly hard to imagine how that might lead to a great deal of resentment & hostility.
One other point – I’m kind of surprised (or possibly I missed it) that no-one has mentioned the pretty high youth unemployment in Australia at present. I find it hard not to wonder how much it is contributing to a rise in street crime in general, and more crimes with racial overtones (dumb phrase as that is).
In sum I would like to think we’re capable of a nuanced examination of such incidents where we recognised that opportunistic theft & assaults and racially motivated violence can coincide, and that a motive to rob does not negate a desire to ‘other’ someone through a violent expression of prejudice.
I’d also like to think, like Casey, that we’re capable of recognising that a white lens isn’t the most accurate for getting a bead on what Indian students are experiencing. As a lesbian who’s experienced what it’s like for members of the heterosexual majority to ‘inform’ me whether I’m experiencing bigotry or not (surprise! I’m nearly always not, whoda thunk?), I can relate to what many Indians here are feeling.
@209 – Amen to all of that, myriad.
@207 –
Racism is a structural, if not always a proximate, cause.
See myriad’s excellent and informed commentary above @209.
LOL
Excuse me, but I cannot help myself. You now disavow your own expletives by blaming someone else and not your little old white haired head!!!!?????
And here I was thinking that it was awful that someone essentialised you on basis of your age, as you described up thread.
Now you are presenting yourself as influenced by what you read to such a degree that you swore, to get out of a bind regarding your language, because I’ve rightly pointed out your emotionality and the hypocrisy of your attacking me on the basis of, what was it?, loose language?
Gold.
Baraholka @ 191,
Vic Police’s own figures show that robberies (‘against the person’, ie. street level robberies) across the state only increased from 3,325 to 3,332 from 2007/2008 to 2008/2009. That’s a total of 7 more robberies reported to the police in 2008/2009.
The largest difference in crime figures for those years, by far, was the 2,341 additional *assaults*, as distinct from robberies.
Simon Overland’s press-released assessments and conclusions *do not suffice*, on face value, to explain the marked increase in robberies and assaults against Victorian Indians.
Vic Police has to do much better than this in their communications with the general public.
If Vic Police can release a figure of “1,447 people of Indian origin were victims of crimes such as robberies and assaults in the year ending June 30, 2008″, presumably they can also:
- know the age and sex of the victims of *all* robberies and assaults, Indian and non-Indian alike.
- know exactly when and where these robberies and assaults occurred
- graphically map the hotspots of robberies of assaults against Victorian Indians around Melbourne by location, date, time of day
- graphically map the hotspots of robberies of assaults against every other Victorian around Melbourne by location, date, time of day
- obtain the addresses of Indians on a student visa and correlate these with their maps of hotspots (for instance, out of the reported total of 46,000 state-wide, Ballarat Uni has 3,000 Indian students who live in around Ballarat, and who haven’t experienced any increase in robberies or assaults – they would be discounted)
- release a hell of a lot more detailed statistics to the public, that would serve to more accurately inform and warn the public
None of the above should be considered impossible or time-consuming, and hopefully all of the above and more is exactly what Vic Police has been doing. I can think of no excuse for them not to. I don’t believe presenting the public with accurate and truthful information can inflame pre-existing negative racial tension (the basic flaw underlying Patricia WA and others’, ‘more harm than good’ style reasoning is its simultaneous denial/acknowledgement, admission/dismissal etc).
In the very drawn out meantime, the assessments they’ve provided in press releases don’t successfully account for or explain anything, except the very limited statistical facts I noted above.
On another note, I’d been keen to look up the destinations of the most recent round of Creating Better Places funding, and was happy to see Brimbank received $400,000 for two civic improvement projects, on top of the $100,000 they received last round. If it had all gone towards beautifying inner-suburban commercial shopping centres like Smith St, I was going to get angry.
Hopefully, that’s money being spent to deal with the very practical and *opportunistic elements* to these crimes (ie. where and when they happened), despite any questions of motive.
On another note again, my very young cab driver last night previously worked in the kitchen of an Indian restaurant (he graduated from a two year course in Hospitality Management) near Bourke St from 9am to 11pm, for $80 a day. He was forced to catch public transport home late at night, as the cab fare would have eaten up $25 of that $80. He’s now renting in Ivanhoe, and drives around Ivanhoe/Templestowe/Heidelberg/Fairfield etc. He’s well aware it’s a much safer part of Melbourne to live and work in. His parents, on the other hand, are worried sick about him and want him to return home because Melbourne is a dangerous place.
Make of that what you will – it was just a brief conversation – but the last few days I’ve been more and more interested in reading about what PatrickG @ 5, Fascinated @ 192, and others, have written of earlier in this thread – regarding government deregulation of the education industry, and the relaxing and increasing of Indian student visa obtainments, to fill perceived worker shortages in certain industries such as Hospitality and Hairdressing.
(excellent comments, myriad74 @ 209)
Mark,
I am in general agreement with Myriad
In other words the crime might be starting from an opportunistic place, but the expression of it as Indians are experiencing it is reasonably labelled as racist.
but not with you
Racism is a structural, if not always a proximate, cause.
AIU Myriad, the motivation for most the attacks is theft, but latent racism comes out during the attacks and is expressed through insults and exaggerated vicious bashing.
In my view the comments of Overland in the article I cited sit comfortably with Myriad’s comment.
Also, the comments from Overland I cited do not contain the phrases you quote: ‘we don’t know whether this 1 or these 2 incidents was/were ‘racially motivated’; ‘it is giving Australia a bad name’. Maybe you have another comment from article I haven’t read.
I was not arguing that racism is not a cause in any of the attacks. I was arguing pace Overland that opportunistic attcks on soft targets coupled with the honeypot effect of a doubling of such soft targets in a short time are the major cause with Racism accounting for a smaller number.
If the motivation for an attack is theft then the person attacked is not being targeted because of racism even though the attacker may indeed be racist and intensify his attack accordingly.
Since you asked, my working definition of racism is ‘belief in thr inferiority/superiority of a person because of their race’
oh bugger I forgot the other part of this para (new bit bolded)
“In sum I would like to think we’re capable of a nuanced examination of such incidents where we recognised that opportunistic theft & assaults and racially motivated violence can coincide, and that a motive to rob does not negate a desire to ‘other’ someone through a violent expression of prejudice. Equally a desire to go and bash someone based on bigotry might also include robbery as part of that. This would explain for example why ‘curry bashing’ has entered the Australian street vernacular..
Baraholka, the problem I have with Overland’s statements, and those of most of the police I dealt with was an almost point-blank refusal to entertain the proposition that the interplay we both agree on (opportunism and racist expression) might therefore actually mean the crime is racist. From my experience, and Overland’s comments keep reinforcing this view, if there was any theft involved no matter how an incident had played out, police were promptly very sure it wasn’t racist in nature. So when my friend got bashed, they focussed on the taking of his wallet. Oddly he wanted to focus on being accosted by a group, repeatedly bashed and racially abused.
In my experience police readily identify and rigorously police known self-identified white supremacist groups; they aren’t very good at recognising the shades of grey from there to a person without any racial bias (if such a being exists). So for eg, they refuse to acknowledge what it tells us about street culture that a term like ‘curry bashing’ exists. They aren’t good at recognising that local trouble makers aren’t just looking for people to rob, they are particularly enjoy robbing particular people they identify by race. While it’s not always detrimental to their policing in terms of identifying and apprehending culprits, it’s very detrimental to police-community relations, as we’re seeing with the Indian Australian community now.
Overland yesterday sounded like the Police union do whenever a member injures someone. “We’re conducting a full investigation, but can I just pre-empt that by saying that they acted completely appropriately”.
And well, cant be helped, really – whatever else Overland is, he also represrensts an interest group called VICPol.
But his public statements in this issue need to be viewed very much in that light.
Baraholka,
I think the structural/proximate cause (Mark@211) and reason/cause distrinction contributing to motive (me@165), needs to be better acknowledged in police communication. It makes sense for the police to look at direct motive because that’s how they deal with crimes in the legal sense and in terms of burden of proof.
However, as structural cause, no matter the primary motive for a crime, if the victim is in any way more likely to be targeted or met with greater violence, then that is of interest to the group(s) who are affected.
When communication restricts itself to primary motive and fails to acknowledge the risk felt by that group, they feel sidelined. Motives are complex, and you are discriminating on the basis of primary motive (though acknowledging the other).
If members of victim-identified groups hear that distinction and believe it discounts or fails to acknowledge their risk in any way, they will be insulted.
Better information along the lines Nick outlines @191 can help counter hysteria – and there is plenty of that too.
And Myriad @209, great comments
That’s practical policing.
The police seek to maximise the likelihood of catching the offenders.
If your friend could have given the police the names and addresses of the persons who bashed him, then perhaps the wallet would have had less importance in the case.
No doubt, your friend was unable to furnish the police with that information.
Therefore, the wallet was the only piece of physical evidence likely to aid in a successful prosecution.
(I bet that the malefactors were never identified. For the police, investigating such crimes with the prospect of a successful prosecution is an exercise in futility.)
Baraholka may consider how these events are quantified and digested in annual police reports to be quoted by blog commenters. The information is filtered through the desire of the police to achieve a conviction.
Katz I know that might seem a logical point and of course using the wallet as a tracking device for the perpetrators makes sense.
However here are the problems with it:
a) the police failed to acknowledge that the crime as initiated was a racially based assault
b) this means by failing to acknowledge it, they were in effect denying the presence of factors that may have helped them identify the assailants
c) while my friend couldn’t identify his assailants he could give god details including distinguishing marks for two because they took their shirts off to head-butt him, revealing tattoos
d) most pertinently they failed in their duty to inform him of all options available to him which included lodging a complaint with the Office of Anti-Discrimination which also has investigative powers and a lower threshold of proof (not being court-based). If he had known about that he could have pursued a complaint through that process that could have increased the chances of finding his attackers and offered options such as mediation which he actually wanted.
On top of that they refused to call him an ambulance, take him to the emergency themselves or assist him.
in sum I would question whether what on the face of it looks like ‘practical policing’ was in fact anything of the sort.
b) this means by failing to acknowledge it, they were in effect denying the presence of factors that may have helped them identify the assailants
c) while my friend couldn’t identify his assailants he could give god details including distinguishing marks for two because they took their shirts off to head-butt him, revealing tattoos
d) most pertinently they failed in their duty to inform him of all options available to him which included lodging a complaint with the Office of Anti-Discrimination which also has investigative powers and a lower threshold of proof (not being court-based). If he had known about that he could have pursued a complaint through that process that could have increased the chances of finding his attackers and offered options such as mediation which he actually wanted.
Myriad @215
Fair enough, there would be a number of ‘robberies’ which were
actually the icing on the disgusting cake of racist bashings
and a cursory Google for ‘curry bashing’ quickly turns up a number
of assaults in which bashing is the only motive.
It would appear that we may disagree only on proportions.
Perhaps you think the majority of the attacks on Indians are race-based.
I need more convincing, particularly when it is very easy to find
Indian spokespersons who, having spoken to the victims, do not
ascribe race as the motive. Several examples can be found on the
Wikipedia Page
2009-2010 attacks on Indian students in Australia”
Are you being too critical of Overland? I can easily Google
statements of his where he acknowledges that there are some
assaults on Indians which are
clearly racist’ but none where he refuses to concede that a robbery can be a sideshow to a
racist bashing.
I also note that in contrast to the Indian Media portrayal of the
issue as White Australians beating up Indians, the victims commonly
report mixed ethnic gangs as the perpetrators, and in Sydney, commonly
Lebanese gangs, not that this excuses anything, or makes it worse,
nor do I imply that Anglo Aussies are never involved.
Katz @218
The problem of (racist) bashings being misrecorded as robberies
does not appear to be occuring in Victoria as Nick shows @213:
only 7 additional robberies in last calendar year but 2,341
additional assaults
Nick @213
If a person is bashed and robbed, how is that recorded ? As a robbery or an assault ?
As a robbery, Baraholka.
Have a read through Vic Police Crime Statistics 2008/2009, for more details and breakdowns of those figures.
Baraholka
It would appear that we may disagree only on proportions.
Actually I’m not sure we do because I honestly couldn’t say what the proportion is.
What suspect is that they have been underestimated though because of the police being leery to place race at the forefront of motive, and because a lot of the assaults in particular on international students are not reported. A big reason for this is because (ironically) the average student’s experience of the police back home usually means they are afraid and/or deeply cynical about the police. That makes the job of our police even harder, and why the community relations stuff becomes particularly pertinent.
Katz,
what I mean with (b) is I would think if the police entertained the theory that the motive for a crime was racism, it may see them looking for a different group of people, or make different assumptions about where to find them etc.
I honestly can’t recall what the tatoos were but no enoch powell
(d) in tasmania yes. So the multicultural liaison for the police tells the migrant communities, and so says the OADC.
Nick,
I have looked through the Vic Police Crime Statistics 2008/2009 PDF and cannot find anything that definitively says that if a person is robbed and bashed, then that offence is recorded as a robbery and not an assault.
Page 22:
5 Robbery includes offences of armed robbery and robbery/assault with intent to rob.
With respect, I don’t think that means that if a person is robbed and bashed, then that offence is recorded as a robbery and not an assault.
I’ll write to Vic. Police for clarification.
You may be right, Baraholka, so I’d be keen to know what you find out.
Though this from About Victoria Police: Crime Statistics appears to confirm that it would be recorded as a robbery:
Nick’s quote highlights the demands of practical policing. The aim of the police is to apprehend malefactors and to pass on information to prosecuting authorities.
It is up to prosecuting authorities to decide whether and how to proceed with individual cases. Police provide these prosecuting authorities with the worst case scenario. Prosecutors take it from there.
In the example cited, perhaps the prosecutors discover that they may not be able to make an armed robbery case stick. They may opt for illegal possession instead, even though the police stats say “armed robbery”.
Police stats have to be read with that fact in mind. There will be a mismatch between arrest records and indictment records.
Mark@#211 quotes Baraholka@#207
The cause of the increased attacks on Indians is simple:
– quantitatively, there are tens of thousands more Indians coming into Melbourne over the past few years and
– qualitatively, they are exposing themselves to more risky activities, moonlight job-taking, dodgy suburb-living, expensive appliance-porting.
The null hypothesis – that Indians are suffering crime victimization at the same “apples-to-apples” rate as the general community – has been sustained.
There is no need to invoke some vague, malevolent rise in racial hate crimes propensities.
Mark intones:
What on earth does that mean? This is not an effusion of positivist malice but a genuine plea for some conceptual clarity and scientific purity.
There is not much scientific point in vaguely gesturing at some supposedly influential part of the world unless one can properly identify it, measure it and test it for meaningful relationship.
Vague talk does not help in identifying and isolating the risk factors for violence. “Structures” are simply more enduring and well-organized social relationship formations. “Racism” is where any ethnic groups is subject to disparate treatment related to its superficial appearance rather than fundamental performance.
Philosophically speaking, a “cause” consists of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an event. Which in turn can be divided into ultimate and proximate causes. Scientifically speaking we focus on the sufficient conditions as Occams razor draws the shortest distance between cause and effect.
From the point of view of positivist behavioral science, the intent of a racist perpetrator is not all that important. What matters is the measurable outcome for the racial victim. So anecdotal tales of how some one yelled racist abuse at another person doesn’t prove much at all.
Good social scientists do not take words at face value. They measure deeds and then look to correspondence with words.
Myriad- I think it’s a bit limited to attribute Indian students attitude towards Vic police simply to bad experience at home. Many indian students who work as taxi drivers face daily harassment from bored cops and vic taxi directorate issuing fines for petty parking offences as they circle the city looking for work. I have had many conversations with Indian cabbies who have been assaulted and called the cops only to be left bleeding for 40 minutes – in one case, the guy was 500 metres down the road from the cop shop. And jalwinder Singh, the cabbie whose stabbing sparked the 2008 CBD protest was not found by the cops who found his abandoned cab. He was found 200 metres away by a truck driver hours later. that is some fine police work there. Many cabbies tell me that if they have to call the police because of assault, they use a fake Anglo name as they r pretty convinced the cops won’t come otherwise. I am sure the Indian cops are not nice – they are cops after all – but I don’t think we have to go that far from Melbourne to see why Indian students don’t always trust Vic cops.
Hey Liz
I don’t doubt what you say is true. I can only speak from my largely Tas experience working in community liaison, and really struggling to get police and other relevant authorities to understand that our paradigm (‘police are people you can trust, the people you call for help’) is most definitely not the paradigm for many international students, India included. Another good eg in my experience is Chinese students – having grown up in an authoritarian regime that stores all data on everyone, they understandably can’t believe that if they give info to one branch of government here (eg police) it won’t be shared with other branches (eg dept. immigration)
Update: New post.
Hi Myriad
I think you make an excellent point about Chinese students. I was having a conversation with a Chinese background uni staffer who works with Chinese international students at a sandstone uni, and she talked about it being an open secret that a couple of Chinese gov officials lived in a house two blocks down from the campus to keep an eye on the students.
I think this is also useful to think of this when one wonders why Chinese students don’t protest their treatment here in the same way. Indian international students have sometimes found ways to use the media both here and at home to effectively bring attention to their plight. A Chinese international student I worked with 5 years ago informed me that when his journalist father submitted a piece about his (the student’s) experience in Australia, and his shabby treatment by an Australian university (and being ripped off working at a 7-11, and being told by the SDA they couldn’t help him!), he was sacked from the local People’s Daily. I don’t assume that the local branch (feeder program) of the Australian university had anything to do with the sacking, because in this case the interests of the uni, and the Chinese authorities were as one: the protection of a valuable industry.
I have written in a bit more detail about some of those types of example in the most recent edition of Overland
http://web.overland.org.au/?page_id=1960
I do feel like a bit of a wanker repeating that, but it seems less revolting than resorting to quoting myself, which I had to do when I couldn’t find an electronic version of something I’ve written about work stuff for another thread here…
My commentary is as an Indian who’s studied in Aus and seen first hand the evolving state of Indian migration to Aus.
There are subtle nuances within the pattern of international student migration from india to aus, that might be difficult for non-indians to pick up, and which I feel are quite relevant to the crime patterns we’re seeing in Melbourne.
There are two kinds of Indian international students in Aus – the serious students (hailing from various parts of India) who typically enrol in the mainstream uni’s and possible even the lesser recognised polytechs, who come to Aus with the genuine intention to complete their studies and integrate into mainstream aussie society and white collar sector. Then there is the rapidly increasing cadre of students who enrol in TAFE’s and the lesser known & regarded tech institutes for all sorts of vocational courses (hairdressing, pastry making, welding etc) in order to get that much sought after student visa. This category of student is typically (I’d say almost 80%) from the Punjab region in India, mostly from small towns and even villages in Punjab.
Here I must digress a tad, to provide some historical/cultural context. Punjab state in India is one of the wealthier and more progressive states. Punjab (meaning land of 5 rivers) has always been agriculturally very rich, and the relative urbanisation of punjab’s rural sector is far ahead that of any other state in India. Intensive migration from Punjab’s rural sector/small towns to England (to work in the mills in Manchester and Birmingham) right from the late 1800’s, and similar migration to Canada and USA right through the early 1900’s to date has means a steady source of repatriated foreign currency earnings into rural and small town Punjab. This entrenched pattern of migration from rural and small town Punjab has over the past 15 years shifted its focus to include Aus and NZ too, and is fuelled by the below:
>> access to land wealth. This is especially true over the past 15 years as India’s property sector has experienced unprecedented and ridiculous capital gains. Even a small piece of land in a semi-decent part of rural Punjab shall more than pay for the approx $40k that it costs an international student to fund his stint in Aus.
>> peer-pressure (a young chap sees all his mates going overseas, so he too feels the urge to make his mark in Aus/Canada/USA/NZ)
>> social one-upmanship (seeing a neighbour fund his newly built mansion from dollar repatriations sent by his sons overseas makes a chap feel rather envious and he too feels the urge to send his son across the 7 seas).
>> ready network of compatriots overseas – a young chap from a small town or village in punjab probably has most of his mates, cousins etc already in Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, LA, Auckland. So he has a ready network to tap into, that provides cheap accommodation, help with getting that job at the gas station/BK, and very importantly – a social support structure in this new and foreign land.
The above explains the deluge of international students from this demographic into Aus. This is of course helped enormously by the purely commercially driven TAFEs and similar institutes of dubious merit that adopt totally superfluous entrance criteria and massively inflated fee structures, to provide a formal acceptance to Indian students from this demographic, who quite frankly are infinitely more interested in getting a PR in Aus, and being able to earn in aussie $$$ as quickly as possible, rather than actually engage academically with their enrolled program. That’s the only reason they choose to study vocational courses in disciplines that are actually looked down upon in middle class india as being inferior and menial jobs (dignity of labour is an entirely different topic, so enough said on this). That these students willingly work long hours in relatively low paid sectors like driving cabs, Indian restaurants, gas stations, fast food joints…is also representative of the more “grass roots” backgrounds of these students (as opposed to those students from the more urban areas across india, who would prefer to, and are also capable of securing, employment in higher paying and more “respectable” jobs). While many of these students may be funding their fees from the sale of family land back home (a lot of them also need to fund their education from loans in India), they will make every attempt to vociferously save costs while staying in aus, as a penny saved is a penny sent back home in forex. As a result, these students, mostly males, often stay in large groups in a single residence (often as much as 7-10 chaps in say a 3-4 brm pls) and in relatively cheaper suburbs to save rent etc.
This lifestyle adopted by this category of Indian students, complemented by their relatively “fresh off the boat” behaviour (purely a function of a lack of exposure to first world culture and lifestyle), clannish tendencies (sticking to their own brethren instead of mingling with other aussies) and poor English communication skills – can easily render a rather “ethinic” label on them, as perceived by observing aussies, significantly more so than international Indian students hailing from more urban areas in India, or those studying at the unis, who tend to be relatively more cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and better integrated into mainstream aussie society. By staying in the poorer and crime ridden suburbs, and working in jobs that expose them to late night audience and also the “trash” segment of aussie society (drunken youth, gangs, rednecks, boy-racer types), these students are massively exposed to that segment of aussie society that tends to be very quick to harbour prejudice. And as alluded above, its not difficult to see how this segment of the Indian international students can very easily be perceived, by someone easily prone to prejudice, as overly ethnic, socially awkward, culturally different, and highly visible (every cab, gas station, fast food joint !!).
Prejudice knows no reason, and its easy to see how the “trash” society in aus quickly develops a sentiment of spite and disregard for this student community, supported by a sentiment of envy at them being able to buy the Ipods and laptops etc, and a grossly misplaced sense of entitlement (its OUR land, not theirs, to walk around with their electronics, and work in every petrol station etc). The booze, drugs and semi-mob mentality that is often a feature of this “trash” community’s lifestyle, also boost these sentiments of negativity and hatred.
So as Myriad has so aptly pointed out, this is definitely a case of opportunistic crime that very quickly instigates latent inherent sentiments of spite, jealousy and ethno-centricity which, when faced with a victim that often doesn’t fight back (and certainly a victim community that has to date not YET resorted to physical retaliation)….morphs into the savage crimes we have seen so far.
Solution – attack the root cause. Why are there so many youth that are evidently so un-employed and unemployable?? With social benefit fuelled easy access to booze, drugs and $$$ to fund their misspent time, the idle mind in these pathetic lads often becomes the devils workshop that conjures up all these prejudicial sentiments. My take – tackle the dysfunctionality these youth face while growing up, enforce social education, crack down much harder on juvenile and adult crime, impose tighter social benefit control mechanisms, and create a few legal examples to send a deterrent message to the bullies.
Mystic trader – I think yr analysis of “mob mentality” is maybe a bit simplistic, elitist and mostly crap but I am interested in the stuff about Punjab. Recently, the shift in recruitment in the VET/TAFE sector has been away from andrha pradesh and punjab, to Punjab and Gujarat – I understand so little about Gujarat that I can’t grasp what is up there. But on Punjab: isn’t it also the case that the failing returns from the green revolution is fueling the desire for families to proletarianise a family member in the overseas labour market as a last-ditch effort to claw back their former economic status? I know some Punjabis who definitely fit this mould and am interested in yr comments. Also – Gujarat. Any thoughts on that shift? Cos I must confess I don’t understand those dynamics at all.