Guest post by Tim Watts: “I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent"
January 14th, 2010 by Guest Poster | Published in Activism, Australiana, Crime, Culture, Education, Ethics, Immigration, International, Media, Melbourne, Politics, Race, Sociology, The Web | 351 Comments
My mate Tim Watts, who’s been doing some great work online on violent racist incidents in Melbourne, has provided this guest post. Previous discussion of the spate of attacks on Indian students at LP can be found here. -MB
“I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”
Australians are rightfully proud of the good thing we’ve got going on here. We know that we live in god’s own country and most of us wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that – in fact I couldn’t agree with it more. However, one area in which we’re certainly not world leaders is self reflection. Most of us are pretty happy with our lot in life and don’t feel the need to risk it by asking too many questions of ourselves. As a result, we’ve made avoiding direct public discussions about the (relatively minor) imperfections in the Australian way of life an art form. It’s trite, but it’s the Australian way to dodge any issues that have the potential to make us uncomfortable with a dismissive ‘She’ll be right’ or ‘No worries’.
I had cause to reflect on this recently when I posted a bit of a spray about the inadequacy of the police response to the recent attacks on Indians in Melbourne on my Facebook profile. This deliberately direct comment provoked some very odd responses (both public and private) from ordinarily sensible people. While the content of these responses was extremely varied, they had one fairly consistent theme – a desperate avoidance of confronting the role that racism (subjective or structural) has played in these attacks.
I knew that Mark shared my frustration at people’s reluctance to confront the issue head on, so to try and keep up the momentum for addressing the core of this problem I offered to set out a factual basis for discussion and respond to some of the more common dodges that I’ve seen employed to avoid these facts.
Factual Basis for Discussion:
1. Media coverage of violence in which racial minorities are the victim has increased substantially over the last 18 months or so. I don’t have data for this, but I don’t think anyone’s really disputing it.
2. Assaults and robberies of people of Indian appearance increased by 5.4% in 2008-09 (a total of 1525 incidents).
3. People of Indian appearance are 2 ½ times as likely to be the victim of an assault as non-Indians (an assault rate of 1700 assaults per 100,000 people compared to 700 assaults per 100,000 people). It could even be worse than this; a number of Indians who have contacted me privately has suggested that there is chronic under-reporting of attacks to the police driven by a fear of losing visas and a belief the police are apathetic.
4. Representatives of the Australian-Indian community and the Indian Government have publicly stated their belief that these attacks are racially motivated.
5. The public response from the Police to this situation has been inconsistent. Public responses to incidents are provided on a case by case basis without reference to broader trends. On some occasions the Police have conceded a racial motivation for attacks while in others Police have publicly rejected race as a causal factor despite evidence to the contrary.
On the basis of the response I received to my original post, I’m sure people are already starting to object that nothing in the above necessarily equates to a problem of racism. So let’s examine the most common responses that have been prevalent online in the past few days:
Disavowal: “You Can’t Prove That These Incidents Were Motivated By Race”
By far the most common response to claims of racist violence basically boils down to a correlation v causation argument. Anyone with a little knowledge of statistics knows that correlation does not imply causation. In layman’s terms, the mere fact that Indians are two and a half times as likely to be victims of violent crime doesn’t mean that they are victims of violent crime BECAUSE they are Indian. There could well be another cause that isn’t a function of their race – the frequently cited alternative causes are Indians over-representation in poorer areas, more dangerous jobs and shift-work (Mark’s already covered the structural racism angle here so I won’t go over old ground here).
This is an argument that’s not limited to the online debate – variants of this argument have been advanced by people as senior as Australia’s High Commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, who recently complained that:
There is an unfortunate tendency in the tabloid media to equate anything bad happening to a person of Indian origin to racism. Then they focus on why you won’t admit it is racism, because they take it as a given that any attack has to be a racist attack.’
Unfortunately, this argument is one of those examples of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. As XKCD has put it, while correlation doesn’t imply causation “It does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.” Unfortunately, in Australia, when correlation points to racism, we don’t ‘look over there’ – we resolutely look the other way. The avoidance instinct kicks in and we latch onto another causal explanation, any causal explanation to avoid having to confront the presence racism.
This instinct to look the other way that leads to extraordinary logical contortions like the following chain of reasoning from a Victorian Police spokesman:
I think there was a mention where there was a comment similar to `why don’t you go home?’ but there was nothing more… They appear to take some delight in the actual assault. It’s very disturbing and their propensity for violence is quite shocking… I think the motivation would have been robbery.
Well, obviously.
I’d be happy if the Victorian Police were able to make the case publicly that racially motivated violence isn’t a problem. It would be great if someone could publicly show that that the correlation between Indian and being a victim of violent assaults is not the result of a causal relationship. Show me some data that shows that taxi drivers, night shift store clerks or people in other at risk occupations are equally likely to be victims of assault as Indians (in fact, before you do that you’d better show me that Indians actually are over-represented in these professions).
But people don’t do this. Instead the default position of the Police seems to be to rule out a causal relationship, despite the overwhelming correlation and without any data of their own. Any honest evaluation of the statistical context of these crimes would lead someone to ask how the Police could possibly be justified in confidently ruling out racial prejudice as a causal factor in time for the next morning’s news.
It’s this automatic dismissal of a racial element to these crimes despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that’s causing so much resentment among Australian-Indians and the Indian Government. Neville Roach AO, the Chairman Emeritus of the Australia India Business Council hit the nail on the head when he said that:
Unfortunately, the seeming instant dismissal by local authorities of the possibility of racism being involved has created an impression of a nation in denial. This has seriously damaged Australia’s credibility and helped inflame public opinion in India and within the Indian community in Australia, who see the official line as indicative of an unwillingness to take complaints of racism seriously.
It is difficult to understand how the police are able to rule out racism completely and with such certainty. While a premature conclusion of racism would also be inappropriate, the apparent disproportionate number of attacks on Indians relative to other overseas students does suggest racism is a factor.
Quite. It’s not the people who are suggesting that racism is relevant here that have something to prove. It’s those who are denying it.
Other Countries Are Worse!
“Australians on the whole are no more racist than anyone else, and possibly less so than quite a few places”. This one is often accompanied by gratuitous assertions that because of this fact, if you criticise anyone in Australia for being racist you are an anti-Australian, latte sipping, left wing basket weaver (those who know me will know how deeply insulting I find that).
The rejoinder this is short an obvious: Yes, so what?
I have no doubt that Asian, American and particularly European countries are far more racist than Australia (anyone who disagrees with that is either ignorant of the OS experience or into pointless self-flagellation). There probably is no other country in the world that I would rather live in if I was of another race (or more pertinently, that I would rather my child to live in).
But so what? Racism isn’t a relative concept. It’s not less bad because others are worse. To put it another way, we wouldn’t stop trying to stamp out paedophilia in Australia just because we discovered it was more common in another country.
Further, putting false relativism to one side, Australia’s uniquely exposed to negative economic consequences of being perceived as racist (to wit see projections of declining Asian student numbers). We’ve got good reason to hold ourselves to a higher standard than everyone else.
All Violence is Wrong – We Shouldn’t Focus on the Racial Element
Violence is violence is violence. It’s repulsive in any form and there are strong laws against it in all forms so we shouldn’t fixate on the racial element.
A week ago I probably would have agreed with this. I was against hate crime legislation because I thought that was already adequately covered by existing criminal laws and anything beyond that was getting close to criminalising thought.
However, upon reflection in light of the incident that I experienced, I think I’ve changed my mind. I think violence with a racial element IS in fact different to other violence because it has a differential impact. Violence with a racial element has an additional, targeted intimidation impact on minority communities that general violence doesn’t have. I hadn’t really thought about this before, but sitting on that train the news reports of racially violent incidents came immediately to mind in a way that I think general reports of violence wouldn’t have in that situation. In this way, the broader intimidation impact of violence is greater when it’s targeted towards an identifiable sub-group.
Further, generalising the problem in this way can blind policy makers to presence of important causal factors specific to the racial subgroup. It’s a bit like saying to an Aboriginal that alcoholism is bad wherever it manifests itself, therefore we shouldn’t focus on alcoholism in remote communities, rather simply on the general, Australia wide problem.
Don’t Talk About It – It’ll Only Make It Worse
The common objection to confronting the racial element of these incidents is that even if it does exist, if you talk about it in public, one of the following things will happen:
* You’ll ‘fuel’ the problem by given racist louts the publicity they crave;
* You’ll provoke a ‘law and order’ bidding war between Labor and the Liberals; and
* You’ll undermine the operational independence of the Police.
And on top of that, it won’t change the behaviour of people who are already flagrantly disregarding the norms of society.
I have to say, this is the response that irritates me the most. It amounts to little more than the advocacy of sweeping the issue under the carpet.
I simply can’t accept this – Words matter.
Words matter even more when they are being delivered by the Police – the bearers of the Government’s monopoly on the use of force. The Police enforce our society’s laws and as such are standard bearers for our values. Their public statements and behaviour carry special force. You could probably run off half a dozen slogans of police road safety campaigns. When the Police speak, they speak with authority.
However, when the Police simply ignore the overwhelming correlation between being Indian and being a victim of violent crime, they send the message that it’s ok for the rest of the community to similarly look the other way when confronted with racial prejudice. By equivocating in the face of overwhelming evidence of racially motivated violent incidents, the Police send the message that the broader community is also equivocal in the face of racism. When this prejudice is unchecked in the public debate it creates the impression that there is room for this in our society. And they send a message to the Indian community that they are not taking the issue seriously.
Let’s Face Facts and Act
It was this feeling that the representatives of law and order in our society, the Police force, were letting down the Indian community by not being honest about the issue that prompted my extremely minor contribution to remedying the problem. It was as much an act of absolution of guilt as community service (though there are international precedents and a strong public policy argument in favour of such an approach). I decided to start mapping incidents of racial violence and any consequent law enforcement response because I wanted to try to face the facts and see the scale of the problem for myself. I haven’t gotten far and I’m shocked that it has received the attention that it did, but I’ve already learnt more from people’s response to the idea than I probably expected to learn from the exercise itself. It hasn’t changed my view that Australians in general aren’t racist. But it’s made me realise that we’re more ‘actively complacent’ about it than I ever expected.
Elsewhere: Hoyden About Town.
Tim
I’d like to know where you got your stats from. I’ve done some extensive researches for data over the last few weeks, and come up with nothing.
The police don’t keep records (or say they don’t) on the ethnicity of attackers/attackees, so am interested in how you know things they say they don’t.
A very well presented case, you’ll get no argument from me. What I find even more difficult to come to terms with is the racism directed against indigenous people. You may get a few brief sentences from an “average” person with regard to the possibility of there being racism towards migrants or visitors but mention the much more deep seated and profound issues facing Aboriginal people and you get horrified looks and stunned silence. Sorry of this is OT but a do see it as much greater negative force and thus one that is proving far more difficult to confront.
Post in haste and repent at leisure! Sorry, missed the vital link, have now clicked on it.
My understanding is that the police analysed the information they did have (and which I hadn’t seen released prior to reading the above) and concluded that the attacks on Indians correlated not to race but to circumstance – that is, they were attacked at exactly the same rates as any other person of any other skin colour were at the particular time and place they happened to be in at the time.
(To clarify: If I walk down a dark street at night and am attacked, it might be because I walked down a dark street at night, not because of any other factor).
To my mind, the fact that the police did this analysis shows that they approached the problem correctly. They looked at the stats, saw a possible problem, and then looked to see whether it was real or perceptual.
I’m not denying that Australians, like human beings all over the world since the dawn of time, are racist. I’m sure that there are attacks sparked by racism as well. But to decide that attacks are racist simply because of the colour of the victim’s skin is also racist.
The police and government have taken the right approach here: analyse the data to see if it supports your hypothesis. When the data shows it doesn’t, deal with the real problem, which is the perceptual one.
mehitabel – I do hope you’re right. I haven’t seen any reference to it on the public record (which is the arena I’m principally concerned about here). Would make me feel a lot better if that analysis is out there…
mehibatel, that would still, if so, leave many questions unanswered:
(a) who are the comparators? It’s unlikely to be any other person, because the Indian population are on average much younger than the rest of the population, and younger males generally have a much higher propensity to be the victims of assaults in public places;
(b) it still doesn’t demonstrate that place is the independent, that is, causal variable;
(c) it also doesn’t answer the question of whether Indian students and nationals are more likely to be in those places, which takes us back to the structural racism explanation.
Tim, thanks for an excellent summary of the complex issues. Nothing to disagree with except yr rather optimistic claim that “Australians in general aren’t racist”. I think Australia is a deeply racist society but that the racism is entrenched within institutional arrangements which allows Australians as individuals to represent themselves as non-racist. In other words the history of the dispossession and genocide, the racist Federation consititution and racist institutions over time have been so overwhelmingly effective in creating racist conditions that most Anglo-Celt Australians, who are the ones with cultural and economic authority, don’t recognise themselves as racists. They don’t need to because their racism is entrenched within institutional practice. Institutions like Police forces, for example, which are still killing Aboriginal people with impunity like on Palm Island. Institutions like state health care services that fail to deliver the goods to Aboriginal people. Should I mention the entire NT govt? At the level of individual affect many people respond with horror at the suggestion that they are part of a racist culture because they don’t actually harbour racist sentiments. But it is nevertheless a racist nation.
That’s a useful distinction, anthony. The structures can embody racial discrimination, while individuals don’t hold racist views. They just accept that the structures are, well, the background, common sense, the way things are done, etc. It’s a very common thing in sociological analyses.
It might also go some lengths towards explaining why some people respond with so much affect when seeking to deny that Australian culture is racist. It’s taken as a personal slur, when in fact it’s not.
I was also interested in the (to me, irrelevant on this question) attempts on the other thread to ascribe ‘ethnicity’ to the perpetrators of violence against Indians. One commenter said, quite honestly I think, that he wanted to forefend accusations that ‘white Aussies’ were the culprits.
Again, without personalising it, at least two conclusions can be advanced from this sort of remark;
(a) Narratives of racial assault are highly inflected by the Cronulla riots and similar phenomena associated with ‘national’ days – all the plethora of ‘We Grew Here, You Flew Here’ groups on Facebook, for instance, show this is a sentiment held much more commonly among those who identify as Anglo Australians than the membership of far right groups would indicate; so it’s highly charged and produces disavowal/distancing;
(b) There’s still an ordering of discourses whereby ‘Australian’ very quickly defaults to the core identity of ‘white’ ethnicity; that is to say, a core identity which has to deny that it’s an ethnicity.
Anthony Nolan @6, while you are musing about institutional racism, would you care to do a demographic on the presence of non-”Anglo-Celt” (as you call it) people in senior positions in Australia, relative to their abundance in the general population?
Then would you care to compare that with other nations?
If there is “deep institutional racism”, as you claim, then there would be NO foreigners in senior positions anywhere in Australia. They wouldn’t get that far.
I think you are overdoing your case.
Elise, there are far fewer people from non Anglo backgrounds at the top of almost every profession than there are in the general population. That’s been demonstrated repeatedly. In any case, that’s not what I take anthony to mean.
@5 – further to what I said before, I have trouble putting the claim made about police research together with the increase in assaults.
Let’s put it this way.
If there are x assaults per 1000 among, say, males aged 18-25 across all of Melbourne, is that the standard for comparison with the same x assaults per 1000 Indian males aged 18-25 in particular areas? If that’s so, it proves nothing about an absence of racist violence.
Tim I understand your second last point but I also believe there are dangers in giving lots of tabloid publicity to ethnic violence (which is not, of course, the same as saying we should ignore it). I would have thought it risks creating a sense of fashion in anti-social behaviour, so that people who would never have thought of targeting an ethnic group before will feel impelled to join in the latest fad and bash an Indian. Gays last century, Lebs last year, oh what, it’s Indians today? Anything to get a laugh on Saturday night while feeling at the cutting edge of teenage rebellion.
“You know what would happen if those three kids “went back where they came from”? Victoria’s biggest single export industry (education) would collapse leaving the State Government incapable of providing the support services you are so clearly relying on. Those students are your meal ticket fuckwit and you’d better show them some respect. You don’t speak for me you piece of shit and you don’t speak for our community.”
But Tim the appearance of this fellow on your train to Camberwell clearly indicates that the money made from milking cash cows, sorry, International students, isn’t going to provide adequate social services. I can understand your anger and fear when placed in such a confronting situation but really, to berate this miserable sod (even mentally) for not genuflecting before the flow of capital through the coffers of our corporate universities and their more blatantly capitalist private college offspring seems like a liberal mirror image of The Age’s trembling incantation of the risk to our $12 Billion export industry, rather than any real sympathy for the violence meted out on these students.
As for Australia’s High Commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, who recently complained that:
“There is an unfortunate tendency in the tabloid media to equate anything bad happening to a person of Indian origin to racism. Then they focus on why you won’t admit it is racism, because they take it as a given that any attack has to be a racist attack.’”
What tabloid media is he referring to?! That bastion of anti-racist crusaders, the Herald-Sun? Or even The Age, which repeatedly refuses in editorials to label the violence as racist..?
One final point, I have to agree with Anthony Nolan regarding Australia not generally being a racist country. The very foundation of the nation was based on racial genocide. We may not have race riots frequently, but that’s because we dealth with ‘the problem’ two hundred years ago and are now only engaged in a containment and mopping up operation.
Mark: I think yr point about ‘default’ Anglo-Celt ethnicity as the core identity spot on. I think of myself as an ethnic, Desert -Irish in fact, which has its own burdens and joys no less or more than others. Ghassan Hage (White Nation) informs my views as does Jock Collins’ spirited defense of multiculturalism (contra Hage) as an effective wedge against the hegemon of white Australia. I’ll not drag the dialogue too far off the point but I think we’re still alright compared to other nations and as proof offer yesterday’s conversation with a (Christian) Leb-Aussie workmate who ended the conversation with the reflective remark “Ah, such is life”. On inquiry (my astonished ‘what did you just say?’) he repeated the comment. I was able to point him in the direction of Tom Collins and his famously Australian first sentence “Unemployed at last”. To his great amusement. Culture is embedded in language in very subtle ways. The important thing is to play with the difference and rejoice in the sameneness. Cheers.
Anthony, I find the statement “I think Australia is a deeply racist society” particularly unhelpful. It dichotomises something which is actually continuous. Racial prejudice exists in all societies. The more important questions surround the nature of those prejudices, how widespread they are, how they are changing over time and how prejudice is built into institutions.
One of the things that has struck me about this debate is the lack of data and the problems with existing data that make it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the extent to which race was a factor in the attacks we have seen. As others have alluded to, there are are a number of factors that influence the probability of being a victim of violent crime besides ethnicity – age, location, income, time of travel, type of travel, precautions taken to avoid danger, etc. All of these factors will be potentially correlated with ethnicity and thus make it difficult to draw firm conclusions without good data.
Remember, what we are interested in is whether, controlling for all the factors that influence the probability of being attacked, whether there is an independent effect coming from ethnicity.
One other aspect of this issue I am interested is whether there is an ethnic dimension to the perpetration of these attacks. Of course, to draw meaningful conclusions there are a host of factors one would have to control for here as well. On this issue I can’t see why you don’t think it is of interest Mark. You don’t think it would be relevent to know whether the attacks were more likely to be committed by some ethnic groups (including anglo-celts) than others? Surely that would be relevent to dealing with the problem?
“you’d better show me that Indians actually are over-represented in these professions”
You can’t be serious. Just about every taxi driver in Melbourne is Indian. I defy anyone who regularly takes taxis in Melbourne to deny this most obvious of facts. They had a huge demonstration in Flinders Street against the violence they are subject to not long ago.
Does this mean the attacks against Indians are not racially motivated at least in part? No. It could be that the drunken bogan who attacks an Indian taxi driver late on a Friday night would not have attacked a taxi driver of another ethnicity. The bogan who has got a taxi home from the city home to Narre Warren decides not to pay the $60 fare and instead attacks the driver, makes that decision because the driver is just an Indian and he can get away with it, because as he sees it Indians are scrawny types who won’t fight back.
LO @14 (nice nom de blog BTW – a lot of us identify with it): on your own terms “Racial prejudice exists in all societies.” Australia no less than others. Only yesterday I had a terrific conversation with a taxi driver from Alexandria about Bedouins. He regaled me with tales of their racist sense of superiority to Egyptians noting, along the way, that Bedouin identify as Bedouin first and foremost. The point here being that, as democratically oriented Australians our political task is to acknowledge our racist heritage and come to terms with the specificity of racism as it operates within our culture. Doing that is essential to modernising the polity and society. One of the tasks is combatting racism. This is a core component of bringing a society of political equals into being. I know its utopian hey, but desire informs what follows (agency).
Hmmmm … I think what I was pointing out was that discussions of racism against immigrants and visitors appear to be far easy to frame with available, international discourses of racism hence we find lots of words. But the particular problem of racism against indigenous Australians is so profound as to be incapable of finding a discourse. Shorter me, our own problems require us to reflect to deeply on ourselves so we use the rest of the world to avoid facing it up it our own shameful behaviour. Isn’t it good that we’re so able to engage with these things?
Id like to make one small point. Regaurdless of the backgrounds of the offenders(and it does seem to be a mixed bunch), lets agree that while they were assaulting the Indians they probably were using a number of racial slurs.
I would state my belief that if they were attacking someone of any race other than their own they would be using similar language “Wog c**t, Kiwi c**t, White c**t, Abo c**t”, etc.
To me thats not so much a racial attack, but an attack made by a P.O.S. winding themselves up as they bash someone.
The coppers dont like the exposure they are geting on this because it shows them as being fairly useless on low level street crime The people doing these attacks are dogs pure and simple, and dare I say it un-Australian.
No, I think it does, but through a disavowal and displacement. Read this and see what you think. It focuses on the Southern European but I think any migrant group could occupy this role:
“Today the Southern European is more often positioned as white-but-not-white-enough to mark the residual racialised difference that must always distinguish us (the southern Europeans that is) if we are to play our anxiety relieving role. This gesture reminds us of the fundamental reason for our being tolerated in the places inhabited by the dominant white Australian culture. We are here to serve the very specific and indispensable role of supposedly supplying the form of recognition that ought to have been given to and received from Indigenous peoples. Indeed, this latter cannot be given and received in the absence of recognition of Indigenous peoples’ self determination, a form of recognition that would effectively require an unconditional withdrawal of the dominance of white Australian institutions and culture.”
by Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacolpoulos
from Whitening Race ed. Eileen Moreton-Robinson, pg 47
The Indigenous Other is absented all together and a migrant Other takes her/his place as the acceptable Other by which Whiteness differentiates itself, even as it disavows its own existence.
Hope this is it:
http://www.vicpolicenews.com.au/our-say/547-our-say-chief-commissioner-discusses-assaults-on-indian-students.html
sorry, back soon…
Patrickb: that’s hot. Displacement of racism on to non-indigenous persons so we don’t have to confront the real issue. That is how racism works. You offer a psychoanalytic perspectibe (despised, I konww) but therin lies understanding.
Which is another way of suggesting what you did. I tend to be of the opinion that these originary moments of land theft and murder en masse by which this white nation was founded (and which remain contested sites in public discourse) explains an awful lot about the hyper-sensitivity whenever charges of racism are raised against Australia. Of course last time I quoted this text, some RWDB went nuts. It tends to have that effect.
Patrick @ 17
When I read that sort of stuff, I have to sigh.
Did we not apparently say ‘sorry’ in Parliament?
Did not the 67 referendum get passed with a majority that surpassed the others?
Did not the white Oz policy get dumped over forty years ago?
So what about now?
What is your evidence for present attitudes? So ‘profound’? How so? What are our present institutions that are ‘profoundly racist’? (without some convoluted back logic that defies comprehension). Or even better, perhaps you might like to illumine us with some sort of suggestion about what it is we might do to not be ‘profoundly’ racist?
It seems to me that loud ‘mea culpa’ without concrete stats and/or suggestions for moving forward is merely a different form of avoidance of confronting racism in itself. ie if one wails loud enough, one is actually released from doing anything else. (“I have spent all day complaining about how racist everyone else is, I don’t have time to actually research stats and come up with answers”).
Indigenous Australians have very profound problems – however, I suggest that IF racist attitudes do exist toward them, dealing with those attitudes is pretty low on the list of priorities for someone who has poor health, education, life expectancy, personal safety, accommodation etc etc.
Just spend an hour outside the outpatients at Alice Springs Hospital, see the parade of women and children with bandages and crutches, then ask any of them what their priorities are.
Thanks for quoting me, Tim: “Australians on the whole are no more racist than anyone else, and possibly less so than quite a few places”. This one is often accompanied by gratuitous assertions that because of this fact, if you criticise anyone in Australia for being racist you are an anti-Australian, latte sipping, left wing basket weaver (those who know me will know how deeply insulting I find that). I certainly did not accompany that with any gratuitous assertions. You could take my statement as also saying Australians are no less racist than anyone else. See my four (so far) posts on this.
I was writing in the knowledge that a number of my regular readers are in India and I was trying to counter the media representations they had been seeing.
Mark
I was using ‘place’ as an example.
These kind of comparitive stats are used all the time.
If we expect that, for example, there will be X number of robberies on convenience stores resulting in Y amount of assaults on the person in charge of them, and the statistics for Indian students working in convenience stores is exactly the same as for other people working in convenience stores, then we would conclude that it’s working in convenience stores that is the risk factor, not race.
If we expect that, for example, X amount of people walking through dark parks in the early hours of the morning are likely to be attacked per year, and the statistics for Indian students walking through dark parks in the early hours of the morning are exactly the same as everyone else’s, then we conclude that walking through dark parks is the risk factor, not race.
This seems, by and large, to be the conclusion (after a couple of years of study) the Victorian police have reached – that yes, some attacks (and some are still too many, as they also admit) are racist in character but the vast majority of them are simply time/place/occupation.
The lack of attacks on female Indian students has been referred to by some authorities as indicating it’s a ‘behavioural’ issue rather than a race one.
The problem that I see is that very nearly every critique in “The Lucky Country” continues to hold true and most public intellectuals remain as complacent as ever that the title of the book is actually a compliment. So when I read someone saying that we live in “God’s country”, I have to wonder if anything following will actually acknowledge the true extent of the flaws preventing that from being factual. Close enough isn’t anything like near enough, so thanks for trying.
Firstly, props for the XKCD reference. Best. Comic. Ever. Now, to an actual point. Sam @ 15 said, “Just about every taxi driver in Melbourne is Indian.” This is fail. My anecdote – the last taxis I can remember getting in to were not driven by drivers of subcontinental descent (let’s see you pick, by name/looks/psychic powers whether a person is from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh) – has no more validity than your anecdote that “just about every taxi driver in Melbourne is Indian.” To make this statement, you need actual data rather than random ramblings. Go away and get it, or rephrase your statement. I’ll accept data demonstrating that 51% of hours worked by taxi drivers in greater Melbourne is performed by drivers descended from the four countries above (including native Australians with both parents from one of the above countries). Anything less than that and you’re talking rubbish.
As for testing whether the various attacks that have been reported lately are racist, a correlation would require regression testing against key variables; time, place, and gender of the victim would be a start. But this would completely overlook the point made by the post, and by Mark’s and Antony Nolan’s arguments of structural/entrenched racism. Tell me, if people who appear “Indian” are victims due to the perception that they are weaker, or won’t fight back, how exactly is this not racist?
Can I pose a few questions?
Low on the list? For who?
And IF they exist, for whom is the doubt that they may or may not exist? You asked any Aboriginals lately?
Tell me, was the Sorry for the original land theft? Or the murder of thousands of Aboriginals? No? well then has the white nation dealt with its rather interesting start in life yet?
And are you saying we should be proud that we waited till 1967 to decide that Black people were, like, real people and should vote? We might compare ourselves to the U.S. where, at the very least, whatever else it did, in 1870 the USA gave African Americans the right to vote (men natch – ALL women, Black and white, in the 1920′s – and that SAYS something about sexism vs racism and which will shift first btw). And is the fact we even had a white Australia policy not a problem in your celebration of the fact we got rid of it?
Just wondering.
Well Casey, some good points.
Perhaps someone might like to ask some of the women coming out of the Alice Springs hospital to list their priorities?
Or other disadvantaged aboriginal people?
Maybe someone who is recovering from an assault, with no home to go to, with poor life expectancy may, as you seem to be suggesting, be philosophising as their primary concern, whether or not society is entrenched in racism. So, what exactly on the ground are their main concerns is probably a valid question and worth a link of its own.
The point I was making about the historical references is that it was forty years ago that significant statements were made nationally about the fact that racism is no longer mainstream. Therefore prima facie, I wonder how one concludes that there is ‘profound’ racism in the country NOW. Historically speaking, of course you are right. However, I thought the discussion was about present day issues.
Back on topic. I wonder if the issue is rather one like the very common one we see at work where if someone is faced with a problem they cannot solve, they adopt various avoidance strategies which I think I recognise. ie pretend it does not exist, put it at the bottom of the work pile, when they boss comes round, discuss it at length, argue around it, spend so much time talking about it that one does not have time to do anything with it.
Frankly, as the original experience on the train seems to show, it is quite one thing to talk about the issue, and quite another to be actually able to know what to do about it.
I suspect that the problem is not so much entrenched racism (profound or otherwise), as being in the flipping train and not knowing what to do. Perhaps our efforts might be better directed towards actually working out what to do rather than navel gazing about stuff most of us worked out half a century ago.
Tim,
Missing from your factual basis is the following:
Some Indian Community Leaders and Representatives Do Not View The Attacks As Racist
Examples:
The President of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria,
Vasan Srinivasan and Nama Nageswara Rao, leader of the Telugu Desam Party
Some Indian Leaders View The Majority Of The Attacks Opportunistic
Robberies And Not Racist Attacks
Example:
Dr. Yadu Singh, who is head of the committee formed by the Indian Consulate
in Sydney to address the concerns about the welfare of Indian students
in Australia, who says
Most of the attacks are what we call `opportunistic attacks’
The ‘chain of reasoning’ by the Victorian Cop was not specious.
One, if there is a robbery in Western Melbourne or Sydney that passes
without verbal insult it would be a rarity. Two, thugs enjoy
belting up people. Of course they enjoyed it. I was attacked by
skinheads once. They had a great time and their language was
as vicious as their boots; but I wasn’t robbed.
Thugs enjoy their behaviour. The unfortunate kid was alone
had a backpack, and was carrying a radio and of a group known
to carry cash and electronics and known not to fight back.
Look, maybe the attack was racist. But the honeypot effect
is just as a convincing explantion.
I’m with the Vic. Police on this. Some racist attacks but more
more oppotunistic robberies with violence.
@19
That’s a very subtle piece and provides a framework for examining exactly what is going on with white Australian discourse of Indigenous Australia. It grasps the thing by the tail and begins to pull it in but it is a powerful and foul smelling beast so the struggle has only just begun.
@28.
Yes you’ve nailed Marks there. He has already written the Indigenous person out of the picture and substituted the standard white discourse of Aboriginal Australia. What would say marks to my preferred model? An apportionment of seats in both houses of all Parliaments for Indigenous Australians, or perhaps a separate Parliament altogether. Changes to the constitution to recognise prior ownership of the entire country thus providing a basis for tradable property rights.
I agree with Ken Lovell. It is dangerously self-fulfilling to widely and loudly publicise the violence as primarily motivated by racism. Every crime will have different mix of motives. Many thugs are racist. Many are also homophobic and misogynist. First and foremost, however, they are thugs whose violence precedes their social politics.
The immediate fix is to improve public safety measures – the longer term fix is to improve our “social capital”. We can’t fix racist attitudes as a discrete issue. Racism like other bigotries is a symptom of deeper inadequacies.
Structural or sanctioned racism is not relevant here – as the behaviour in question is outside the social norm.
… while correlation doesn’t imply causation “It does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”
And, in so doing, it lies. Correlation has been waggling its eyebrows (and gesturing furtivewly) for donkey’s years over the fact that when ice cream sales are high, so are deaths by drowning – among other things.
That’s a very poor example, Gummo.
If you are looking to formulate a hypothesis in social science, you will look at things which are correlated within a particular field of events/phenomena in order to test which variables may have causal power.
In other words, if I were seeking to research, say, why there are many more men with PhDs in fields which have large majorities of women enter at undergraduate level, I’d probably look at a correlation with *factors related to gender* rather than with *whether or not they eat ice cream*.
XKCD is spot on as to how research actually proceeds. Perhaps as opposed to blog comments which seem to prefer sometimes to leap to reductio ad absurdum in one single bound.
Marks:
As if all those health, poverty and violence problems are unrelated to the whole racism thing…
mehitabel:
Or, it could be that the patriarchy has different uses for the men and women of different/inferior races.
Nah… too complicated.
@25 – mehitabel:
But it might well be an important one. Let’s look at a hypothetical example, where X and Y are both groups of young men aged 18-25 but different groups. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume that these are the only groups.
If there are 1000 assaults in the city centre around nightclubs, and 800 of X are assaulted, and there are 1000 assaults dispersed through the suburbs and 800 of Y are assaulted, then the two groups have an equal propensity to be assaulted, but it may still be that Y are being targeted under different circumstances by different assailants, and thus being singled out because of their membership of group Y.
So you might still have a pattern of racist violence.
Similarly, the temporal dimension in your example is crucial, as is the percentage of people of the relevant group working in or walking around a particular place. If there are more assaults in convenience stores than there were 5 years ago, and 5 years ago Indian students made up a much smaller number of workers in convenience stores, then you can reasonably infer a racist motivation, particularly when you combine that with all the anecdotal evidence (and I’m sure if you dug deeply enough, you’d find people talking about doing it online) of ‘curry bashing’ – perhaps people are going to convenience stores expecting to find Indians to bash. In some instances.
The underreporting Tim mentioned in the post is also highly salient, as is the Victorian Police’s apparent tendency (shared by many on these threads) to discount any racist motivation (some here have defined it in such a way to define it away).
I made some comments on the other thread, quoting from a Professor of Economics whose report was commissioned by the Australian Institute of Criminology about the notorious problems of collection and interpretation of crime statistics. Leaving aside underreporting, there are possibilities for double counting (arrest of more than one suspect), differences in what is counted as a crime (report, self report, arrest, clear up, conviction, etc). This is extremely well known in all the literature on criminology. There are also significant differences between various groups and various types of crime in police taking an interest, which are also highly salient in this context. Not to mention variations in policing between different areas, and what cops are looking for.
It’s actually much safer when discussing crime statistics to take them together with other relevant qualitative factors in order to interpret them.
And we don’t actually have much info on either the data or the method of analysis, and we do know that there are great inconsistencies, as pointed out in the post, in the way police categorise these incidents, which it seems to me, again, makes reliance on such data unsafe. It could even be a press line spun off data. We just don’t know without having seen it.
@36 – Indeed, Anna.
There are far fewer Indian female students in Australia. I’m too tired to find the link, but I cited the figures on an earlier thread.
And the motivation for assaults by males on males and males on female, and the character of the assaults is very different indeed because it’s, well, patterned by gendered cultural assumptions.
“If there are more assaults in convenience stores than there were 5 years ago, and 5 years ago Indian students made up a much smaller number of workers in convenience stores, then you can reasonably infer a racist motivation, particularly when you combine that with all the anecdotal evidence”
I’m sorry Mark, but that is pure tosh. Indeed, this is a perfect candidate for a spurious correlation. You should try that argument on with a statistician, econometrician or anybody else that works with data for a living!
I don’t agree, LO, so you might care to do better than argue from authority. You might also care to recognise that the only kind of data is not the quantitative kind.
Note also your selective quotation!
Thanks Tim.
Just wanted to add that in terms of positive things we can do to improve the long-term ability of Australian society to recognise, accept and act to reduce racism, my top pic would be to support the inclusion of civics and related study into schools (and it must continue past primary school).
I very much agree with you though that the single biggest thing we can all do now is speak up and challenge racist behaviour when we see it such as your experience on the bus (with the obvious qualifier of stay safe).
mehitabel,
I’m sorry, but the link you have provided does not show that:
What Simon Overland actually says on this link is:
This is exactly the kind of dismissal of the issue by anecdote rather than an serious analysis of the data. Your link is an example of the problem, not the solution.
Cheers,
Tim
Chav #12
To be fair to Peter Varghese, the tabloids he was referring to in the quote above were the Indian tabloids.
You make fair point though that you need to focus on the moral element in the first instance rather than the economic impacts. The economic impacts may be an unfortunate consequence, but they aren’t the real issue.
Cheers,
Tim
“I’m sorry Mark, but that is pure tosh. Indeed, this is a perfect candidate for a spurious correlation. You should try that argument on with a statistician, econometrician or anybody else that works with data for a living!”
.
I do, and I don’t see it as problem. Basically the first point serves as the baseline, the conditions then get manipulated (usually experimentally in my case, but in this case it’s just the way life is), and you look at the second point as the outcome. This is fairly typical of the best data you are going to get in many areas, although obviously you want other data to strengthen your claim (which is what Mark says). It would be nice to have a second baseline, like number of assaults on white people in convenience stores across the two times (which I’ll just assume is flat for argument’s sake), in which you would have a nice interaction in a 2 * 2 ANOVA. So what’s the problem with that? Does it get there by magic? Of course maybe people are just assaulting more Indians because they think they’re weak, deserve it for non-racists reasons etc., but that’s why you need other data.
.
I think you’re confused about running perfect experiments, which you can never do in many areas, like this one, and actually trying to understand what is going on and finding realistic interpretations of the data.
Labor Outsider #14
Couldn’t agree more with this. Both FISA and the Indian Government have requested raw data on the number of attacks on Indians, but this would really only tell a small part of the story. This issue falls pretty squarely in the Open Government/Gov 2.0/Power of Information Agenda debate – to my mind there shouldn’t be anything to fear from transparency of data. The absence of data in a situation like this will only lead people to argue from anecdote and breed mistrust….
Cheers,
Tim
Neil #24
You’re completely right Neil – apologies. I wasn’t intended to imply that you in particular had done this, just make a general observation. But the way that I wrote this section was sloppy and lumped you in – sorry.
Cheers,
Tim
Greg #26
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but on its face I find this comment pretty disappointing. The whole point of this piece is that we live in a flawed society and that we’re not willing enough to confront this. That’s not inconsistent with the fact that despite these flaws, life in Australia is still better than 99% of other places in the world. Yes there are blights (many around race, in particular with respect to indigenous Australians) that we should feel driven to address, but so long as we recognise this and don’t discount these flaws, surely we can also recognise that we are extremely lucky (both in the ironic way intended by Horne and in substance).
#30 Baraholka,
That’s true, and neither does Mukesh Haikerwal who has probably been the most prominent victim. Many others disagree. I’d also argue that victims have an incentive to down play the racial element. The attacks must be traumatic. I’m sure they would be even more difficult to cope with if the victims thought that they were targeted because of something intrinsic to you (and which therefore you couldn’t avoid in future). It would be much easier to deal with if you could simply tell yourself that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I think that the Police’s argument is potentially specious (in the sense of being plausible but false) because they don’t offer any data to support it. Why do they think that it’s ok to dismiss extremely serious concerns by simply arguing from anecdote. It’s complacent and it’s not good enough and we ought to be asking for me.
Cheers,
Tim
#33 WBB
In practice, I pretty well agree with this. Right now we don’t need education campaigns or tolerance walks. We need the Police to perform their public safety role. However, I do think that race needs to be taken into account when doing this. The Police need to send a clear deterrent message that they are targeting those who assault Indians and that if you commit these offences, you will be caught. Just as we have had Road Safety advertising campaigns for many years, we need a Racial Safety campaign right now.
#34 Gummo Trotsky
Sigh
Mark (or anyone)
On Structural Racism, if there is a series of institutional arrangements none of which are racist, but which combine together to force a negative outcome on Indian nationals, is that structural racism ?
Also, is the ‘Home Invasion’ crime phenonemon racist ?
IIRC, the phenonemon initially targeted members of the Chinese/Vietnamese community because they were known to have large quantities of Gold/Cash/Jewellery in their homes.
Is that racial targeting or opportunity targeting ?
Tim @49
Thx for the reply. I think the victims should be taken at their word. Most say they are the victims of racist attacks. Are they not saying what they believe to be true ?
I look forward to you introducing the more nuanced views of some Indian Community leaders into your “factual basis”.
#52 Baraholka
I don’t think there’s anything inaccurate about what I said here:
My point was that the assertion has been made (and continues to be made) and requires a response.
However, if people feel that it’s important I wouldn’t have any objection to adding a rider to this sentence to the effect of:
(I don’t have rights to edit the body text on LP though)
Cheers,
Tim
I think Tim’s key point is this one “However, when the Police simply ignore the overwhelming correlation between being Indian and being a victim of violent crime, they send the message that it’s ok for the rest of the community to similarly look the other way when confronted with racial prejudice.”
The instant denial response isnt doing anyone any favours, VICPol – and it certainly wont help your cred if this trend ultimately continued, and became undeniable. And Overland’s recent performance has been silly: Indian students are generally near the top of the pile back home, and nearer the bottom here. It almost certainly *isnt* true that they’re safer in Australia, even if India is overall more dangerous for the average punter.
How about this alternate form of words, VICPOL: “Any form of violence is unacceptable, and we’ll be monitoring closely for any sign of racism, which is also unacceptable”
#54 Lefty E
Thanks Lefty E – this is exactly the point I most wanted to get across.
Perhaps some of these “ordinarily sensible people” actually have some familiarity with Indian society, warts-and-all. One of the problems is that Indians tend to be immensely racist themselves. They live in a badly made glass house that is full of cracks.
Does anyone here actually know of the default Indian opinion of people of African origin? Of the partly Australoid “tribal peoples” of central India? Such opinions are usually horrifying, and put loudly & unashamedly.
What about the likely reaction of an Indian parent (especially of the “professional class”, most especially the Brahmans) if one of their sons wanted to marry a woman with darker skin than his own?
Indian society loves racism so much that it actually went and made up extra races so that there would be more things to be racist about: that’s what the castes are!
Of course there is ingrained racism in Australia that needs to be addressed, as it spreads ugliness, inequality, deprivation and misery in the lives of all (even those who happen to be on top of the local heap).
But if you think that will be helped by kow-towing to a pack of hypocritical racist pricks (the tabloid Indian media) who were only whipped up to break the Australian Govt’s will to not sell India uranium, then you are dreamin’. The rank hypocrisy was exposed by the fact that whenever an apparent “racist attack” that the Indian media had trumpeted (such as that on an Indian undercover journalist in that 4 Corners story) turns out to be perpetrated by another Indian, everything goes silent instantly. No correction, no changing tack, no shame. Not even the self-serving, mealy-mouthed crap that our media would come out with in a similar circumstance.
PS- I note that the abuse of Australia/Australians in the online Indian media has suddenly evaporated in the last few days. Just after Simon Crean’s visit to India for talks with the Indian Govt. I wonder what Mr Crean might have promised? 44s of yellowcake, anyone?
Lefty,
AFAIK Overland does not reject the correlation between being Indian and being a victim of violent crime or issue instant denials. He says some attacks are clearly racist but most are opportunistic robberies. I think you want him to reverse the relative proportions, correct ?
as I have the info while I don’t want to derail the thread I do want to add another dimension to the issue of what various spokespeople for the Indian community have said about the assaults etc.
This is specifically focussing on Indian -Australian community reps, both for students and the settled Indian community here. I’ll preface this by explaining that I worked in community liaison for dept. immigration at the time of the Indian assualts issue really gaining attention last year.
Basically when the issue first blew up last year a lot of the Indian community leaders’ initial reaction was to be angry with the student youth for ‘rocking the boat’. Internally there was a dialogue running in the various Indian communities between the older members and the youth about how the issue had gained attention and what impact it had on the reputation of the settled Indian-Australian community. This largely meant that settled Indian community elders & reps were dismissive of the youth, told them off for making a spectacle of themselves, were angry that they might have damaged the reputation of Indians in Australia and got them branded as trouble makers etc.
Amongst the students there were broadly two camps – one that had a nuanced view of the situation (ie there’s problems with racism but also with shitty services, jobs/ transport/housing localities & lack of integration with the local community that is exaserpating the racism issues) and one that had a much more absolutist view that everything that was happening could only be explained as racism.
Over time many of the settled population have put aside their initial emotional reaction & concerns about being shamed / seen as trouble makers, and particularly as government has continued overall to deny any racism, has become increasingly persuaded by the student viewpoints.
As a result we get consistently contradictory messages from the Indian community. Some elders flatly denied any racism, and continue to wag their finger at their youth for being disruptive and hysterical. The absolutist students just kept upping the ante.In the middle I would argue lies a growing consensus amongst a significant percentage of the Indian community in the broad that Australia has it’s head up it’s bum and is not taking the whole thing seriously, including the racist element.
you could also throw into this very complex situation (and this is probably more for Mark’s structural racism thread but what the heck) the dynamic of settled communities exploiting new students & workers from their own country. It’s certainly a factor when it comes to paying them rip-off wages etc. and a factor in terms of the level of scrutiny some elements will then want to avoid of the whole situation. How big a factor – well who knows but I would reject equally any analysis in this big sprawling topic that it’s all ‘anglos’, or all ‘ethnics’
So my point being that there are complex dynamics in settled communities – particularly those that now have as an adjunct a large transient student community. We’d do well to take these into consideration both when looking at public statements and how we look to address the specifics of issues.
Hopefully this post while a bit off topic might at least help shed some light on the whole contradictory public statement stuff.
AW @ 36
“As if all those health, poverty and violence problems are unrelated to the whole racism thing…
Erm, I thought that’s what the question was…rather than the answer as your post seems to imply.
So is it the medical staff in the hospitals treating beaten up aboriginal women(mainly) who are racist?
Or the educational professionals teaching in one person remote community schools?
Or the employers who at one meeting I attended in Alice Springs gave a list as long as your arm why they would dearly love to employ aboriginal people in meaningful jobs? And yet couldn’t because educational outcomes were so poor that they could not comply with OHS requirements?
Is it the NT Government, which last time I looked had the highest proportion of indigenous MPs and Ministers in the nation? How is the proportion of indigenous MPs in your jurisdiction by the way?
Perhaps it is the young police constables who have daily to face the reality of aboriginal women being bashed literally to within and inch of their lives and beyond, and yet have to do their utmost to see that the perps and/or likely perps are kept out of jail to reduce black deaths in custody?
It is frustrating to me that there are these accusations of profound racism, undeniably true of fifty years ago, and yet when you meet the people on the ground, the reality of their attitudes is just so different. (That is not to say there aren’t people out there like that, but that is a whole lot different to the stupid perception of profound racism).
Perhaps rather than pontificate from 1000km away, people might go to the NT and North Queensland and try to help like so many people there are trying to do.
What, too many “actuallys”?
Nice work Tim.
As I was saying the other day, while it might be reasonable to publicly state that in a particular case ‘we don’t know if it was racially motivated or not’, it’s quite another thing to disavow racism and racist violence entirely. For minorities here, and for international observers, this simply doesn’t even pass the sniff test. Everyone knows that racism and racist violence exist throughout the world – literally everywhere – and have throughout history.
In fact, one of the probable results of the complete disavowal of racism by many Australians is that those overseas are likely to conclude that the problem is worse than it really is (or why deny it entirely?), or that it’s as bad as anywhere else in the world.
In fact it’s not. Though I agree with Casey et al that our racism runs very deep in our national psyche, and that the suppressed guilty knowledge of this drives the denials, I think that those denials invite the imaginations of international observers to run wild. Thus what we tell ourselves and each other to make us feel better, paints us as dangerously deluded and so accustomed to being racist we can’t even identify it any more.
This is true only of a tiny minority of Australians I think.
#57 myriad74 – great comment
marks, you’re kidding right? I live in Alice, it is undoubtedtly racist and this has an impact on everyone. There is both individual and structural racism, both of which conspire to confer less chances to Aboriginal people to live a happy, violence free lives. Sadly wider racism does increase the propensity for “lateral violence”, where people in powerless positions covertly or overtly direct their dissatisfaction inward toward each other, themselves and those less powerful than themselves.
This is not to deny that the aboriginal women of which you speak wouldn’t like to live happier violence free lives, it is just that you seem to think that racism has nothing to do with the situation in which they live (which to me seems absurd).
#myriad 74
You have made very usefull observations.
I suspect that some elements of the settled communities have provided ‘opportunity’ for students to come and study, with work with pay, conditions and accommodation that ‘Australians’ would not see as acceptable. Whether these arrangements are part of a general ‘sponsorship package’ is obviously hard to know. Desperate people will do desperate things. Rip off merchants (Anglo or otherwise) exploit vulnerable people.
My great concerns are:
Many of the international students training as cooks etc already have good qualifications in other areas which we are not utilising or planning to utilise.
That only the tuition fees seem to have been enforced – why havent these institutions (unis included) been required to provide appropriate accommodation and safety in appropriate locations as part of the fee package. I suspect the great Aussie penchant for Negative Gearing comes into play here.
In reality there are too few jobs for Australian students – add the International student and its an employer field day often with low wages and bad conditions. A return to colonial/class – master/servant days. No wonder many student groups ban together in substandard housing – to share costs.
If the real cost of studying in Australia is X why not say so up front and have it paid for up front through a Central Government Agency – that way accommodation can be sourced and quality approved, training courses and fees vetted.
Only an Australian Government agency should receive and approve applications by International students. Private agents for training institutions (in Australia or elsewhere) should be banned. Regardless of how good a job the unis etc might do, the small operators, esp overseas, tend to bring the whole system down.
The working/voluntary hours restriction of 20 hours per week for students is a crock. Ditto the income restrictions on Australian students on Austudy etc.
Thank you for cooking my pizza – Good luck getting a job with your Mechanical Engineering degree. WTF.
Very intersting Myriad – the same happened in the Iraqi community back in 2002-4 between PPV and TPV holders. The PPVs didnt want a bar of the TPVs – as they feared being lumped in with a group that was then being stigmatised by the Howard government as queue-jumpers.
They get along much better now.
Baraholka – that particular comment of Overland’s annoyed me (the comparative nonsense – as if that’s somehow relevant, or even corrrect), but I’ll grant you his responses are better than some other police spokespersons – and def better than our state and fed politicians, who, AFAIK, have never *once* got past the ‘opportunist crime’ line.
#64 Left E
This is Brumby about 6 months ago:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/attacks-on-students-clearly-racist-overland-20090610-c2l9.html
Tasty Cooked Goose @ 62.
Firstly let me say that I never asserted that racism does not exist. Since you claim to live in Alice Springs, you might like to ask one of the local Arrende people what their views on the Walpuri are to establish that.
However, to get past the obviously different world views we have, I just repose the questions I put – and since you claim to live in Alice Springs, you can name names and put some details in to back up your assertions. If things are as bad as you say, and given the town is as small as it is, naming names and providing details should be a cinch, right?
Who are the medical staff that are racist? Or, what are the medical institutions that are racist? How is their racism manifested in any practical way?
Who are the teachers who are racist? Or what are the educational institutions that are racist? How is that racism manifested in any practical way?
Who are the employers who are racist? How is it manifested? What are the institutional arrangements that are helping them manifest that racism?
Who are the racist police? Why not ‘out’ them if they exist?
Who are the racist public servants? Out them!
I hate racism and all its works – if you have evidence – stick it up and make a change for the better. If you live in Alice Springs, and it is as bad as you claim, then answers to some or all of the above should be easy to provide today. Don’t delay, hiding institutional racism is condoning it. If you can out people and institutions which are racist, I have no problem at all.
Go to it.
@58
This is pretty much what I’m getting at. The assertion that there is a deeply racist current in Australian society towards Aboriginal people is denied or avoided. The situation of Aboriginal people is, for the most part, reminiscent of the third world. There is no reflection on how and why this is. marks’ list of anecdotes is a great example of the type of outraged or shocked response discussion of the inherent racism towards Aboriginal people invokes.
“How is the proportion of indigenous MPs in your jurisdiction by the way?”
None, what are you doing about it?
Its interesting Tim @65 – if you go back to last June, hardly any of this “opportunist crime” line is around. Now Gillard never says anything else, the acting Premier didnt even wait to discover the murdered student hadnt been robbed before repeating the line, and the police are frequently saying there’s no evidence of racial bias – when they weren’t denying that at all mid last year. Which makes you wonder what whether they’re actually working off data, or spin. It cant have changed that quickly.
I dont think the newfound defensiveness and denial is justified, necessary, or helpful. There’s also a new barely concealed sense around of “ignore them, they’re just whingers, and they’re KNOCKING OSTRAYA, when their country is SHIT!” which frankly, is only likely to let racism off the leash.
I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t the latter, Lefty E.
Just wait til that mooted cricket stoppage in India gets some legs (if it does, but I gather the party in question prevented the Pakistanis playing a game). The reaction to that will be really, really ugly.
Hi marks, not that your questions deserve to be answered given the tone of your post, and I certainly won’t be naming names (out of deference to the fact that I try to confront the racism I see in indivuals with them directly- not always easy). However some examples of racist comments I have heard, in after sport banter, include: “jokes” about burning Aboriginal kids with boiling water; serious statements about the sexual depravity of Aboriginal people (that “they” rape their children); Aboriginal people do not deserve to be treated as equal humans because they are “primitive”. It seems to me that that people only say these things publicly because they assume I must have the same opinion they do (being a white bloke). These people, in their day jobs work in banks, the hospital and as trades people. One of them is even aspiring to get into the police!
On the other questions structural racism works through denying opportunities to people as a result of their race. Do you think that a Pintupi or Kukatja person really has equal chance of having their illness addressed to their satisfaction at the Alice Springs hospital as someone who comes from say Melbourne (or even Germany for that matter)? Having talked to some people I know who come from Walungurru, Kiwirrkurra and Balgo, it is common that they find talking to doctors difficult, that they are frequently misunderstood, and often do not understand what they are being told in relation to the management of their illness. They just take this as part and parcel of their lives. The fact that there are not adequate interpreter services is an example of strucutral racism. It is not that the doctors are racist (though they could be), but that being Aboriginal cuts down your chances of being treated in a way that others are. If you want to read more about how structural racism in health setting works and what can be done about it through addressing the ways medical services are structured and “delivered” have a look at “Sharing the True Stories” published by the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health
As I said all I can do is confront it when I see it, and do what I can to learn about the people of the different cultures who live here. I can speak a little bit of Kukatja (enought to make me realise the significant differences in world view that arise from the way the language is structured) so, although I can always do more, I am trying.
Tim Watts,
Are you determined to keep my comment at 56 away from the fragile ears of the public? Lucky for you LP itself doesn’t think that way- it gave you this forum.
Kersebletes, Tim doesn’t have moderation permissions as a guest poster. I’ll just go and have a look now. My apologies for the delay – haven’t been at the computer this morning til just before.
#71 Kersebleptes – not sure what you’re talking about. I don’t have any visibility of or role in moderation at LP.
Though if you’d read my post you know that I don’t have any concerns about the fragile ears of the public.
Sorry I had to read your comment at #56 in the end Kersebleptes
Please see the “Other Countries Are Worse!” section above.
An absolutely brilliant contribution Tim.
The only thing I can add is that your thoughts here deserve a wider audience than this excellent web site.
Congratulation on calling the community, police and media for their inability to look adequately for/at the existence of racism and racist violence. You have done so forcefully, yet eloquently.
@71
“but that being Aboriginal cuts down your chances of being treated in a way that others are”
Simply put and absolutely true. Of course some people will interpret “treated in a way that others are” as removing the supposed advantages given to Aboriginal people and that isn’t the intent of this statement.
Tim,
I think you will find the vast majority of people are humans. Humans don’t listen if they see rank hypocrisy. You want people to listen. Fundamental contradiction.
You should understand the problem of India lecturing Australia about entrenched racism. Things must be kept in proportion. To avoid unnecessary offence and make solutions more likely, a country with a log-filled eye like India on racism should make it abundantly clear that it realises that it too has a problem. Quote me the Indian Govt statements and Press articles (beyond a few fugitive reader comments, which speak volumes of conditions there) that have done this. They are eagerly courting unnecessary offence.
India is simply saying: “We are big now- bow down.”
Not good enough.
You might assert that “a country like Australia” should simply ignore this abuse, get on with the slow business of ridding our country of racist sentiment, and see the extraordinary fuss that India is making as a useful stimulus to that process. If so, you either think that Australians are inherently better than Indians, or that Australians are not due the same respect in international discourse as other nationalities. If so, then again it is not good enough.
#78 Kersebleptes
I will concede that ‘the vast majority of people are humans’.
However everything else you are saying is completely absurd (though divertingly amusing).
Are you really saying that we shouldn’t respond to racial violence in Australia until the Indian Government admits that there are problems of racism in India? Call me crazy, but I think stopping people from being bashed and stabbed in our own backyard is a bit more important than the political debate in India.
As I indicated above in the section titled “Other Countries are Worse”
The response of the Indian government is neither here nor there. I’m sorry you’re offended by the Indian Government but I’m more worried Indian kids who are getting bashed in my city.
Incisive post Tim, and a generally informative discussion.
I don’t think I can add to it except to note the shock I experienced when I first recognised my own deeply entrenched racism. I was in my thirties and a child of fifties Australia. Walked into a shop to get cigarettes and saw the only other customers were an Aboriginal family (couple of women, couple of very young children and an old man) quietly going about their business. My immediate response was fear – totally irrational under the circumstances.
So I am aware that at a fundamental level I am racist, and it’s probably hard wired. This does not mean I am a bad person, or that I express racism in my thoughts or actions. It does mean that being aware of it enables me to consciously challenge it.
Well, Tim, even if you were correct on the absurdity of my thinking, you will still have to solve the problem using people like me…and a lot more people who think not at all.
It will take a great deal of work to get barbarians like me to stop burning children alive in camper vans. Oh, hang on…
I meant @59 (I think). What is it with this blogging software and the numbering.
Issues of racism in India are well known. For mine the best current political essayist is Arundhati Roy who is excoriating on Indian history and politics.
On entrenched racist culture in Australia: within genocide studies one of the hallmarks of a genocidal regime is denialism. This involves institutional blindness on an historical scale. The struggle for recognition of indigenous Australian dispossession and subsequent genocidal policies had to overcome immense institutional inertia and opposition all of which was organised around denial of Aboriginal pre-possession (Terra Nullius), presence, culture and ongoing existence. Then the double bind of denying genocide. It works like this: Rule 1) there was no genocide; Rule 2) There was no genocide; Rule 3)is that Rules 1) and 2) don’t exist.
Australian social and political institutions are pre-programmed to deny the existence of a problem at first sight. It is what we do. The consequences of genocide fall not only on the victims and it is consequently part of Australian heritage and culture to deny the existence of a problem.
Mark,
From a sociological standpoint, how would you address an issue like structural racism in Australia?
Or to put it another way, what can be done to effect real change?
A country could have none of Australia’s all-encompassing experience (and practice) with discrimination, and yet still be immensely insulted at India’s responses.
My point is not that Australia “doesn’t have to worry until India is completely non-racist”. It is that India’s responses give racist Australians the perfect excuse to do nothing. The responses of both Indian Govt and the Indian Media are so unbalanced, so hypocritical, so insulting that ignoring them is the right thing to do until they are moderated.
This is the reverse of what should be happening, and that is not the fault of the Victorian Police (everything else might be, but not that).
That’s such a big question, delrio!
I’ve got to go out in a second, but I always suggest in these sorts of conundrums that you have to pursue legislative and policy change simultaneously with cultural change. It’s incredibly powerful just to talk to others, and challenge what you see expressed in conversation. That’s one of the ways that attitudes towards same-sex attracted people have been shifted and influenced. Unfortunately, with racism, it hits a brick wall of denial, disavowal and evasion. We’ve got a long way to go, but recognition that there is a problem here really is the necessary if not sufficient step.
“Things must be kept in proportion.”
Tell that to Nitin Garg.
Oh, wait…
Why is it necessary for us to feel insulted? I don’t. I’m with Tim; I really don’t think that the response of the Indian government or media has any pertinence to how *we* deal with an issue that is an Australian one. Who is “us”, anyway? And how do you insult a country?
Just off topic (sort of) for a moment a squirmed in extreme discomfort when I went to see Avatar a couple of weeks ago and one of the company reps said about the indigenous Nav’ii that went something like “we’ve offered them medicine, hell we’ve set up schools for them so they could learn English. Ungrateful, what the fuck else do they want from us?”
I’d say more but I don’t want to spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it. But I’m surprised the (white) Australian public aren’t more uncomfortable with the themes in Avatar. Especially when it seems to be about theft disguised as colonialism with big mining vs the indigenous.
Tell that to Nitin Garg.
True, we can’t do anything about racist attacks over in India. But the people who have been screaming racism at us can…and they don’t.
Nitin Garg is a person who was stabbed to death in Footscray not long ago.
Tim,
Let’s say an elderly woman gets robbed and bashed and her handbag stolen. While being assaulted she is called ‘a useless old hag’.
Is that attack ‘ageist’ or opportunist ?
On a different tangent imagine Indian nationals were housed in Toorak or Vaucluse (Sydney) instead of Footscray and Harris Park. Would there be more or less assaults. I say less. Hence, assaults are opportunistic, not racist.
Imagein they were housed in areas of Wollongong (more Anglo as opposed to Footscray and Harris Park) devestated by high unemployment. I would say there would be a comparable rate of assaults. If so assaults are correlated by socio-economic/unemployment, not racist attitudes (assuming equal levels of racism in Woolongong/Footscray/Harris Park).
Would you agree ?
Yeah I know it was in Footscray. I assumed you were disapproving of my allusion to events in India some years ago. Sorry if I misunderstood.
#92 Baraholka,
I think these are all reasonable questions that are best answered with data.
The questions that I would ask of the data to answer your questions are:
-”Does the race of the victim make them any more likely to to be bashed as well as robbed compared to other sub-groups?” (speculating without data here, but my guess is that if you’re an Indian you’d be more likely to cop a beating as well as lose your bag than a grandma).
-”Are assaults in on Indians more or less likely per 100,000 of population in Toorak or Vaucluse instead of Footscray and Harris Park?” (my guess is that there would be too small of a population of Indians in Toorak etc to make a valid comparison).
-”1. Are Indians more likely to live in areas of high unemployment and if so, 2. Are they any more likely to be victims of assaults than others in these high unemployment areas?”
As a side note, I take it that you’re implying that if the original motivation for the crime was robbery, the subsequent addition of the ‘ageist’ (or racist) insult doesn’t change that and prevents it being a racially motivated incident? If so, I’d advise caution. I do think that the use of group insults in these situations is an indicator of a strong prejudice against that group in the individual that could well play a causal role.
I’ll also leave it to Mark B to comment on the structural racism aspect of your final two paras.
Cheers,
Tim
Thanks, Tim. I think I, casey, anthony, and several other commenters have addressed the general structural racism question on this and previous posts. I’d merely point out, once again, that socio-economic status and race are intertwined. Much as they might be separated out as analytical constructs, the two constantly influence each other. And neither are straightforward unproblematic concepts.
Crime patterns also differ greatly according to suburb and location therein. Where I live in New Farm, you’re probably much safer walking around the back streets at night (expensive housing, well lit, lots of police patrols) than you are on the main drag where there are lots of bars. But, there again, you’re distinctly safer at the New Farm end of Brunswick Street than at the Valley end, for a whole host of reasons. You can actually feel that as you cross the suburb boundary. And your sense of safety is going to differ according to who you are. And all this varies according to the night of the week and the time.
Again, I’m trying to gesture to the fact that purely statistical arguments are of limited utility in this area, because the level of abstraction misleads. And that I’m not sure that Baraholka’s hypotheticals tell us much.
To their credit, the Queensland Police use a fair bit of qualitative research in developing policing strategies. That’s largely a result of the presence of the CMC (the independent crime and corruption commission) which has employed some excellent criminological researchers for over a decade. Among other things, the Victorian Police would be well advised, I’d suggest, to overhaul their research capacity, and an independent commission with a real research brief as well as the ability to investigate misconduct and corruption has been a great boon in Queensland.
That’s interesting Mark – I didn’t realise the CMC had that kind of a research function. That would be extremely valuable.
It’s very closely articulated to social science and criminology research concentrations at the three major Brisbane universities, Tim, with a fair bit of crossover – academics taking secondments, and vice versa, and they work very closely with the police from the Commissioner’s office downwards. It’s also helfpul to have a body genuinely independent of parliament and politicians involved in policing – the chair of the CMC is usually a barrister of some standing, and in my view, they’d have no hesitation whatever in calling bullshit if Bligh were coming out with the sort of rubbish Brumby and co. are.
Mark and Tim, you both seem to have decided that (a) Australians are racist (well, of course they are, so’s everyone) (b) attacks on Indian students are racist by definition and (c) the government and police aren’t doing anything about it; and are then interpreting all the data that comes your way through those prisms.
(a) Yep. So’s everyone. Doesn’t mean that therefore any attack on someone of a different race, religion, culture or creed in Australia is therefore motivated by racism. Some will be.
(b) The available statistics say very few are (one paper I read said there’s no evidence at all that any are, but I’m willing to go with the idea that some would be). There’s no evidence, for example, that attacks on convenience stores have gone up and therefore have become racist in nature, and pulling strawmen out of cirular dark orifices like that does little credit to your reasoning powers.
The questions have been asked, not only by the police and government but by academics; there is no evidence to suggest that the attacks correlate to race, but is to suggest they correlate with time/place/employment.
(c)It is always possible that Brumby said one thing six months ago and another now because he is now better informed. There is plenty of evidence – from the Vic Police site, for example – that they take the perception of racist violence very seriously and have been working with the Indian population on this for much longer than it has been a media issue. The Indian governent’s backpeddling could just as well be explained by S. Crean presenting them with irrefutable evidence that they’re wrong as it can be by veiled hints of bribery and corruption.
Undoubtedly, a handful of these attacks are racist. However, you seem to be aiming for a society where an Indian can walk through a park late at night in perfect safety (regardless of whether anyone else can). People unfortunately get assaulted, and violence is obviously a bad thing, but you are never going to eliminate it completely, although we should strive to do so. Misidentifying the causes of violence, and inferring that a white person in the same situation would get off scot free, is also potentially dangerous.
And deciding that all violence against a particular sub group is the result of racism, as a sort of default position, is also racist – which is the position that the Indian media are taking.
Mark,
i’d like to discuss the attacks with respect to Structural Racism some more. You seem to be saying “it’s all been explained”, but I’m sorry I don’t get it yet.
A lot of what you’re saying seems to be: “Indian nationals live in poor suburbs, that’s structural racism, so if they get bashed up in those suburbs, the cause is racism. Since this is obvious anyone who disagrees must be in denial”. Again, sorry if I don’t get what you’re saying. I’m happy to be corrected.
From where I sit you seem to want to push away any critique of structural racism, simultaneously decline to discuss it since its a self-evident truth, ignore any reference to stats as either inadequate or tainted by pre-existing viewpoints and also reject hypotheses that attempt to balance for location (Wollongong, Vaucluse)
as ‘not meaning much’ also ignore similar non-racist opportunistic crimes (old women, home invasion) and also flatly reject opportunism as any explanation at all since its answered by structural racism.
Your structural racism silver bullet has slain all contenders.
Its not only a social theory, its a magic wand.
If you have the inclination to respond to @52 I would be grateful. Think of me as a struggling student.
If you have the inclination
I’d merely point out, once again, that socio-economic status and race are intertwined.
That’s no doubt true, but it’s not stopping many groups getting racism directed at them even if they are not creating any problems and even if they live in rich suburbs. For example, in Melbourne, there are lots of Jewish people living in a small number of rather well to do suburbs (East St Kilda, Caulfield, Elwood, etc.). I don’t have any data on it, but I doubt they are creating very much crime at all (I doubt they ever have), and you certainly don’t get harassed by Jewish gangs if you live in those suburbs (I’ve lived in one of those suburbs, and I’ve never bumped into a Jewish gang). This doesn’t stop them having to have permanent security on some of their Synagogues. So SES is no preventative here. I imagine the same would be true of some of the Chinese community. At least the last survey I saw (which admittedly was ancient), showed that Chinese immigrants create less than 1/4 of the amount of crime that the average Australian does, and I’ll assume the second generation, who are generally quite well off, are not creating their fair share either. However, my bet is that this doesn’t stop them getting harassed, being told to go home, etc. (indeed, I don’t need to guess — and off topic, you can see some of the consequences by the amount of complaining people do when Chinese professionals won’t move to racist backwaters). Thus whilst I think SES does play some role in racism, high SES is certainly not stopping groups from getting their unfair share of it, and nor is living in high SES areas. This is why I think racism in Australia is quite pervasive and that the role of SES is over stated — I don’t think it’s just poor oppressed males that are the cause of a lot of it.
Baraholka,
My understanding of Mark’s “structured racism” is anytime a race has different outcomes from the average person that it’s deemed the “system’s” fault and labeled as structured racism, regardless of whether race is just correlative or actually a causative factor. Which puts it at odds with the definition of “racism” which is only focused on causative relationships.
Look Kersebleeters, forgive me, but the old adage is: People in glass houses should not throw stones. The fact that your glass house there is full of cracks and has therefore hardily withstood a few hailstorms, suggests its pretty well made, probably fortified glass, and so, the Indians can throw as many boulders as they like, see???
In other words
????!!!!
OH COME ON Kersebleepters.
I read and read and read but just have to come back to this cracker. What manner of man be this, that be not human? Of what horror do you now spake?
Not another race being made up is it?
“The fact that your glass house there is full of cracks and has therefore hardily withstood a few hailstorms, suggests its pretty well made, probably fortified glass, and so, the Indians can throw as many boulders as they like, see???”
You sure you want to stand by that position, Case? If not, I’ll give you fair time to evacuate, just as Sherman gave to Hood. Look it up.
Aw, what the hell, go for it JaperZ. Gimme what you got.
Structural racism, like other forms of structural inequality, is identifiable by quantifiable differences. Signifiers of structural inequality are frequently arrayed around differences measurable against class, ethnicity, gender, sexual and other forms of both subjective and objective identity. In the case of Aborigines one of the classic signs of difference was ‘special treatment’ from the state polices: too much ‘special attention’ and too little protection by the law.
It appears to be the case that Indian students in Melbourne are getting too little attention paid to their claim that they are getting ‘special treatment’ from racist elements in Melbourne. They say that they are victims of racist attacks. The polices and politicians are saying no its not. In the absence of police data to show that the Indians are wrong about a racist element to the attacks the forces of the state are denying the account given by the victims themselves. WTF? In failing to acknowledge the legitmate accounts by Indian students of the conditions of their lives the police and other sections of the state are failing in their duties.
Remember how long it took for women and children to be the full protection of policing and the full protection of the law to which they are entitled from DV? When looking to identify inequality it is by looking for the only thing that links patterns of distribution of inequality which is relative powerlessness of those experiencing the inequality. An easy way to start that process is by listening to what they are saying about their experience. Like the Indian students who say they are subject to racist attacks. Not real hard, is it?
Anyway, like I said, feel free. I’ve been waiting for one such as you. And you’ve read enough now to have an opinion on structural racism. You can give an opinion on that too if you like. Do you agree with Depisis? Or Mark?
Baraholka @ 98, and desipis @ 100,
Let’s say, you know, hypothetically speaking of course, that in the space of few short years, the Australian Government decided to overwhelmingly increase the number of student visas made available to young Indians, and to dramatically ease the pathway from those student visas to obtaining permanent residency – ostensibly, because the Australian Government determined that we have drastic skills shortages in hospitality, hairdressing, pastry-making etc
And, let’s say, as a direct consequence of those policies, and the financial necessity derived from living overseas in a nation with a more expensive economy, and one which decrees a foreign student can legally only work a maximum of 20hrs a week, a high proportion of the young Indian students who purchased those visas and pathways to residency:
1) ended up residing smack in middle of notoriously crime-prone suburbs
2) were forced to commute notoriously crime-prone, dangerous routes to and from their studies in the evening/at night
3) were forced to take evening/night-shift jobs for a pittance in notoriously crime-prone, dangerous industries/workplaces
4) were forced to commute notoriously crime-prone, dangerous routes to and from their evening/night-shift jobs
5) experienced a dramatically higher than usual increase in the number of assaults and robberies against them, as compared to the general public, *and* the actual increase in their student numbers
Then, let’s say, hypothetically speaking, the Australian Government chose to repeatedly dismiss those assaults and robberies, by saying ‘No no noes! Those attacks were just opportunistic. Those young Indian students – the ones we actively invited, and encouraged, and promoted heavily to through advertising to relocate to and reside in our fair country with its endless plains to share – they were just *in the wrong place at the wrong time*’.
All in the very same space of a few short years.
That would be structural racism.
bravo Nick.
Nick:
So the government “forces” them to live in the same way that hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens live. How horrible.
Statistical evidence?
107
Well, no it wouldn’t, Nick. It would be that common thing, an unintended consequence of a policy.
There was no deliberate piece of social engineering which resulted in their being at risk of a higher incidence of attacks; these were a consequence of choices made by these students in taking up the opportunities offered.
I’m not sure that it is the government’s responsibility to say to incoming students, “Look, you don’t have enough money. This means you’ll end up in a poor suburb, where the crime rate is high, and will have to take a risky job, which will increase your chances of being attacked. I know you’re eligible otherwise, but don’t do it.”
People make choices, and there are consequences of those choices.
It’s not as if the government’s intention was to bring them here simply for the purpose of them being bashed.
Again (and one of my posts has been apparently stuck in moderation for a long long time, no idea why) there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the issue hasn’t been swept under the carpet but that, in fact, the police were well aware of the attacks long before the media were.
They investigated them, correlated them with available data, and concluded that the problem wasn’t a racially based one at all.
It’s ‘structural racism’ if you can show that there were other, safer areas where Indians could have lived, but these were denied to them; if there were other, safer jobs they could have taken up, but they weren’t employed in them; if there were other, safer ways of getting around and they weren’t able to make use of them.
Yes, perhaps governments should have planned better and provided more support for these students. Otherwise, it is hard to see what they could have done – provide alternate housing? different jobs? refused them entry to the country?
The idea that a type if racism is “structural” just means its not about the attitude of particular individuals (though these may be important in other ways) – but about the way certain larger forces (eg markets, policies, social attitudes, ideologies) interact to disproportionately disadvantage one “ethnic” or racial group.
In this case, the interaction of student visa work regulations, poor labour market regulations, high rents in safer areas etc are interacting to create a ‘racialised’ underclass of Indian/ Pakistani students employed in late-night service industries like 7-11s, taxis and fast food joints. They are vulnerable, have few industrial rights, and are easy targets for any resentments that may be held by sections of the permanent resident population.
Or as that great Peruvian playwright Heiner Mueller once famously wrote,
“or it’s all different…”
Mark, I think you have to be a little careful with this structural racism theory. For example, I could make a similar argument about humintarian visas. Follow this chain:
- humanitarian visas are more likely to be taken up by people from non anglo-celtic ethnic backgrounds.
- such people are also likely to be less skilled, on average, than the existing population in Australia and face other natural barriers to integration
- lower skills, exposure to trauma and those other barriers all contribute to such people being in the lower part of the income distribution
- being in the lower part of the income distribution means that such people are more likely to live in lower socioeconomic suburbs, which are associated with higher crime rates
- higher crime rates in these suburbs means that poor people from ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims of crime
- thus, recipients of humanitarian visas are victims of structural racism until the government finds a way to ensure that they are no more likely to be victims of crime than any someone from an anglo-celtic background
- this would be the case even if such people were not being singled out because of their ethnicity
- given the other factors at play, this would mean, changing all the factors that contribute to such people being more likely to be victims of crime – location, income, etc
- given that it is almost impossible for a government to achieve this, any policy that directly or indirectly exposes people from ethnic minorities to worse outcomes than the anglo-celtic community will be structurally racist for the forseable future.
- indeed, on this definition, any society is structurally racist while there is any welfare gap between people of an ethnic community and that country’s dominant ethnic group.
Pretty broad don’t you think?
And Conrad and Mark, on the statistical stuff – you simply cannot point to a bivariate correlation between two variables as evidence of a causal relationship when there are so many other confounding factors. That argument has got nothing to do with running perfect natural experiments, it is just basic statistics that you need to deal with the likely large omitted variable bias. All the correlation does is tell you that there might be a relationship, but it provides very weak evidence of one.
That’s the bit that amuses me, desipis. Let’s not even get started on the assault rates which Aboriginal kids endure.
Casey,
“Spake” be past tense, be it not?
Nick,
“ostensibly, because the Australian Government determined that we have drastic skills shortages in hospitality, hairdressing, pastry-making etc …”
That isn’t how I understand it. I thought the Government was looking for people to take up full degree courses, but the scheme got hijacked by private providers offering short vocational courses — often used as a back-door migration route.
“were forced to take evening/night-shift jobs for a pittance …”
Not necessarily. Foreign students may be taking such jobs for a reason:
a) They can’t work in most established professions because they haven’t yet got the relevant qualifications — they are students, remember.
b) Students — at least the ones doing serious degrees, rather than the trashy vocational courses — have contact hours during the day. They can’t work 9-to-5 and give their studies the attention they deserve. Part-time night jobs might therefore appeal from that perspective.
c) Foreign students don’t have the contacts and networks that local students would use to get part-time jobs — particularly in small business. This isn’t a case of racism necessarily, just of not being a local.
I agree that working night-shifts at the 7/11 or the servo is not what I’d call the ideal job. But what sorts of jobs would you consider suitable, in an ideal world, for full-time students?
desipis @ 108, and PDAA @ 114:
“So the government “forces” them to live in the same way that hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens live. How horrible.”
I don’t remember writing that anyone, or any government body, forced anyone else to do anything.
desipis, if you were referring to a figure of, say, 500,000 Australians, who live in those suburbs and work those jobs, that would be ~2.5% of the population.
I’ve no stats to back this up, but have no doubt there are significantly more than ~2.5% of the Indian student/ex-student population living “in the same way”.
Desipis @ 110:
“Statistical evidence?”
Well-canvassed previously here.
The Victorian Indian population increased by ~15%.
Assaults and robberies against Victorian Indians increased by ~40%.
The Victorian population in general increased by ~5%.
Assaults and robberies against Victorians in general increased by ~8%
Hence:
The statistics available are very limited, and they’re applied to the Victorian Indian population as a whole, and not just Indian students/ex-students.
I’d very much like to see figures for assaults and robberies against Victorian Indian students/ex-students alone.
Yes that be correct Kersebleptes. Twas rhetorical and intentional. But wait, Japerz, who I am most looking forward to drawing into this convo, will be along shortly to sort me out, don’t worry about that.
I see what you’re driving at LO, but I think you’re over-egging the pudding a bit with the analogy. I think its actually pretty straightforward.
Students visas have 20 hour maximums for work (because they are suposed to be studying).
But unlike most East Asian students (with exceptions), a lot of South Asian students (with exceptions) cant afford to get by with that limit.
So they work longer hours, for employers who KNOW they cant complain, and take advantage of it. Unlike a permananet residnet (including people a humanitarian visas) they have few rights, and risk being deported for breaking visa regs.
So they take jobs that no one entitled to welfare (eg our humanitarian entrants, other unemployed) would ever bother with. eg driving 12 hours shifts at effectively $10 per hour. They become a casual labour underclass.
What is the government supposed to do? What it normally does: regulate the labour market to protect workers. There’s not anything remotely controversial, hard, or unprecedented about that.
But it simply hasnt been done in the case of international students. And the poorer of these students – as we pretty well know for a fact by now – are Indians. Doing the jobs that no one else will do, in demonstrably public and isolated areas. And gov’t doesnt do anything, though it easily can – probably worried it will affect export income if they do.
Quoting myself on another thread:
Mehitabel @ 110:
Bingo!
OK, Lefty E, but that improved regulation is also going to catch the students working >20 hours, isn’t it? If the employers are now paying the full rates, and declaring everything to the ATO, as they should, it only takes a little data-matching to identify the students who are working >20 hours. And then it’s bye-bye for them as their visa gets revoked.
A good outcome?
Yes, a good outcome Paulus. The whole thing is a rotten borough, from dodgy college, to dodgy employer robbing em blind, to the potential for casual violence from racist idiots after the midnight shift.
It will mean the entire industry will have to think (for a change – and I really mean it when i say that they *never* do) about how international students are supported here, and parents back home will have to do the same, and be realistic.
It means employers cant get away with underpaying vulnerable visa classes. Once they have to play by the rules you’ll find all those sectors less dominated by one ethnic group, and less prone to attracting people looking for ethnic targets, or economic resentment from unemployed permanent residents.
Nobody jumps up and down about regulating 457 visas, or Pacific seasonal workers, or people on expired work visas – but its hands off the students? How convenient for dodgy colleges, and dodgy employers.
All upside, as far as I can see.
“And Conrad and Mark, on the statistical stuff – you simply cannot point to a bivariate correlation between two variables as evidence of a causal relationship when there are so many other confounding factors. That argument has got nothing to do with running perfect natural experiments, it is just basic statistics that you need to deal with the likely large omitted variable bias. All the correlation does is tell you that there might be a relationship, but it provides very weak evidence of one”
.
LO, you’re missing the design, which I explained. Here it is a gain, more simply:
.
1) You have two time points (or two regression lines using multiple time points if you prefer and have the data).
2) You have two categorical groups (Indian, Control).
3) This means you have a 2 (Time) * 2 (Racial group) ANOVA (assuming we only have 2 time points)
4) If you then get an interaction (say, violence against Indians goes up, but stays the same in you control group), you then have an interaction.
5) What the interaction suggests is that something is changing for one group, but not the other.
6) This is all the ANOVA tells you
7) However, you need some explanation for why one group goes up, but the other remains stable.
8) Who knows how you get your explanation, but you could interview the criminals or whatever. If they all said, and you believed them, “I target stores with Indians because I think they are easy targets”, you might conclude that it is stereotyping that is responsible for difference. Alternatively, if they said “I target stores with Indians because I hate them”, then obviously you can conclude something different.
.
This is just basic design LO. It’s not a bivariate correlation. It’s either a 2 * 2 ANOVA or two regression lines, both of which can tell you something meaningful (especially with other data).
@110 –
Yes, indeed, mehitabel, that would be why it’s structural racism. The whole point is that it’s not intended, but there are a heap of background assumptions which no one reflects on.
Excuse the smiley, I don’t know why it appeared!
It’s structural! ;)
Racist, Opportunist, Structurally Racist, Racialist, Indianist, Curry Bashing, Arab on Indian, Somali on Indian…. whatever.
Does anybody (except for a couple of more enlightened commenters above) think that no matter which title is used, that an actual crime has ben committed, & perhaps the Vic Police, & especially the Vic judicial fraterntiy, could grow a pair & actually have a go at doing something about it?
Conrad, I know what the ANOVA tell us, and I’m telling you, that for that ANOVA to be meaningful, you would have to include a host of controls because there are a range of reasons why the probablity of being subject to violence could change between the two groups that are nothing to do with racism. Unless those other factors are controlled for, you could get a race effect that is an artefact of the analytical approach and not statistically robust. In the absence of those controls it is not much better than a bivariate correlation.
This is similar to the dispute we had on the thread about corporal punishment – from what I can tell you from both threads is that you are prepared to draw stonger conclusions from weak statistical analysis than I am. I’d rather be more circumspect and say that until analsyis is undertaken that examines the role of other confounding factors in more detail, the link with race is merely a weakly supported hypothesis. As I also said on other threads, unless you were able to demonstrate that the only relevent difference between the control and subject group with respect to their exposure to such violence is their race, your ANOVA analysis above would not see the light of day in a reputable economics or statistical journal.
Lefty E – I don’t think I am overegging things because it is the logical conclusion from the arguments Mark and others are making. That said, I have no problem with the education market being better regulated to ensure that students travelling from overseas are given full information about the real value of those courses from some sort of independent authority. However, I also have no problem seeing low-skill workers working for low wages as long as the work conditions comply with legal requirements (not cash in hand, OH&S being obeyed, etc). Where that does not occur then I support the prosecution of employers not obeying the law.
Remember also, many of these students do these courses to help them to get into a country that they know will provide better opportunities for themselves and their families in the long-run. Consequently they are prepared to work under conditions that you might find degrading, but they might find acceptable given the alternatives.
For example, I will give you one potentially confounding factor. What if it isn’t that crime against Indians has gone up, but crime against people in places that Indians are more likely to be found? In a sense, what we are interested in is if there were two convenience stores within a neigbourhood with similar characteristics with regard to the attractiveness of committing a crime there (lighting, street position, etc) but one store had an Indian behind the counter and another had a Vietnamese person (just used as an example), would the store with the Indian be more likely to be robbed? And even that might not tell you that it was racist in nature because the Indian could also be targeted because they were regarded as less able to defend themselves and the store (thus they are being targeted because of their race not because of racial hatred put a perception of weakness).
All I am saying by this is that things are likely to be more complicated than some of the arguments made above and that without very good data it will be impossible to find out what is really going on. That matters for policy.
LO
you’ve reminded me of a point in relation to this discussion which has occupied my mind but never when at a keyboard – why aren’t there similar complaints from the Asian population? (BTW, for some reason, I never think of Indians as Asian – is it an Australian thing or just me?)
I would think (and now I’m engaging in non statistically verifiable – that I know of – off the top of my headery) from conversations/observations, that Asians are more actively discriminated against than Indians.
So why don’t we hear the same level of grievance from them?
Is it because ‘Asians’ are a diverse group whereas Indians do at least have a nation in common? A perception thing?
Just throwing it out there.
Mark, I see you’re refining your argument. We’re now not talking about racism against Indians, but against Indian students. So Australians aren’t racist towards Indians as such, it’s just Indian students who get up our nose?
You can’t do that (well, obviously you can, but you shouldn’t). Either Australians are racists who are cheerfully sticking the boot into all things Indian, and the focus just happens to be on students because of the recent death, or Australians are discriminating racists who demand to see a student ID card before going for the biff.
You’re undermining your whole argument. If it is only students, then that suggests it’s nothing to do with race but is to do with behaviour.
Anthony at @104, Nick @106 and other learned Prodders:
Thanks for the rundown on Structural Racism. Appreciated.
Structural racism, like other forms of structural inequality,
is identifiable by quantifiable differences.
Structural inequality. Now that’s a far more accurate description
of the predicament of Indian students.
The issue I have with this term ‘Structural Racism’ is that it
empties the important concept of racism of meaning. Once you shear
racism from the concepts of fear/hatred/inferiority/superiority
based solely on race then you are losing the core of what racism
means and implies.
A similar discussion occurred around the use of ‘Genocide’ to discuss
the policies and practices of Anglo settlers towards Australian
Aboriginals. Some intellectuals were far too free with this crucially
important concept, applying it to all or most phases of Australian
race relations. Other (sympathetic) intellectuals demurred, noting
that ‘Genocide’ was too powerful and important a term to be applied
without precision.
In my opinion, Robert Manne demonstrates superb
sensibility in his handling of the term ‘Genocide’ in Australian
race relations in his notable Quarterly Essay on the subject
“Bringing Them Home” applying it only to the immediate pre-WW2
period under A.O. Neville and to Tasmania.
The ineptitude of this term ‘Structural Racism’ is that it is applied
where no fear/hatred/racial motivation is present. Ipso Facto ‘racism’
is simply an incorrect description in such circumstances. Welcome
to the land of Humpty-Dumpty where words mean precisely what
intellectuals want them to mean, no more and no less.
An insistence on saying that racism exists witout
racist intent is foolishness. Not many except the converted are
going to listen to such sophistry and the practices and consequences
of racism are too deadly to be allowed concealment in academic fog.
But Inequality . Now you’re talking. Fairness, the fair go. That’s
the way to an Aussie’s heart. You tell Aussies that its not fair
that Indian students have no option but to put their head under some
thug’s boot just to pay the rent and you’ll get a fair go back in
the form of a couple of minutes listening. Because it’s true.
But Racism without racist motive ? What’re you smoking, mate ?
Indian students in Melbourne are getting too little attention paid
to their claim that they are getting ’special treatment’ from racist
elements
They may claim so, but its not true. Overland set up a special
operation in June 2009 especially to address the bashings and robbings.
I’ll bet it wasn’t the last one if only for the reason that the
Vistorian economy needs those students.
They say that they are victims of racist attacks. The polices and
politicians are saying no its not
Partially correct. Most students say the attacks are racist. A sizeable
proportion do not. Some have drifted to the ‘its racist’ line
to embarrass more action out of the State. (see Myriad). Of the community
leaders, most say its racist, some important ones do not, including
the Indian Consulate Committee Chairman. The cops do admit a racist element
but the pollies do not, hopeless spin doctors they are, protecting their
education cash cow.
BUT as galling to the Students as Brumby and Gillard’s
spin may be you can bet your eye teeth they want the problem
solved yesterday. Apart from the cash, Gillard is too decent to let
her spin prevent her from acting on the bashings. You think otherwise?
A very large problem has arisen of several years making.
It will not be solved in a day, but that does not mean nothing is being
done.
the only thing that links patterns of distribution of inequality which
is relative powerlessness of those experiencing the inequality
The Indian students have significant power, namely education cash cow dollars
and a government that is an important trading partner with Australia. They
are getting and will continue to get results.
As to the only thing (that causes inequality) in this case,
I think you should also be looking at unintended cumulative results of
policy, esp. poor supervision of private education providers, notably their
ridiculous self-serving understimates of Oz living expenses.
From Wikipedia:
Mr Punjabi is a former president of the University of Sydney Union.
So they work longer hours, for employers who KNOW they cant complain,
and take advantage of it
Lefty, its not evil for employers to give employees longer work hours
if they want them. The 20 hr rule is a sensible rule. Students are
meant to study. What should be fixed is the underestimate of Oz living
expenses. Do that and the foreign nationals will live in better
suburbs, won’t need so many crummy jobs and the problem will
be greatly reduced – despite Tim’s reluctance to agree that Indian
nationals would be safer in Toorak than Footscray :-)
@131 – I might have been commenting quickly, mehitabel, but the focus of the discussion has been on Indian students. I do recall having broadened it to include Indian nationals who aren’t students, but are rather residents, in some comments. But, for the life of me, I can’t see your point as to how then it would be ‘not racist’ and/or “to do with behaviour”. I’ve been attempting to point out that racism isn’t just as set of beliefs but embodied in a range of behaviours, including violent ones.
Behaviour of the victim, not the attacker – in the more general sense of ‘behaviours’, carrying no blame.
And argghhh….mega apologies…it was actually Nick who was wanting to refine it down to students!! My bad!!
Long threads can do that to you…
No probs, mehitabel.
Still not sure what you’re driving at, but it’s Friday night and I’m tired and had a wine or three before, so it could well be my haziness!
Baraholka@132,
Well said. It frustrates me how ‘academics’ choose to define concepts based on the most loaded words possible in an attempt to raise political motivations rather than choose the words that most accurately define it.
Although many Aussies will wonder why it’s not fair for Indian students to have that as their only option when many Aussie students have that as their only option too.
I’m not so sure they are unreasonable. From studyinaustralia.gov.au:
That seems quite reasonable. It’s more than I would have been spending as a student and is about the same as my recorded living expenses two years ago (including inflation adjustments).
Actually, we don’t, desipis. We try to define concepts rigorously. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, just quietly. Which is one of the reasons I’ve been pointing out that many of the statistics being bandied around are based on incommensurable measures which are wrongly conflated as if they were representing one concept. It’s got nothing to do with ideology, it’s just rationality.
There are also a lot of concepts (for instance, racism) which are not really operationalisable as constructs in quantitative research. Whatever variable one employs can only be a proxy.
From where I sit, it’s those who are so concerned to define ‘racist assault’ in such a way that it would only occur if the assailant made a signed confession in their own blood about having only one sole motivation, or something, who are the ones defining concepts with a highly political intent.
I also don’t know why you choose to put ‘academics’ in scare quotes. I have a PhD, I work at universities. I don’t put ‘police commissioner’, for instance, in scare quotes…
I recall a recent survey (2009) that used job applications to examine racial bias. It bore out the idea that having a name that was not anglo reduced your chances somewhat. Being an Aboriginal person was probably the biggest handicap. Is anymore evidence needed?
It wasn’t somewhat, I think, Patrickb, but quite markedly.
I might hunt the link down. I think it was research Andrew Leigh and Amy King did.
I’m sorry; the co-authors are Alison Booth and Elena Varganova. The paper is here:
http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/AuditDiscrimination.pdf
Casey,
‘Twas should have an apostrophe.
Just saying…
@140
Thanks Mark, I was too slack to track it down. I used “somewhat” as I didn’t want to inflame passions by using an adjective like “considerably” or indeed your own courageous choice.
How are the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan students in Melbourne going?
No sarcasm: I really haven’t heard anything about them.
“but I think you’re over-egging the pudding a bit”
Right on. I’d say there’s a meringue in the oven.
@143 – Very prudent, Patrickb!
@144 – I don’t think the people who talk about ‘curry bashing’ make much of a distinction between where on the subcontinent people come from!
Mark,
Well yes, I can’t argue with that!
But I was thinking of their own perceptions of how they are travelling.
Incidentally, when was the first recorded instance of the term “curry-bashing” being used? Is it peculiar to Australia?
It’s a good question, Kersebleptes. Perhaps some googling would disclose an answer or two, and maybe to the first recorded use of the term ‘curry bashing’; I’ve certainly only heard it very recently. Incidentally, the coincidence of Facebook’s expansion and its new searchability for groups really has made it much more clear how many people hold racist, nativist views. There’s some huge groups there along the lines of ‘We grew here, you flew here’ with numbers in the thousands, and I believe in one instance, tens of thousands. It’s making it clearer that such sentiments are held much more widely than far right groups and a bunch of surfers from the Sutherland Shire.
But it’s bed time for me and I’m all googled out!
Thanks, Mark.
I’ll have a google, but as you say- not tonight.
No probs! Let us know when you do!
Bara @ 132, good response, in particular your comments about structural inequality. But I think your analysis has one blind spot that explains why the two main aspects of this discussion are talking past each other.
You seem to be defining racism from first principles as inherently a conscious, deliberate act. Excerpting from @132:
In your formulation, racism is individual and agentic, by definition. If it’s inadvertent, unwitting, unconscious or just plain ignorant, it cannot be racist, in principle, according to you. So I can understand why a term like ‘structural racism’ would be meaningless to you, because a ‘structure’ is communal and pervasive. A structure can distribute outcomes and effects regardless of individual intention.
FWIW, I believe your definition of racism, as always and only a product of individual deliberate intent, is too narrow to be useful in understanding social phenomena and historical realities. For example, there are countless examples from colonial times of colonists who acted with genuine humane intent and goodwill towards colonised peoples. By your definition of racism, therefore they weren’t racist. Does this mean that the overall economic apparatus and structure of colonialism was not, dare I say it, structurallyracist? And that the inevitable outcome of the underlying economic, social and political relationships in colonial society produced outcomes that were patterned by race, even though there were many individuals actively working to achieve the opposite?
To the current question, without (I am certain) any racist intent whatsoever, Desipsis comes out with this remark:
Consider the presumption behind this statement. Desipsis is positing that the fact that both Indian and Aussie students face the same straitened circumstances might cause resentment (“not fair”!) among Aussies. Why should it? It couldn’t be economic jealousy, since every Indian student is a net contributor to the local economy, and their visa conditions ensure they can’t “take our jerrrbs”. So surely if foreign visitors and Aussies have similar prospects and circusmtances (even cruddy ones), isn’t that an example of the great Fair Go you were sermonising? I guess it would only cause resentment if the Aussies felt they had some greater entitlement than the Indians, for some reason, oh, I don’t know what it could be. It’s inadvertent, unwitting and unconscious, but it’s a presumption of privilege and entitlement, denoted by race (“we grew here, you flew here”). Since your definition of racism doesn’t extend to such unconscious acts, what term(s) would you propose to describe this resentment that Desipsis refers to?
(If it helps, I’ll throw in a comedic example…consider the stage character of Sir Les Patterson. You couldn’t find a character who acts with more goodwill and genuine bonhomie towards the world. Yet he’s irretrievably racist, sexist and every other -ist you can think of. His lack of awareness of such is a major part of what drives the humour. We can watch him say the most racist of statements and laugh at his lack of awareness. But your definition of racism would have it that Sir Les is just a nice bloke who’s misunderstood…I put it to you that this character is a particular example of dramatic genius, a caricature, but a profound one, of how we so often appear to others on the world stage :D
Sorry, TL;DR. Bara, to understand the discussion of structural racism (or sexism), all that’s needed is to accept (even if you don’t agree with) the notion that, in principle, it’s possible for somebody to act in a racist (or sexist) manner, even if they don’t personally bear any ill-will towards others on account of their race or gender.
A clear example in gender-based issues is our employment structure that presently makes women more expensive to employ than men, proximately because of maternity provisions but fundamentally because employment market structures and relationships are normalised around male workers, with female workers constructed as Other). Whilever we have an economic structure in place that makes hiring female labour, pound-for-pound more expensive and administrively onerous than male labour, we will see the outcome of this is in lower salaries and a more difficult employment prospects for women (to compensate for greater structurally created expense if/when they have children): all this despite the fact that most individual bosses (including female ones) have no conscious individual in-principle objection to hiring women to do the same jobs as men, for the same salary (and to be crystal-clear, this isn’t an argument for doing away with maternity provisions, it’s stating that the present underlying logic of employment markets means that maternity provisions raise the price of female labour, thus entrenching a form of disadvantage for women that is 100% contrary to the express aim of maternity provisions).
So when you hear a random wild-eyed lefty raving on that capitalism is inherently racist and sexist, such examples as above are what’s driving the thesis, even if your interlocuter has forgotten the substance of the argument and has resorted to mindless repetition of ideology ;)
“……and a bunch of surfers from the Sutherland Shire.”
This is an outrageous slur of the good manners and attitudes of surfers everywhere!
We demand a retraction immediately!
Without statistical proof of the surfer:ignorant bogan:skin head yobbo ratios in the baying mob at Cronulla there is no evidence supporting your uncalled for Lover of Mother Ocean denigration.
We demand satisfaction sir!
Without you taking corrective action we will see you at dawn – as long as the surf isn’t up.
Retracted. I did say “a bunch”, not all. For the record, I used to spend a fair few summers with my cousins at Cronulla! Not a surfer, though. ;)
Mercurius:
Actually what I was positing (or at least trying to) was that because Indian students are in the same circumstances as Aussie students it would be considered “fair” by Aussies, in contrast to the claims made in these threads that we’re treating them unfairly. What would cause resentment would be giving special treatment or taking action because of the plight of Indian students while ignoring the plight of the Aussie students in the same boat.
Mercurius,
Actually that’s according to six online dictionaries I’ve just checked and (at least from my experience) common understanding of the word.
I don’t think it’d be meaningless, it’d just be something along the lines of the apartheid or racial segregation.
SATP @ 128
The whole point of the failure of government to secure anyone’s safety is obscured by the apparent need by some to define ‘racism’ so broadly that we are all caught in the net…which then nicely ensures that the term is meaningless…which then makes what we all thought was racism just that bit harder to see amidst the confusion.
Or as you point out, by shifting the debate away from the need to make public transport safer for those who use it (of any race, creed or religion), any action to remedy the problem as felt by the victims is avoided.
Hm. That might be considered racist too, surely?
@156:
Sorry Desipsis, same ****, different flies. The idea that giving extra assistance, public attention, or sympathy to Indians who are being assaulted constitutes “special treatment”, embodies a racist prerogative of local ‘we grew here’ entitlement. Or are you having difficulty expressing yourself? Who is ‘ignoring the plight’ of the Aussie students?
It’s been suggested upthread by Mehitabel, in all seriousness, and quite despicably in my view, that being assaulted is a ‘consequence of choices’ that the Indian students make in coming here. In “choosing” not to rent a flat in Toorak. In “choosing” to work at the 7/11. In “choosing” to try and take a new direction in their lives, as young hopeful teenagers. Do you really not see a problem with such sentiments, or the unconscious racism that drives it? Sotto voce: that they wouldn’t have got bashed if they’d stayed in Mumbai where the little brown people belong.
Compare and contrast:
When Australian travellers are arrested and jailed, or worse, overseas for actually committing serious crimes in the country they are visiting, domestically the view that they are facing the ‘consequence of choices’ is very much in the minority, and faces strong headwinds. The dominant discourse in local media channels focuses very much on the shortcomings of the legal systems and the cultural and parochial blind-spots “over there”. There are calls to boycott “their” tourism centres. Whereas, here when innocent visiting students are assaulted, some people are trying to fit the ‘consequences of choices’ line onto the victims of the crime.
Maybe you don’t think that’s a racist dichotomy. But I reckon the shoe fits perfectly.
So, this is a call to NO special treatment for special races, because that’s fair then? Well I suggest that this call to sameness avoids the reality of the effects of existing in “different socio-political contexts in differently marked bodies” ((Wadham, Whitening Race, 201).
About this resentment this special treamtment might cause: Does this raising up of the “Aussie” as the discriminated against segment of the community, when others are given what is perceived to be special treatment, remind you of a recent political moment in our recent political history?
Just wondering.
All this inane twittering about “structural” racism is just certain academic types trying to leverage these incidents to feather their own theoretical nests, to try and take discursive ownership. It is obscene. Since I was here last another two threads have been posted, each not learning from the others.
Let’s nip this “structural” racism con in the bud now.
1. The implication of your “structural racism” narrative is quite simple. Indian students need to stop coming to Australia without enough money. When I went to study in the US, I had to show proof that I had enough money to live on. Also you need an understanding of who owns many of these 711 and Burger Kings – The character Apu was not invented out of thin air. That’s right. A lot of these kids have these employment arrangements sewn up even before they leave home through kinship and other networks.
2. The abuse of statistics above where someone thought they could construct an ANOVA table by assuming the exact opposite of what the data and the bleeding obvious tell us. There is no such thing as a naive binary – Indians and “the Others”.
3. What this ideological imposition confirms is that the Cultural Studies moonies here have no idea about the socio-spatial cultural dynamics of global multicultural cosmopolitan cities like Sydney and Melbourne. It is simply not good enough to continually try to divert the analysis away from the realities of and data from Sydney and Melbourne to a much less developed and far from cosmopolitan town like Brisbane.
4. The cultural naivety is incredible. No one has mentioned the classic Indian/Pakistani form of violence – pouring kerosene over someone and setting them alight. No one has mentioned the significant violence and muggings perpetrated by gangs of Koori kids; no one has mentioned the great anomosity betweeen Hindus and Muslims; no one has mentioned the great anomosity between Muslim Arabs and black African Christians whose refugee status has much to do with genocidal pogroms by their Arab Muslim overlords; no one has mentioned the outer western suburban division of male youths into various racial/ethnic gangs and their inter-gang fighting which terrorises all.
Rather than sitting in your bedrooms flicking through passe Cultural Studies readers, please travel a bit – both overseas and to the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. And please stop those who post “quoting myself from another thread…” Even reading the papers would help you. Then you might have heard about the recent murder of an Indian man by his Indian employees.
If this is the standard of academic “thinking” in Australian universities, we are in serious trouble.
Mercurius
I don’t know where you live. But outside Mosman, Woollahra, and Toorak, “Aussies” are every colour under the sun and come from all over the world. You need to get out more if you wish to be taken seriously.
@162 – Charming, just charming.
For most of the comment, see the section in the post:
As to this:
Well…
And:
But…
Tu Quoque much?
And, of course, the point of this thread should be dissing ‘academics’ (yes, the scare quotes are necessary – De Beauvoir’s Devilish Discourses of Doom, Derrida Rises From The Grave!, The Ghost of Foucault Walks!; it should be a Hammer horror movie!). It’s nowt to do with people being bashed, harrassed, killed. Perish the thought! It’s all about common sense v. teh latte left elites with their high falutin’ French theories! Isn’t it?
Mark
I can see I am banging my head against a brick wall. You STILL don’t get it. My entire post was not at about Other Countries (which by the way, ARE worse), but about the realities on the ground in western Sydney and Melbourne. Once again your post shows you have no understanding of these places, and when you are told you refuse to budge. And yes you do exhibit that sterotype academic cluelessness of globbing onto whatever obscuritanist theoretical twaddle that is currently fashionable. But as these threads show, you are praying to false prophets. You say you have a PhD. Having completed some Social Science work in the US, I will take a guess that your PhD is from a new Cultural Studies Australian former CAE. This tosh would not pass muster at even the most ordinary US Social Science program. You would FAIL.
That’s where you learnt about ‘naive binaries’? You know, like ‘latte lefties’ and ‘teh common peeps’?
Thanks for the ad homs, why are people so unklind? Have a nice day, now.
His name is actually Dr Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Ph.D, if you please.
Another “”"”"”"academic”"”"”"”" see?
Oh I told you to bring half the bottle, and you didn’t and now look what happened.
I wasn’t dissing academics. I was dissing political activists who pretend to be academics to try to give their political position the apparent integrity of an independent academic one.
Mercurius:
Giving them assistance, public attention and sympathy to someone because they were assaulted is ok, but doing so because their Indian is special treatment. People have always been getting assaulted and robbed while travelling late at night, but now there’s a big outcry because someone noticed it’s happening to Indian students? That’s special treatment.
LO:
I don’t disagree with you that there are lots of potential confounds — all of which would be handy to investigate if one could. Some are obvious, like those you pointed out, and many are non-obvious. I think where you and me differ is that I think it’s very hard to collect data in many social science problems (like this one especially), and so you need to think about how big potential confounding effects are, and if they are not very big, then you can safely ignore them. Thus you should really be thinking in a more Bayesian type manner, where you look at probabilities of possible causes, and not the sort of “significance level” world that we unfortunately teach too many people. If you don’t do that, you end up with sit-on-yours-hands syndrome, where you never do anything because the perfect set of data is simply too hard to collect.
For example, if I was going to answer the question, I wouldn’t go and try and collect every possible confounding variable — this is impossible (note that I would try and collect the obvious ones, like frequency). I’d much rather use a multi-level analysis (say, data from different cities), and that way if you got interactions at different levels it would be far easier to rule out possible explanations as you get comparative data in different contexts.
On this note, it’s seems pretty obvious to me that you can’t just use frequency (so I don’t buy any of the X% of the population gets victimized arguments). This is because you could quite conceivably have effects going both ways — for example, maybe we don’t see a rise in victimization above the population mean, but this might due to Indians becoming more careful, and not because the context has remained the same. Obviously you’d have to investigate this, however, my bet is that these sorts of variables are not static at all — East Asian students, for example, no doubt cop a lot of racism too (in fact, my bet is that the white Australian attitude towards them is more negative than the attitude towards Indians), but, anecdotally, they’re more careful about getting into bad situations (e.g., don’t live in crappy suburbs, don’t go out as much at night etc.) quite possibly because there is a much longer context of them being here. Thus, rates of victimization arn’t a good measure of racism.
@164 And Mark, from the Cultural Studies reader of Whoever-T-F @ 162, how did you miss “socio-spatial cultural dynamics”? I nearly choked on my cornflakes!
Meanwhile, @162:
1.
Indian students need to stop coming to Australia without enough money.Translation: they wouldn’t have got bashed if they’d stayed in Mumbai where the little brown people belong.Really? Indian students need to stop coming to Australia without enough money? And here I was thinking that people should stop bashing Indian students. Guess we’ll just agree to disagree on that one.
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
I bin everywhar man, I bin everywhar, I walked those storm canals man, I breathed the Leagues Club air: I bin to…
(pause, huge breath)
…Cabramatta, Bankstown, Harris Park, Parramatta, Sefton, Minto, Padstow, Yagoona, Narellan Vale, Punchbowl, Richmond, Granville, Merrylands, Auburn, Lidcombe, Belmore, Campsie, Hoxton Park, Campbelltown, Picton, Wetherill Park, Mt Druitt, Kellyville, Kenthurst, St Albans, Windsor, St Marys, Newport, Warriewood, Glenorie, Dural, Engadine, Heathcote, Miranda, Kurnell, Rockdale, Oatley, Kogarah, Enfield, Strathfield, Canterbury, St Georges, Janalli, Maroubra, Malabar, La Perouse, Lucas Heights, Silverwater, Homebush, Ermington, Meadowbank, Carlingford, Cronulla, Concord, Burwood, Kingsford, Kingsgrove, Baulkham Hills, Seven Hills, Rooty Hill, Randwick, …
(pause, huge breath)
Wagga Wagga, Lithgow, Bathurst, Orange, Woolgoolga, Bellingen, Lismore, Nyngan, Balranald, Gunning, Dalton, Mudgee, Wilcannia, Grafton, Parkes, Newcastle, Raymond Terrace, Bulahdelah, Taree, Wingham, Gloucestor, Forster, Seal Rocks, Stroud, Dungog, Maitland, Tamworth, Singleton, Eden, Narrandera, Cooma, Thredbo, Jindabyne, Merimbula, Tathra, Bermagui, Bega, Narooma, Nowra, Braidwood, Quenbeyan, Berry, Gerringong, Jamberoo, Kiama, Bundanoon, Bowral, Mittagong, Goulburn, Taralga, Wollongong, Katoomba, Gosford, Terrigal, The Entrance, Umina, Wollombi, Peats Ridge, Pitt Town, Putty, Broke, Cessnock, Scone, Nelson Bay, Pindimar, Medowie, Karuah, Port Macquarie, Kempsey, Armidale, Dorrigo, Crescent Head, South West Rocks, Nambucca, Clybucca, Urunga, Sawtell, Casino, Ballina, Byron, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Murwillumbah, Leeton, Yamba…Hay!
I bin everywhar man, I bin everywhar, I walked those desert tracks, man, I breathed the Alpine air: I bin to…
(pause, huge breath)Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Darwin, Canberra, Geelong, Traralgon, Orbost, Lakes Entrance, Mornington, Warnambool, Hamilton, Horsham, Mildura, Goolwa, Victor Harbour, Ballarat, Ernabella, Murray Bridge, Elizabeth, Burra, Alice Springs, Yulara, Amata, Hermannsburg, Santa Teresa, Burleigh Heads, Coolangatta, Mackay, Cairns…
(pause, huge breath)
New York, Bangkok, San Francisco, Tokyo, Chiang Mai, Osaka, Hiroshima, Ho Chi Minh, LA, Pasadena, Takayama, London, Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown, Dunedin, Dublin, Christchurch, Hamilton, Gainesville, Rarotonga, Suva, Noumea, Montreal, Niagara, Poughkeepsie, Newark, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Worcester, Salisbury, Stratford, Bath, Singapore, KL, Penang, Hat Yai, Kota Bharu, Jakarta, Krabi, Ayutthaya, Hilo, Honolulu, Ensenada, Kyoto…
Yes indeed. I mean, just for starters, you’ll get terrible wrinkles from all that sneering and brow-furrowing you do!
“why are people so unkind?”
Perhaps its because you’re an annoying bombast with nothing to offer in this debate.
On your “points”:
1. Irrelevant. The issue is not how they get the jobs, its that the governmetn has turned a blind eye to enforcing the visa limitations.
2. Unreferenced assertion. First year essay fail mode.
3. Many commentators here are from Melbourne. The thread and others are largely about Melbourne – lesser extent Sydney. Brisbane has hardly been mentioned once.
4. That’s because we’re talking about violence against Indian students. See topic of thread.
At Post 64 I made some comments (perhaps too generalised).
I see one or two have similar threads.
If citizens and visitors have a good understanding of the rules of engagement then racism and/or complacency may not be such an issue.
EG: If you study in the USA or France, you dont work – you are expected to support
yourself (whether by own income or scholarships). You dont take jobs that citizens may require. End of section.
A similar long term arrangement here for all future International students (which granted, would seem draconian at first) might take the heat out of the rascism issue. Im not sure carrots such as Permanent Residency help.
It is often difficult to make reasonable decisions isn’t it?
Mercurius
I knew that trying to approach this topic rationally – that is, trying to look at the data and analyse it – would lead to accusations of racism.
So it’s OK to assume that Australians are racist and therefore attacks on Indian students are ipso facto racist without checking to see if there are in fact other explanations?
I have very carefully, in virtually every post, made it clear that I believe racism exists and that some of these attacks were likely to be racist in nature, but the simply fact is that the stats have been analysed by both the police and academics and no supporting evidence can be found to demonstrate that these attacks are racist.
You have also (surprise) taken my post out of context. I was answering the assertion that somehow, the government was responsible for these attacks by encouraging these students to come to Australia. My argument was that you cannot blame the government for the choices made by people and the alternative was to prevent people making these choices at all.
If, when there is no evidence to suggest these attacks are racist, you continue to assume that they are, then you are racist (inversely) yourself.
And, btw, as someone who has been the victim of racism, has a ‘funny name’, whose father was one of the first post war immigrants to this country, who grew up in a community with one of the highest percentages of Aboriginines in Victoria, and whose family has a tradition of support for the aboriginal community, you’re barking up the wrong tree. (Oooh, but I’m unaware that I’m racist, so I must be….)
Just skimming through this now-sizeable thread; there seems to have been little, if any discussion of what possible role the “squeaky wheel” effect may have played in all this.
Then again, my familiarity with sociological technical terms is slight, so maybe I missed it…
Boo hoo. And I knew that approaching this topic theoretically – that is, trying to discern some cultural biases and blind spots – would lead to immediate, strident and huffily indignant claims that, after comprehensively analysing years of crime data for 5 whole seconds (that’s 5000 milliseconds!) there is no proof positive of racism (we arksed dem why dey did it, and dey sed nuffin!), nothing to see here, move along people.
I mean, we’ve got police chiefs and politicians shouting from the rooftops that the attacks weren’t racist, when in many cases they haven’t even apprehended a suspect and interviewed them? So HTF can they be ruling out motives when they haven’t even laid hands on a perp? One could be forgiven for thinking that their denials and disavowals are a tad premature, and therefore not credible.
I guess it must be, because that’s what you do in your very next sentence…
…and yet disavow that statement in the very next breath…
You’re all over the place, Mehitabel. What, exactly, IS, bothering you about this discussion? You believe racism exists and that it’s likely some attacks were racist in nature but…you don’t think the evidence shows that. Ohh…kay. Whatevs.
It’s odd how stridently positivist some of the participants are about the evidence. ie. without proof positive, the negative hypothesis is therefore proven(?). Or is your null hypothesis that the attacks are not racist? What a biased analytic framework. Surely the null hypothesis should be that the motive variable is unknown?
I love the term ‘opportunistic’. It’s like, what, people just spontaneously decide to bash and rob somebody? There’s no history leading up to that point? There’s no context? It all happens in an existential vacuum, does it? I’m sorry, but in terms of usefulness for crime prevention and mitigation, “shit happens” is a lousy theory.
False binary. There are many policy alternatives in between offering student visas that necessitate scraping out a marginal existence while studying in Australia, and closing the door altogether. But, missing the point in any case, it *is* despicable, in my view, to infer the bashings are the ‘consequence of choices’ by the victims.
If you like. I just think that the absence of statistical proof positive in no way proves the negative. At best, the matter remains open to enquiry. The speed, stridency and huffiness with which some people wish to stifle that enquiry conveys to me a sense of cultural insecurity, or anxiety that there’s something to hide. But that’s just my spider-sense tingling. And since I’m “inversely racist” (ooh, sounds painful!), as you’ve so convincingly argued, what would I know?
RE: your personal anecdote. I’m sorry that you’ve had painful experiences with racism yourself. Unfortunately, such experiences don’t have an immunological effect. Being subjected to racist treatment is not a vaccine. I’ve personally known some very racist Holocaust survivors.
Mercurius,
I think there’s a big difference between saying that there are a few racist thugs in Australia, and saying that Australians in general are racist or that Australia has a problem with racism.
To those who claim that Indian students wouldn’t be assaulted if they didn’t live in “dangerous areas” and engage in activity late at night, just as a data point I can observe myself, Nitin Garg was killed only metres from the Hungry Jacks in our local park – where our teenagers go when they get their rare HJ’s fix, and walk home through the same park. I also walk the dogs in the dark there regularly.
Not exactly Dangersville, although “Footscray” for some is code for “Ewwww!”
“Just skimming through this now-sizeable thread; there seems to have been little, if any discussion of what possible role the “squeaky wheel” effect may have played in all this.”
It’s funny isn’t it. I don’t remember too many on here complaining about everyone else (white people, asians etc) getting bashed & robbed in dodgy areas late at night but as soon as it happens to a few Indian students it’s the end of the world. Unfortunately a few in here seem to have been sucked in which of course was the whole point. India flexing it’s muscles.
Mercurious @171: that was a belly laugh. Thanks.
And @176 as well: in the absence of evidence that the attacks are not racist the Police might like to listen to the views of the victims who assert that the attacks are racist motivated. Who else would know?
To put the entire issue in a broader perspective still: this is what happens when you deregulate a market. International education was barely regulated. Enter the spivs (and that dosn’t exclude sandstone universities). International student visas became a recognised back door route to residency then permanency. Enter more spivs. In the meantime these poor buggars are stuck living on next to nothing doing shitty jobs in hyper-exploited conditions and are copping street level violence from local disaffected tools who may or may not be anglo-celt ozzies. They may be local (other ethnicity) ozzies who recognise the cause of their grievance which is always, in this racist darlin’ nation, the last mob who got off the boat.
Course the attacks are racist. Course it is a racist country. Has everyone forgotten how Namatjira died?
As to whoever-it-was who reckons some respondents ought to get out more – get off the grass. I work in Parramatta which is highly multi-ethnic, grew up in an industrial town full of immigrant workers and their kids and have travelled extensively enough to know that racism is a common experience everywhere bar no place. The point is to understand the specifics of how racism works in Australia and to combat it because it exemplifies intolerable pre-modern thought that is unacceptable in a democracy which is built on a form of rough equalitarianism.
Mercurius
You obviously have a problem with people being open minded on an issue. I’m not contradicting, I’m qualifying, two totally different things. That is, I’m acknowledging racism may be a factor in a few rare cases, but that it’s not statistically significant enough to register on the radar.
I’m also open to persuasion.
And no, I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time on the issue, not a few minutes. I realise, of course, that no one should dare to comment on it unless they’ve got a degree in sociology or are currently working on the ground with Indian students or whatever, but hey, sue me.
As for cultural biases, I think it’s culturally biased – and racist – to theorise along the lines of: “He was attacked. He was Indian. Therefore he was attacked because he was Indian.” Surely defining all a person’s life experiences by the colour of their skin is racist? Surely it is NOT racist to consider whether factors other than a person’s nationality might have something to do with what happens with them?
Absolutely the motive is unknown. The statistics have been examined to see if racism is a factor and have come up with a blank (which, as I said before, doesn’t mean it wasn’t, just that it was statistically insignificant, not a difficult concept to grasp). Therefore, we have to fall back on other explanations.
The police, our government and (after a bit of discussion, including, I’m sure, waving around bits of evidence) the Indian government, have all concluded that the attacks are due to other circumstances, common to the lifestyle of the attacked students, other than the colour of their skin.
But to take the police and governments at their word, and assume that they’re acting on evidence and are not conspiring to hide the truth for their own nefarious means, would of course not be a tenable position for a lefty intellectual, who knows that whitey is inherently bad and that therefore anything that happens to anyone who isn’t white must fit into that hypothesis.
So the alternate argument is: “We don’t have any evidence as to motive but we know it’s because of racism. If the statistics aren’t showing this, then it’s because the racism is inherent in the system in such a way that attacks on Indian students are bound to happen in ways which can be statistically explained away by Teh Authorities. Anyone who criticises our hypothesis is obviously deluded and probably a victim of the hive mind.”
anthony nolan:
For the most part I’m not sure the victim will have an objective view of the motives of the offender. I’m going to put my money with the professionals who investigate these crimes everyday.
Desepsis: for years the Police minimised and ignored gay bashings and homicides in Sydney despite the victims saying they were the victims of homophobic attacks. They also ignored the claims of women that DV was real violence not some sort of private matter not subject to the rule and protection of the law. Women had to agitate long and hard and yes they said that the minimisation of the harm done was a result of patriarchal biases within the state. Aborigines too claimed (and still do) that they are the victims of Police violence and that this reflects the inherent racism of state services. The voices of the victims lead us to what is wrong, not statistics. Denial of the voices of those wronged is part of the culture of denial in Australia. We do it well.
Proposition in the headline of the thread “I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”
OK, I’ll have a go at summarising the rebuttals from the case for the negative, thus far:
1)Premature/Hasty: Police & some academics quoted as concluding the attacks are not racially motivated, when in some cases suspects are yet to be identified, let alone interviewed and apprehended, let alone brought to trial and had the whole matter examined by a judge and jury. That’s some fast police work. Well done lads!
2)Distraction/Irrelevance: Hey! Look! Over there! There are racist people in India!
3)Non sequitur/Ad Hom: If you assume the motives are racist, you’re an inverse racist. (And therefore what you say cannot possibly be true!)
4)Blame the victim: They’d all be safer if they moved to Toorak. Or worked in the City Library. Or stayed indoors. Or brought more money with them. Or, just to be sure, went back home.
5)Minimsation: Well, yes, OK, sure, there’s smoke. But no fire. Well, OK, there may be a few spot fires. But it’s not like we have a fire problem.
And a late entry…
6)Conspiratorial: “India flexing its muscles”? WTF? Jacques I expect better from you. Perhaps India should be thanking us for the wonderful opportunities we offer its citizens to be bashed, stabbed and murdered in such a lovely, safe, clean, modern, cosmopolitan environment as Melbourne? What a nice change of scene it must be for them. And yet they complain! Ungrateful whingers!
—-
Tim, so far I’d say your headline proposition is looking pretty safe.
Just like the fine investigative work done by the armchair detectives in this thread who concluded the opposite just as fast…
Is Racism (and the attendant complacency) a structural issue?
Humans like many other animals, desire boundaries. People are wary of what they dont really understand – the things that are outside the boundaries.
Why do we knowingly put people at risk? Because at any given time, fear, safety, necessity, and populism – are easier to deal with than rational thought.
What guides rationality – primarily – education, a range of acceptable rules/boundaries and understanding.
Australians need to decide on these things. We do a great diservice to ourselves and our guests otherwise.
When I first became aware of this issue, several months ago, mainly by regularly reading in the paper that these attacks were happening and were racist in motivation, I accepted that premise at face value.
Before rushing to judgement, however, I thought it would be wise to check a few things.
1. Was there any evidence to suggest that assaults on Indians were greater than those on the general population? (rather than simply reported more).
The answer is, yes they are.
2. If so, were these assaults greater than one would expect for people in particular circumstances? (Place of work, for example).
Apparently, from all I’ve been able to find, no they’re not.
Willing to be proved wrong on 2, please do so providing evidence.
However, despite the apparent lack of evidence, I am keeping an open mind, based on the fact that the statistics may not be telling the whole story – for example, the assaults on people working in convenience stores may have gone down by more than they have (personal assaults in Victoria have dropped dramatically across the board) if the people working there hadn’t been Indian.
That isn’t proveable either way, so, as I said, it makes sense to leave the question open.
Anthony, crime rates are dropping in Victoria, precisely because the police have learnt from examples like the ones you cite. There is plenty of evidence (www.police.vic.gov.au provides multitudes of references) that the police study the statistics, talk to groups at risk (and even groups who perceive themselves as being at risk!), identify problem areas and situations, and try and come up with solutions.
Targetted action by police is one of the reasons why Victoria is the safest state in Australia.
Mercurius@184 – seems like you’ve waited for the thread to degenerate to make your taxonomy. Where does the point made repreatedly by Labor Outsider fit into that list?
Helen@178 – and West Footscray is Footscray-code for “eeww!”
Conrad – thanks for the clarification – so I guess I should put it like this – I think the confounds in this case have the potential to be very important – so, I stand by my point that without better data there is not enough evidence to conclude that Indian students have been victims of racist attacks in Melbourne rather than victims of crimes of opportunity. Also, one has to be a little careful with Bayesian analysis – priors can be subject to important biases.
nick@#107 said:
No one held a gun to their head, forcing them to come here.
There are no racist structures in Australian state, apart from the Intervention which falls under the head of the race power under s 51 of the Constitution. And most people agree with it.
Therefore there is no “structural racism” causing a disproportionately high incidence of assaults on the Indian community, the idea is just a figment of the overheated sociological imagination.
I’m sorry, I’m with SATP and Mole on this. Whatever you call it, real crimes are going on, they seem to be concentrated in particular areas and around public transport… and the Victorian Police have been caught with their collective undies down and are thus busily arse covering. You can probably add the Victorian judiciary to that as well.
One thing I would be interested in seeing is some sentencing data for street assaults in Victoria. A few years ago Qld made a point of locking up people who do this kind of thing for longer, and as we now know (thank you Levitt and Donohue), imprisonment reduces crime. Maybe something similar has to happen in Victoria.
Dunno, Nick @184. LO’s been putting his/her case well, IMHO. It would help if the statisticians could explain in lay terms what *would* constitute enough evidence in their ruggedly positivist view of the world. You know: set some credible, achievable, falsifiable goal-posts, and don’t move them.
As for the ‘leaping to conclusions’ accusation. I have not “concluded”, in the sense of ‘absolutely certain, this question will not be revisited’, that all the attacks were/are racist. But I am very definitely on-side with those who are suggesting that the structure of our economic, social and political apparatus can and do distribute outcomes that are patterned by race, regardless of the intentions of individuals.
Some of the respondents here seem allergic to this idea, and viscerally so. They want it taken off the table altogether, so we can talk about things they find interesting, like how racist some people are in India, or how students don’t come here with enough money, or how the police have already investigated this and everything’s fine, so go back to sleep you troublesome person you. Reactions of that level of preciousness do little dispel the perception that there’s “something to hide”.
The socialised concept of racism is invalid to many respondents, who have defined racism so narrowly that it has no meaning at all beyond the level of the individual: in their view, a liberal democratic society like ours cannot possibly be “racist”, by definition, only individuals. At a stretch, an explicit political framework and national constitution with a racist programme at its heart (eg. apartheid, nazism) can be racist, but in modern western liberal democracies, racism at the societal level is impossible, in principle, they would like to believe. This invalidates racism altogether as an explanatory or analytical framework in criminology. Why would anybody wish to do so? Cui bono?
I’ve also been helpfully informed by some interlocuters that I’m an “inverse racist” who has “a problem with people being open minded on an issue”. Maybe. But I also have a problem with people raising hasty, irrelevant, non-sequitur, distracting, blame-the-victim, conspiratorial points on an issue, so there you go. When responses get down to personal speculations of that kind, it usually means I’ve touched a nerve.
I think what this issue has highlighted is a massive cultural blindspot. There is an a priori assumption that societal/structural racism is impossible in a liberal democracy. That is a blind-spot of the same qualitative sort as the discredited notion that clergy sexual abuse is impossible because, you know, priests are holy. Yet we now know that the structures of the church supported and enabled predators. The responsibility for that situation went well beyond the level of individual criminals preying on children. I put it to you that in Australia we have a problem of a similar character as regards racism.
We even see the same attendent defense apparatus, like Desipsis suggesting that we shouldn’t place much store in what the victims say, because they’re not “objective” enough. That logic enabled us to ignore what the children were saying, for decades. Such willingness to ignore or silence the victims is intellectually bankrupt, even dishonest.
Tim’s headline of “…I’m complacent”, seems especially perceptive to me.
Sorry, but blind-spots are where the cockroaches breed, and the a priori belief that “we were a racist society, once, long ago, but we’re cured now,” is a biggie.
I have not “concluded”, in the sense of ‘absolutely certain, this question will not be revisited’, that all the attacks were/are racist. But I am very definitely on-side with those who are suggesting that the structure of our economic, social and political apparatus can and do distribute outcomes that are patterned by race, regardless of the intentions of individuals.
Yes, but this doesn’t go far enough. Why is it that I can’t attend a social gathering – and I’m an IT person who associates with mostly tertiary educated people, even though most of them in a vocational degree – without being forced to overhear some opinion of non-Anglo-Saxons that might have come out of the mouth of Alan Jones? Why is it that internet conversations in any forum to do with asylum seekers, or immigrants of any kind, reliably throw up bigoted and racist comments? Why is it that I regularly hear from the aforementioned relatively-educated* acquaintances that the Aussie culture (meaning, white Australians) is “under threat”? Don’t tell me this is simply “anecdotal”; it’s been happening almost daily for as long as I can remember.
People are asking, is this pervasive and society-wide trashing of residents from other countries (and the implications that if they weren’t there, peoples’ lives would improve – “taking our jobs”, etc) responsible for violence against these residents? Well, some of us hick non-statisticians have studied some history and we would kind of tentatively say, well hell yeah.
And the nature of this bigotry is that it doesn’t matter how many wise and well intentioned people you can point to on the other side; the bigotry creates its own deadly matrix for violence anyway.
190
scepticlawyer – what would be the point of looking at data on sentencing when you obviously don’t accept the data on anything else?
Victoria is the safest state in Australia (ABS) and the crime rate, particularly the rate of personal attacks, is falling. Victoria has now got the lowest crime rate for the last twenty years.
Which suggests that it is doing more right than it is wrong.
Victoria has achieved this result partly because it approaches crime prevention scientifically, looking at the evidence and acting on it. They go further, acting on perception and dealing with it, as well.
It would help if people such as yourself approached reporting from ‘The Herald Sun’ and its ilk with a bit more scepticism.
And BTW, this isn’t saying that ‘everything’s fine’ but expressing a confidence that the police will continue to take the sensible, evidence based approach to issues that they have in the past. It is clear from the available evidence (and the sequence of events can be followed on the Victoria Police site, but is also confirmed by other reports as well) that the police identified a problem, determined its nature, and took steps to deal with it.
It is obvious also that their initial response was the same as many of the posters here – that these were crimes of race. Thus their extensive work with the Indian community. It’s also obvious that they came to a different conclusion once the stats solidified, but this didn’t mean that they stopped dealing with the perceptual problem.
Of course, if you want a law enforcement agency to act on gut feelings and media hype rather than evidence, that’s your perogative. But all the evidence suggests that Vic Police are getting something very right.
It also suggests that they aren’t hiding things under the carpet, being quite prepared to make some embarrassing admissions over the years about their own shortfalls and shortcomings. Again, I’d rather a police force that admitted it got things wrong and prosecuted its own officers, then one which continued to defend its people and its position when the evidence was out there.
As for ‘structural racism’, as it is used in this blog, it seems to be a way of sticking to one’s set beliefs in the face of the evidence. That is, you know you’re right when you say the attacks are racist, and noone can prove you wrong, no matter what the evidence, because the whole system is structured in such a racist way that even the evidence is corrupted.
Not only is this incredibly conspiratorial, it shows a lack of intellectual rigour and terrible narrow mindedness.
So, back at you — what evidence would you accept before you believed that the attacks on Indians was not racist? (structural or otherwise)?
Or will you just admit that this whole thread is a waste of time, because you arrived here with a set position and expected everyone just to agree with you unthinkingly?
“because the whole system is structured in such a racist way that even the evidence is corrupted”…yes indeed….quite right….but hey! let’s just continue to bury our big white aussie heads in the sand and ignore the obvious structural racism threading thru our society…and like mehitabel make something completely barbaric sound just oh so reasonable…yuk..excuse me i need to puke
1. I don’t accept arguments for structural racism. Never have, never will. All they do is allow people to feel pious and good about themselves while doing nothing. I’d say something about fiddling while Rome burns but the analogy doesn’t quite fit.
2. I don’t think you can change people’s core beliefs. If they’re racist or sexist, they’re likely to stay that way.
3. I do think it’s possible to change people’s behaviour, and when it comes to things like this, that’s all that counts.
4. I don’t care why these crimes are happening. They could be happening because the crims think that all Indians are little green men from Mars. I doubt it, but having worked in the courts for a bloody long time, nothing would surprise me.
5. It wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve got a combination of poor policing and powder-puff sentences, and no amount of cheersquadding for the Victorian Police and judiciary will change that — they’ll have to fix it themselves.
6. I don’t read the Herald Sun.
7. Who gave you the right to be such a patronising git? Here’s a cluebat: you have some good arguments, but you’re not getting anywhere with them because you’re being a patronising git.
Skepticlawyer @ 196 Things like apartheid and the White Oz Policy are examples of what would be ‘structural racism’ imo. So personally think they need to be kept in mind and ruthlessly beaten around the head when they pop up. However, no evidence whatever posted that this is a factor in this case.
However, everything else you said – spot on.
Mercurius,
Of course there can be such patterns in the outcomes, but in order to demonstrate that these are caused by the structures of our economic, social and political apparatus you have to demonstrate that they aren’t caused by racial patterns going into the structures. Patterns outside the control of our society such as the relative wealth and risk appetite of the young aspirational students from a developing nation who would seek opportunities overseas when compared to the wealth and risk appetite of the average financially content person from a developed country.
Wanting all possibilities considered before concluding guilt; how unreasonable.
From the dictionary:
It’s quite possible for that belief or discrimination to form part of a social structure. However such beliefs and discriminations are not the only cause of “outcomes that are patterned by race”, so it would be incorrect to label one with the term to describe the other.
Again with the straw man.
I didn’t say that we should ignore the victims, just implied that we shouldn’t take everything they say on face value by saying they didn’t have the most objective take on the situation.
If you want to prove something its up to you to find such a set of goal posts and put together an argument to convince people that you have. Also, given that our understanding of society will constantly be changing/improving its always possible that a new idea or observation will move previously accepted goal posts.
“. I don’t accept arguments for structural racism. Never have, never will. All they do is allow people to feel pious and good about themselves while doing nothing.”
Er … who’s being a patronising git?
Mehitabel, SL has declared “never have, never will” accept the idea of structural racism, even as a thought-experiment. I trust you’ll be as strident in your denunciation of SL’s closed-mindedness as you are of my alleged offence in the same category?
I think the basic approach you are advocating is not without merit. Sure, let’s use whatever empirical evidence is available, let’s assess the operation and activities of Victoria police, and let’s give credit where it’s due. You do that all that very well. But you are, in my view, overly confident that your approach yields results so unassailable that it’s literally, in your words, a “waste of time” to continue the discussion with anybody who isn’t convinced by your evidence. My suggestion that the empirical positivist approach you adopt may have blind spots at the cultural/societal level is met with a level of hostility and vituperation that doesn’t accord with the cool rationality you espouse.
Likewise, Desipsis reaches for the dictionary and simply won’t countenance any discussion of a concept of racism that goes beyond the textbook, yet in the next breath wants to assure me that:
…unless the subject matter is racism, in which case the definition is set in stone for all time, apparently. Another case of “close-mindedness” for you to denounce, Mehitabel?
As for what evidence I will accept, I probably can’t give you an answer that is acceptable in empirical positivist terms, because I’m not approaching the question from the same epistemic basis as yourself. I guess my approach to racism (and sexism, and democracy, etc…) is informed by the fairly orthodox leftist idea that the project of “perfecting” society is never complete, never finished, always deferred, always yet-to-be, always a work-in-progress. We can always be less racist than we were in the past, while still having more work to do. So perhaps you are right that in the empirical positivist sense I don’t have a sound proof/disproof approach to racism. But my purpose is not to answer or dispel positivist-oriented propositions, it’s informed by a hope of continual progress in society. Is that approach really so deficient, so unutterably offensive that it should invite accusations of ‘inverse racism’, ‘closed-mindedness’ etc.?
And I’m really not meaning to be patronising. I’m coming off the back of 8 uninterrupted months of intensive tertiary and high-school teaching, so I’m probably a bit locked into a teacherly “patronising git” mode that is grating for adult interlocuters.
“I don’t accept arguments for structural racism. Never have, never will.”
What an astounding statement. No structural racism? Not even, as has been pointed out, apartheid or the White Australia Policy? Or, for that matter, laws which gave the government ‘special’ rights over the lives of Indigenous people, which still continue in Australia today?
Mercurius,
My problem isn’t with the concept, but with the poor choice of words you use to label the concept.
There’s nothing I particularly disagree with in that idea. However I do have a problem with how you are applying it. If we are going to attempt to improve society then we need to correctly identify the problems we have and not just assume the problems we have now are the same as the ones we’ve had in the past. To act on a false problem will do nothing to drive the progress in society and potentially drag it backwards.
I imagine most people share that hope, however people will have different appetites for the progress with different tolerances for the risks and costs associated with change. This in turn will lead to differing standards in the certainty expected before conclusions drawn and actions taken. Evidently you have a higher tolerance for those costs and risks than others in this thread, such as myself, who expect more certainty.
Thanks Desipsis. I’m not so confident as you that “most people share” the hope for continual improvement.
I contrast that kind of ‘progressive’ hope with a conservative disposition that prefers to believe what we have now is likely ‘as good as it gets’ in the best of all probable worlds, and so, on balance, we should leave well enough alone.
I actually believe the conservative disposition (Tim calls it ‘complacent’, as do I, heh heh) is vastly more widespread than the progressive. Probably progressivism and conservatism are just different points on a continuum of disposition, rather than categorical differences – given your nuanced exposition that different people have different levels of tolerance for the risks and costs of change vs. tolerance for the risks and costs of staying as we are.
Perhaps a conservative disposition is more ready to assign a zero-cost assumption to remaining as we are.
Perhaps all those who think such a thing as structural racism is impossible might like to ponder the question of why:
(a) There are such severe restrictions on international students’ ability to work in Australia;
(b) Why Indian students might need to work more than American or Norwegian students (both countries contribute in large number to student populations in SEQ, so I’m not picking countries at random);
(c) Why Indian students might be concentrated in occupations and locations which are more dangerous, and whether exploitation and illegal workplace arrangements might be more difficult for them to challenge, and why there is little attempt to address exploitation in housing and work by government authorities, and why their entry into some of these occupations was fostered as a means of ‘gaining work experience’ by immigration and education authorities;
(d) Why extremely dodgy ‘further education providers’ were permitted to happily go about their business of providing substandard courses or no courses at all without the necessary financial backing for years and years, and how this was encouraged and facilitated by measures supposedly to address skills shortages;
(e) Why education institutions overlook the fact that the claims and representations made by their agents in India are so misleading, and in many cases absolutely untrue;
(f) Why people who are not familiar with the mores and language of the areas in which they work or settle might have more difficulty avoiding potential violence;
(g) Why they constantly say ‘it’s their choice’ or ‘it’s too expensive/hard to do anything about it’;
(h) Why they’re so willing to believe police who say ‘there’s no evidence of racism’ as soon as any incident comes to light; but then insist on impossible standards of evidence if some say there is a pattern of racist conduct;
(i) Why things they don’t agree with are seen as ‘academic’ or ‘political’, but their own perspective is just ‘rationality’ or ‘common sense’;
(j) Whether in fact there are political and social aspects to crime and crimes are rarely truly opportunistic or random;
(k) Why they are so quick to point to negative aspects of others’ culture and beliefs, but resist examining whether there could possibly be such aspects to Australian society, except to advance the contention that ‘there might be a few bad apples’, but without explaining where such apples get their ideas from;
(l) Why the views of victims as to the motivation for attacks are to be discounted, except when stated views apparently reinforce the ‘no racism’ line, in which case, they’re completely to be taken at face value, despite evidence presented about the multiple reasons – both communal and individual – why such statements might be made.
I could go on.
Yes, well put Mark. I hasten to add – the definitions of old school racism are integral here as well. I think its clear the policy settings (visa regs, non-enforcement of industrial relations requirements) can together be seen as a form of structural racism insofar as Indian male students on non-permanent visas are now patrolling “on point” in some of the the most exposed and isolated late night jobs are economy produces.
When one group predominantly ends up doing the sort of jobs that people entitled to welfare just wont take – we have a problem, Houston. And its called structural racism. That makes them prime targets for any backlash.
Next some people above will be telling me Latinos in California aren’t exploited owing to their irregular work rights/ visa status and ethnic background. Gimme a break – the denial is actually getting quite silly.
The fact that they are then getting attacked by certain individuals is of course – at least in significant part – attributable to garden variety racism of the individual attitude sort. And some attacks may be “opportunist” yes – but we have to start asking why there are apparently so many “opportunities” to attack Indian nationals on student visas.
Mark, Mercurious, myself, Myriad and several others have been discussing ways to answer that question: that structural racism is enabling soft targets for racist individuals. And its about actual, real stuff too: actual work right limitations, actual visas, demonstrable non-enforcement of regulations, dodgy colleges, relative economic need among a class of students, type of public late night jobs etc. Whatever you think of the theory – I have more time for responses that actually dealt with such real issues in an alternative way. And its not an approach that denies the more conventional definition of racism.
Anyway, while we’ve been debating this, there have been four attacks on Indian nationals in just three days in Ballarat.
Good questions Mark, though I’d amend (j) thusly:
“(j) Whether in fact there are political and social aspects to crime and crimes are rarely
trulypurely opportunistic or random;”In most of the cases I’ve heard any detail about, I wouldn’t be prepared to say that a claim of opportunism was untrue, but that it often seems to be far from the whole story.
Agreed, FDB. That’s sort of what I meant, but thanks for expressing it more clearly!
Didn’t want to be pedantic – in such a slippery “debate”, you don’t want to leave wiggle room!
For suah!
I also agree with Lefty E’s point about the confluence of structural and individual racism; though, again, it’s worth asking why the open expression of racist attitudes and the willingness to translate those into action appears to be more prevalent in some demographics.
Again, the positivists among us might care to consult the Australian Social Attitudes Survey where you can see statistically meaningful differences among age, gender and socio-economic populations.
Because then they would be applying for work visas, which are limited because of the pressure it would put on the economy / employment.
Presumably because there are internationally recognised education institutions in these countries meaning the international students from those countries will be the ones wealthy enough to do so for the experience rather than primarily career prospects. Also students funded by their parents from those countries will require a much lower marginal lifestyle sacrifice from their parents to attain the same marginal lifestyle gain for the student.
See above. Their economic situation and risk perspectives are different because of the economic and social situation in their home country(s).
It’s my experience that government authorities are doing little to address work exploitation of anyone, not specifically international students.
Again, it’s been my experience that the government had a strategy of deregulating and under-funding the education industry for reasons of economic ideology. The basis premise being that the Indian students were the best ones to decide the best courses for themselves, causing the dodgy providers to go out of buisness. It’s not an ideology that I support, but it wasn’t driven by a malice towards foreigners.
I’m not sure what claims you’re referring to here. Do you have an example of such a claim?
Well that ones obvious. Although I’d put the responsibility of understanding the mores and language on the person travelling another location and not expect everyone to cater for the 1000′s of languages and customs of people from around the world who may choose to travel there.
If they have the same position when it comes to local students, I cannot see any racism.
What’s harder to believe, a couple of drunk people getting violent over money, or a government conspiracy to permit the beatings of a group of people who are bringing money into the economy.
As opposed to seeing things you don’t disagree with as motivated by racism. Note: the only thing I’ve argued as ‘political’ is the choice of words used to describe a concept or perhaps more accurately the resistance to moving to a choice of words that will more accurately communicate the concept.
It’s not the examining that people resist, rather the accusing.
Why are you so quick to blame the actions of individuals on the wider society?
I don’t see people taking victims statements at face value, rather relying on the police who investigated and would take input from the victim, witnesses and perpetrator to determine the motive for the crime.
No one is alleging a conspiracy. Structured and patterned decisions have ramifications which go beyond the intent or agency of those who make them. That’s the whole point. To suggest that we’re engaging in conspiracy theories is just a cheap rhetorical maneouvre.
I can see that you just don’t want to understand the concept, so it’s really a fruitless exercise engaging with you further on it.
” …it’s informed by a hope of continual progress in society.
I imagine most people share that hope, however people will have different appetites for the progress with different tolerances for the risks and costs associated with change.”
I find this interesting. I’m not sure that conservatives necessarily want continual progress, believe that it’s desirable, or even possible. Often the position of conservatives seem to be that certain situations are natural, no matter if they’re wrong. Human nature is invoked with a shrug of the shoulders. “Of course, racism is awful, but there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s always been like that.” This always works to shut down the conversation. It naturalises certain situations and it’s always posited by people who don’t suffer from this ‘natural’ set of structures.
I think we hear echoes of this in the conversation here.
Mark:
Ok, perhaps a poor choice of words. I guess it might be better described as gross collective incompetence where special resources are allocated to solving the problem.
There’s a difference between ‘cater for’, and ‘not stab to death’.
Funny, but I’d put the responsibility onto the Australian & Victorian governments, local police and citizens, to provide a safe and welcoming environment with adequate protections in place, for people to whom we extend invitations to come here, and who generate huge economic and social wealth in the community while they are here. But I have this odd notion of being a good host, and furthermore that the government bears an ethical responsibilty when it lends policy, legislative and marketing support to the export of education as a $17bn annual industry. This is an industry, but sadly when the “product” gets stabbed and bashed there’s an ethical liability that’s greater than simply losing a cargo-load of coal in heavy seas.
But in any case, your stipulation for “understanding the mores and language” is ludicrously unrealistic, to the point of being xenophobic. I’m a languages teacher, so I have both some practical and research-based bases for claiming there is no way to become communicatively fluent and culturally adept in a foreign culture, prior to living there. You’re in cloud-cuckoo land if you believe otherwise. Heck, an English-speaking person going from Australia to England or America can land themselves in a whole lotta hot water, and we speak the “same” language. And no, a phrase-book and a couple of etiquette lessons before you go ain’t gonna cut it.
If you really believe in ‘the responsibility of understanding the mores and language’, you should press the Australian government to (for our own protection, you understand, so we don’t get into trouble) ban overseas travel for Australians who cannot demonstrate both linguistic fluency, and cultural expertise, in all the countries they plan to visit or reside. Because you’re expecting visitors straight off the plane to be able to do that. I’m sure, since you’re both free of racist thinking yourself, and structural racism isn’t possible in your world, you’d insist that Australians going overseas will abide by the same standards you wish to apply to visitors coming here.
@214 – Let’s try one more time.
(a) If the Austalian government and educational and immigration policies have created a particular problem, it requires a particular response.
(b) In a civilised society, there’s a presumption that everyone enjoys equality under the law and an equal right to go about their business safely, be paid the legal requirement, etc. But if there are specific factors which prevent some residents and citizens from enjoying those rights, then specific responses are needed to ensure they have equal rights and protections. That’s not an unusual principle – see also every bit of anti-discrimination legislation ever enacted. Or, for instance, preferential treatment given to senior citizens, etc.
You do realise that your claims about the inequities of ‘special rights’ are the exact same rhetoric Pauline Hanson used about Indigenous Australians, don’t you? And the stock in trade of anti-feminist arguments, and, well, everything that seeks to ensure everyone has (ahem) ‘a fair go’, even if they’re not an educated middle class Anglo white heterosexual male.
Fine, yes there’s also going to be significant variance in what constitutes an ideal society particularly when things like pragmatism, religion and stereotypes influence people’s views. Of course America and the internet do seem to publicise a particularly loony brand of conservatism (and there are plenty of loony progressives out there too).
I generally find similarities between my views and conservatives where they are supported by a pragmatic that ideas that have proven themselves are more valid than those that haven’t yet been tested.
“Racism” is a heavily loaded term. It is, itself, a derogatory accusation. Using it in a discussion aimed at finding solutions to the problem compromises that objective.
Because it is a loaded term, many people don’t hear the argument; they just hear the accusation. Moreover, they interpret it (as it seems to be intended a lot of the time) as an accusation that Australia, the society, is racist. It is not some national racism which is putting the Indians in hospital. If there is any racism involved (and despite valiant attempts to turn statistics into causation, that question isn’t resolved), it is the racism of the attackers, not of the community as a whole.
The response to that is to say that there is structural racism because immigrants are more likely to be working and living in vulnerable circumstances, but that argument is rubbish. The term “structural racism” is loaded in the sense that it suggests that concentrations of immigrants in vulnerable jobs and living circumstances is the manifestation of some malicious conspiracy. If anything, it is a manifestation of the fact that Australia allows a very large number of people to emigrate here or come here as students and that once here, a very large number of them start at the bottom.
Oh yeah, I was saying it was acceptable to stab people to death. Clearly.
Don’t we have the exact same responsibility to every single Australian too?
I don’t equate what I said: “understanding the mores and language” with a demand to become fluent in the language. It’s about gaining a level enough to get by in day to day life and avoid getting into trouble either with the law, or unlawful elements of the society you’re going to live in.
I don’t agree that they have created the problem. Violent crime was a problem long before this latest push for international students.
Firstly, the government is not the one taking those rights away.
Secondly, if international students are being denied rights based on the fact that some of them are being assaulted, then everyone is having their right to saftey taken away because assaults are not limited to international students. I don’t believe in the right to equivalent correlative statistical outcomes.
If we are genuinely focused on removing all factors, then you’d better get started with a complete wealth distribution system that ensures everyone is equally wealthy.
I do agree in that we shouldn’t be granting special rights or privleges on the basis of race. Such laws are racist. We should be helping people on the basis of their health/education/financial situation, not assuming things about their situation on the basis of their race.
I really don’t see how anyone could deny the following: this group is here on temporary visas, and not entitled to welfare (unlike a host of other migrant groups), are dominating a category of late night, isolated jobs that are either a. unappealing to permanent residents, or b. on the sort of pay and conditions no one entitled to welfare would accept.
ie certain international students are a new urban labour underclass.
This clearly suits some employers (labour that cant complain, or say ‘stuff you im going on the dole’), and the govt (enjoying the export income). There are therefore clear interests which those groups have in the status quo. Pointing that out is not ‘conspiratorial’ thinking – its called analysis.
If some people are happier to call it “structural inequality against temporary visa holders” then fine. But then we also have to face the fact that its currently dominated by a particular ethnic group.
Now, in a liberal democracy, of course, everyone’s entitled to that shit job in a 7-11 – but if only one ethnic group on a certain visa is actually taking them, because they have no other options – well, Id call that a racialised labour underclass. Just like the Latinos doing laundry and driving taxis in California. Everyone there would deny racism too – but they broadly benefit from the structure.
“it is the racism of the attackers, not of the community as a whole.”
Sure – unless the community as a whole (embodied in its govt) then decides not to enforce labour and visa regulations which apply to everyone else, and would make that group less exploitable and safer, because we like the export income, thanks. Then its a structural form of discrimination. Why dont we treat this group the same as any others?
And now, evidence mounts that being so isolated, late at night, in these jobs no one else want is facilitating old school racism – be it of the economic (‘they’re taking our jobs’) or ideological (‘i dont like Indians’) kind.
The racial underclass exists because there’s a billion Indians living a few thousand kilometres to the north in a country with a much lower GDP per capita than Australia. Giving Indian students access to the same jobs as Australian students hasn’t created it.
Are you arguing that Australians are responsible for the lack of economic progress in Indian?
Are labour and visa regulations being enforced differently for Indian students than for students from other nations?
LeftyE@219
I think you’re on the money my friend. Government know that the current situation is pretty flawed. I suppose the issue really is – how do they get pressured enough to allow the legislation to be tidied up so people are protected. How many more taunts, stabbings, complaints will it take? What should the specific response be? Another separate thread perhaps Mark?
Mark@#205
Vague talk about “structural racism” is just a licence to smuggle in all the fads and fallacies of the over-heated sociological imagination. It needs to be controlled by proper statistical measures, noticeably absent from this discussion.
For sure the S-ES Indian students typically find themselves in tends to make them enter into high-risk activities. But these risks may be incident in a race-neutral way, suffered more or less impartially by all members of the general community involved in them, irrespective of their HB-D classification. In short the higher crime victimization suffered by Indian shift-workers and dodgy suburb-residers may be an example of class, rather than race, inequity.
The only way to test for racist incidence is to examine the crime victimization profiles of young white Australian males occupied in risky jobs and residing in dodgy suburbs. This would control for extraneous S-E factors and isolate for the hypothetical racist causal factor.
Since no one here has bothered to do that, or even raise this crucial distinction, we may safely conclude that all the brou-ha about racism is just a moral panic whipped up to justify pre-existing ideological bias.
According to Nick F @218, the way to have a discussion about racism that isn’t “heavily loaded” – is not to talk about racism! You see, it’s the people talking about racism who are “loading” the discussion. All those other participants who don’t mention it, they are keeping the discussion free of ideological “load”. They’re the cleanskins, and it’s all this talk of racism that’s “loading” the debate.
Racism: the hate that dare not speak its name.
Thanks for the lulz, Nick F!
Actually mercurius just because people want some real evidence rather than assertion is quite comforting to me.
LO has pointed out that there are many possible confounding factors.
This is like reading Andrew Bolt’s blog during the Haneef affair but from the left.
I reckon from a conceptual point of view, that the Howard Government’s assertion that Haneef was a terrorist is on a par with the assertion that Australia is structurally racist. I will believe either only on the bais of evidence.
The arguments for the ‘prosectution’ in both cases are eerily similar.
eg “You don’t believe Haneef is a terrorist? You must support terrorism.”
“You don’t believe Australia is structurally racist? You must be either racist or in denial of same.”.
I feel that my suspicion of the right and the left is justified.
Tim Watts said:
A REFUTATION OF MORAL PANIC OVER ALLEGED ANTI-INDIAN “RACISM”*
Tim Watts article is based on a false factual premise and is therefore making a false alarm. He means well, which is praise-worthy. But scientists have to be truthful before they can be helpful. Anything less than that is a waste of time and money.
SUMMARY
The facts do not support Watts contention, based on the SMH analysis, that in Victoria “persons of Indian appearance” are 2.5 times as likely to suffer assault as non-Indian members of the general community.
A proper analysis of the correct figures show that “persons of Indian appearance” are probably less likely to suffer crimes against person than comparable non-Indian members of the general community.
FAULTY SMH ANALYSIS
The SMH’s statistical analysis is faulty, suffering from a double-barreled error which comprehensively vitiates its predictive utility:
badly-selected Indian crime victim numerator – curiously conflating “assault” with “assault and robbery”
poorly-calculated Indian population denominator – fails to take account of the many Victorian residents of Indian ancestry
Funnily enough for the Left-liberal media, the effect of these errors is to drive the headline ratio of Indian Victims of Crime Against Person (VCAP) 100,000 of population in the same direction – upwards. Since the acceptance of this statistic (or some foggy notion of it) forms the basis for the oft-made suggestion that Indians are the victim of some kind of home grown crime pogrom it follows that its refutation rebuts the allegation of racism.
Dealing with the Indian population denominator first, we have to compute the total number of Indian or half-Indian persons inhabiting Victoria (all figures relate to Victoria for 2008/09): TOTAL INDIAN POPULATION = INDIAN-BORN RESIDENTS + AUSTRALIAN-BORN INDIAN-ANCESTRY RESIDENTS + VISITING INDIAN-BORN STUDENTS
INDIAN-BORN RESIDENTS
It seems likely that the SMH grossly under-estimates Victoria’s Indian population, although it nowhere cites explicit figures. It is hard to estimate this number as no single agency cites an up-to-date and all-up estimate. Wikipedia, quoting the 2006 census reports “147,106 Australian residents declared that they were born in India” with Victoria hosting 52,853.
AUSTRALIAN-BORN INDIAN-ANCESTRY RESIDENTS
It also reports “243,722 Australian residents declared that had Indian ancestry, either alone or in combination with another ancestry”. That is, there were about 96,000 home-grown part-or whole blood Indians. On the assumption that the home-grown Indian ancestry population is in proportion to Victoria’s Indian-born population it follows that 36% of these lived in Victoria, about 35,000. That makes about 88,000 persons of Indian ancestry residing in Victoria in 2006.
In the three years since 2006 immigration has ramped up, more than doubling. Indians are one of the largest sources of immigrants to Australia and Victoria is a favourite destination. So by 2009 it likely that there were probably more than 100,000 Indian ethnics resident in Victoria
VISITING INDIAN STUDENTS
On top of that there are a further 46,000 Indian on student visas, a figure which has leapt up in the past few years.
TOTAL INDIAN POPULATION
So to summarize, by 2009 there were at least 150,000 Indian residents/students living/studying in Victoria. Thats not counting other persons of Indian appearance, such as Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.
TOTAL NON-INDIAN RESIDENT POPULATION
The ABS, as at June 2009, estimates Victoria’s resident population at 5,427,700. This does not include illegal immigrants or net tourists. Victoria’s actual population is probably around 5,500,000, of whom about 150,000 are non-Indians. So Victoria’s non-Indian population is about 5,350,000.
SUMMARY: TOTAL POPULATIONS – INDIAN AND NON-INDIAN
So to conclude, for Victoria in 2009 we have the following population denominators:
persons of non-Indian appearance: ~ 5,350,000
persons of Indian appearance: ~ 150,000
INDIAN VICTIMS OF CRIME AGAINST PERSON (VCAP)
The SMH analysis does not make an apples-to-apples comparison of crime victims when computing the incidence of Indian VCAP. When constructing its Indian crime victim ratio it selects a figure of 1525 Indian victims of “assault and robbery”. From this figure it somehow extracts a ratio of 1700 victims of assault per 100,000 Indians. Which implies that the figure for “assault” actually exceed the figures for “assault and robbery” – a mathematical impossibility. Although this error may simply be a typo.
There were 1,525 VCAP in the Indian community. Assuming an Indian population of 150,000 this gives an Indian VCAP ratio of 1016 (not 1700) per 100,000.
NON-INDIAN VCAP
The SMH analysis is reasonably accurate in its estimate of non-Indian VCAP. The best source for crime in Victoria is the Victoria Police crime statistics report (2008/09). It reports that there were 38,269 VCAP in the general community. That gives a non-Indian VCAP ratio of 705 per 100,000, which seems about right.
RAW MEASURES COMPARING INDIAN TO NON-INDIAN VCAP RATES
On the raw measures, Indians have a VCAP incidence rate of nearly 50% higher than the general non-Indian community. That, on the face of it, is troubling although not grounds for panic. The disparity comes off a low base. And the trend is so far of short term so may be just a statistical blip.
RISK FACTORS FOR INCIDENCE OF VCAP
But this figure hardly tells the whole story. Indians present heavily in high-risk categories and activities. The AIC report on risks of crime victimization (2005) reports “five factors were significant risk factors of personal victimisation…while controlling for the effects of others”:
- marital status: single, separated or divorced, or living in a de facto relationship;
- income: persons in lower income households;
- residential stability: persons who were living at their current postcode less than one year;
- unemployment.
- night-time activities:
Not surprsingly Indians tick almost all those boxes and more. Indian students, who are at least one-third the total Indian population, are over-represented in high-risk categories or activities:
- young age
- male gender
- nocturnal habits
- electronic appliance-porting
- public transport-commuting
- crime prone suburb-residence
- public interactive occupation
ESTIMATED RISK-ADJUSTED VCAP RATE FOR INDIANS
Not having a full demographic break-down of Indian population charecteristics I cannot (epidemiologically) compute, or weight, the expected increased incidence in crime victimization for the part of the Indian community that fall into these categories. At a guess I estimate that the specifics of Indian student demographic classification would double the risk of crime victimization. Weighting that by increasing the size of the Indian community by one-third (50,000) gives an Indian CVPA rate of 762 per 100,000. That is not so very far off the non-Indian CVAP rate of 705 per 100,000.
DISCOUNTED FOR NESB PERPETRATOR IDENTITY
Even this does not give the whole story. For the “racist pogrom against Indians” meme assumes that the assailants against persons of Indian appearance are typical (ie white) members of the Victorian community. But it is mostly likely that such assailants of Indians include a fairly high ratio of their ethnological confrères, since that most Indians spend a lot more time in the company of other Indians. Moreover there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Indians are victims of crime perpetrated by NESBs, particularly in crime-prone ethnic suburbs in the north and west of Melbourne.
CONCLUSION
When these factors are taken into account it seems highly unlikely that white criminals excessively victimize Indian members of the community. This entire brou-ha over racism against Indians is a perfect example of unfounded “moral panic” that Left-liberals are always wagging their fingers over. In addition it underlines the general innumeracy and intellectual ineptitude of most liberal arts graduates who pretend to offer scientific commentary of public affairs.
*Apologies for long comment but this error-correction means getting technical.
@221, Fascinated, I proposed some very modest responses on the last thread, to which a large number of people responded “too hard/unnecessary”. I’m quite reluctant to continue this discussion myself, as I think it’s become quite repetitious, and by contrast to the beginnings of this one and the earlier ones, we’re really not getting anywhere.
I’m not saying “don’t talk about racism”. I’m just saying that if you accuse someone of being racist, then you don’t get to combat racism. As skepticlawyer points out, there are those you’ll never change, but when you tell a whole society that its racist (which is what “structural racism” means), everyone in that society hears you accusing them of being individually racist.
Talking about structural inequality is vastly different to talking about structural racism. As I said earlier, the latter implies some evil conspiracy. The former has no such subtext. One of the most powerful perpetuations of racism is the way we talk about race, so I don’t think it’s sophistry to make observations about the language used in this discussion.
A lot has already been said on this thread about cause and effect. It deals with the “racialised labour underclass” argument, but it is worth observing that again, you’ve gone with a loaded word “racialised” rather than a less emotive term like “ethnic”. The ready inference is that you seek to win your argument on emotion rather than by demonstrating that discrimination based on race is what sees immigrants in menial jobs.
I’m not going to write much more on this topic, because the debate is degenerating a bit. But just to clarify my position within this debate:
a) I have not concluded that the attacks on Indians in Melbourne were not motivated by race. I just haven’t found the evidence that they were convincing yet.
b) I wouldn’t claim that structural racism is impossible. There are instances where public policies can have impacts that unjustly disadvantage particular ethnic groups. Racism can be embedded in institutions. However, that does not mean that Australia’s system of student visas necessarily falls into that category.
@ Nick Ferret:
Why, exactly, does ‘structural inequality’ not imply some evil conspiracy to you, but ‘structural racism’ does imply some evil conspiracy?
Unintended consequences come embedded in social structures that have been built to achieve certain social aims. Sometimes these consequences are simply unforeseeable as societies/technologies change, sometimes they are wilfully overlooked due to the privilege of those with the reins of power, who oft betimes structure our social systems to nakedly benefit their own peers (and ‘just enough’ of the voters) and neglect to consider how they might affect others.
I think it’s good that people react so negatively to the word ‘racist’ now. To somehow spin that as though being called a racist is worse than actually engaging in behaviours which have racist outcomes? – not so much.
Yeah, NickF, I get what you mean that people will get their hackles up and some will stop thinking clearly when the topic is “racism” (it’s hard to think clearly when your head’s in the sand).
But, well, diddums.
Reflection on our own shortcomings and critique of structures is uncomfortable. Especially when we have to confront that many of us are unwitting benefactors of a system that is fundamentally unfair and oppresses many other people in our community. Such exploration takes us to places we’d rather not go. As my 3rd grade teacher used to say: “stiff bikkies”.
Do you see how distasteful it is to suggest that, when there are people in the street beaten to a pulp and stabbed, I should do my utmost to avoid offending the precious sensibilities of a few detached observers?
I mean, in child protection, let’s stop calling the offenders “paedophiles”. It’s such a “heavily loaded” term. We might hurt their feelings.
And the ‘conspiracy’ angle that you dredge up is a repetitive straw man that’s been dealt with a number of times. Too bad you missed it.
Tell you what, with all the various flavours of denialism currently in vogue, there’s still time before the next election to register the Denialist Party. Campaign slogan: “It’s all good!”
Australia, meet your next PM.
Oh come on. You’re English can’t be that bad.
Actually if you want an equivalent for “paedophiles”, it’s calling the teens involved in sexting with their own pictures “paedophiles”. Same outcome, huge difference.
“Oh come on. You’re English can’t be that bad.”
Brilliant!
Mercurius
I don’t think this thread shows any evidence of people putting their heads in the sand. On the contrary, it shows that many people have examined the issue in some depth. Just because some of them have reached different conclusions to yourself does not mean that they’re ignorant or complacent.
Nor are any of us denying that people go to pubs and get stabbed, or saying that this kind of behaviour is a good thing and should be encouraged. I’d take a punt (and feel pretty safe doing so!) that every contributor to this thread deplores violence and would like to see less of it.
You seem to have difficulty dealing with an evidence based approach to issues, preferring to react emotively and throw a few gratutitous insults around when challenged. Well, that’s OK, but don’t mistake that approach for effective argument.
Also – don’t know who suggested this, and can’t be bothered trolling back to find out – there is no suggestion in the police response that the evidence of the victims has been discounted. Quite the contrary; the police started with the assumption that the crimes were racial in nature. Their engagement with the Indian community demonstrates a further willingness to listen to the victims and take their viewpoints seriously. They’re used, remember, to treating the victim’s story as part of the evidence associated with the crime.
SL, it’s OK to be sceptical of the system, but it’s not cool to be a sceptic for the sake of it, against the evidence. The evidence is that the Victorian system of law enforcement works well; Victoria has the lowest crime rate in Australia and it is falling on an annual basis, largely due to the targetted nature of police work in this community. You can’t – well you can, but you shouldn’t – decide that the system needs an overhaul just because you personally don’t think it’s doing a good enough job. And you need to provide evidence that it isn’t working before you say it isn’t.
Of course no system is perfect, no society is perfect, and we should always try to improve. But if we try to do this by tackling problems which aren’t really there, or by failing to correctly identify the nature of problems, we won’t achieve this. To solve a problem, you have to understand its nature.
Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. I do not oppose changing the structure of our society to ensure equal opportunity. I do not think that we should have one law for caucasians and one for everyone else. I simply think that the inequalities we have been talking about are not some intended consequence of a chosen social policy. My point with respect to language is that when you call someone or a society “racist” you are saying, probably unjustifiably, that they intended these inequalities.
An outcome of social policy which is unhappy for a particular ethnic group is not racist unless it was an intended outcome. If the outcome is unintended, it is just unfortunate. That is not to say that we should not work to end the inequality. We just shouldn’t accuse people of prejudices they never felt, particularly if we want their help.
The theme of Tim Watt’s original post was that the response to the attacks in Victoria on Indian students constituted “a desperate avoidance of confronting the role that racism (subjective or structural) has played in these attacks”. My only concern is to point out that if there is racism involved in the attacks (and that question remains unresolved), it is the racism of individuals rather than racism inherent in the society. The suggestion that the structures which leave people vulnerable to attacks are fundamentally racist is simply not sustainable.
My particular disagreement is not with Watts. Although I do not agree that there is overwhelming evidence that racism played a part in the attacks, the fact that there is a spate of attacks against people of a particular ethnic class demands that we look into whether racism was an actuator. As Watts points out, that may give us clues about prevention in the future. It may also give us clues as to who the offenders are.
My real disagreement is with those who want the fight rather than the equitable peace. They’re so strongly committed to fighting racism that they accuse people of being racists just so they can demonstrate their own purity of heart. Not for them the less glamorous role of persuasion to remove inequality by building consensus. They have to burn the village to save it.
Ugh. Mondays.
To the commenter (can’t find original comment) who disputed the idea that students are attracted to study in Australia by false advertising and trickery, here’s a letter in the AGE today:
I for one walk past these Concrete Colleges several times a week and they are depressing places, not a “university experience” which would connect the students with Australian culture for life, as with that scheme in the 60s which I can’t remember the name of!
Mehitabel @ 174:
“I was answering the assertion that somehow, the government was responsible for these attacks by encouraging these students to come to Australia. My argument was that you cannot blame the government for the choices made by people and the alternative was to prevent people making these choices at all.”
All I can say is thank goodness the government does not share your opinions.
Please read the following documents, and at least get yourself up to speed with what the government has acknowleged as, and clearly attributed to, the failures of existing policy and legislation, and what it is seeking to do to rectify those failures:
26/11/2009 Welfare of International Students
09/09/2009 Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Re-registration of Providers and Other Measures) Bill 2009
It’s astonishing that some of you think these facts are somehow in dispute, or even disputable.
Mehitabel @ 233:
“Just because some of them have reached different conclusions to yourself does not mean that they’re ignorant or complacent.”
That really does remain to be seen. However, the notably simplistic conclusion you’ve drawn – that we should ‘just let the Police do their job’ – is highly suggestive of both ignorance of, and complacency towards, what is certainly a broader issue.
Nick
It would be fair comment to call me complacent if I’d just decided the police were doing a good job without investigating the issue.
Instead, I looked at the stats, I looked at academic research, and then I looked at the police reports.
When I got around to those, I already had an idea of what sorts of action the police should be taking if they took the issue seriously – the questions they should be asking, the people they should be talking to, etc.
And it was a nice surprise to find that that was exactly what was happening.
I’m as willing to be dubious of our people in blue as the next person. In this case, however, they seem to be doing the right things – and this is bourne out by Victoria’s performance compared to the other states – and I’m willing to call it how I see it.
You’re welcome to point out where the police are failing, but please do so on the basis of evidence, not an instinctive feelings that the police mustn’t be doing what they should be (not accusing you of doing this, just sayin’).
As for action on international students, it’s good to see the government acting in this area. I have no problems with that and it really doesn’t change much of what I say. The government can act on problems it’s not responsible for, does all the time. It can clean up situations it didn’t create, and it can help people deal with the consequences of their choices. All of these are no brainers.
And why pick on me? A couple of other posters have made exactly the same kind of comment – that part of the problem is, like all students, ones from India are forced to live cheaply – and I don’t see you addressing posts to them.
“The government can act on problems it’s not responsible for, does all the time. It can clean up situations it didn’t create, and it can help people deal with the consequences of their choices. All of these are no brainers.”
Your blithe, ‘no brainer’, willingness to side-step the broader issues of governmental policy failure, and blinkered adherance to your ‘nowt but people suffering the consequences of their own choices’, indicate you haven’t read the reports as requested, and probably won’t.
Ignorance and complacency.
Hm, Jack put up some calcs to show that there really is no issue.
Anyone dispute his figures? By all means, if he is wrong – someone point out why he is wrong. Otherwise, it looks like it is done and dusted for me.
Ignorance and complacency come when one ignores the data and is complacent with one’s own mindset.
Sometimes exacerbated when that mindset is challenged and threads such as this degenerate into name calling.
Sad.
“there really is no issue”
Wow. Just like that. Done and dusted away.
No, Nick, not ‘just like that’ – again, it’s analysis of the evidence.
Obviously you want to believe that the assaults on Indian students are racist, so you’re going to keep believe it, no matter what evidence is produced.
Ironically, it appears that for many commentators on this thread, the only way they would accept that racism wasn’t a factor would be if there were no assaults on Indian students at all…which would, in fact, suggest that there was some kind of racism at play.
If Indians are being assaulted at the same rate as other Victorian residents, this suggests that they are fully integrated members of our society.
“again, it’s analysis of the evidence.”
Nonsense. It’s cherrypicking one data point from roughly a year ago, and misusing that data point to assert “there is no issue”.
“Obviously you want to believe that the assaults on Indian students are racist, so you’re going to keep believe it, no matter what evidence is produced.”
Straw nonsense.
“Ironically, it appears that for many commentators on this thread, the only way they would accept that racism wasn’t a factor would be if there were no assaults on Indian students at all…which would, in fact, suggest that there was some kind of racism at play.”
Straw nonsense.
“If Indians are being assaulted at the same rate as other Victorian residents, this suggests that they are fully integrated members of our society.”
Agincourt nomination.
Nick @ # 245: “Straw nonsense. … Straw nonsense. … Agincourt nomination.”
Open the pod bay door, Nick.
Hilarious.
This thread, as happens, seems to have become a bit snarky as it’s got longer. I’ll keep it open for now, particularly to give Tim a chance to respond, but I’d also remind everyone of the comments policy.
Apologies, Mark.
Nick
if it’s nonsense, prove it to be so. If you can’t, it isn’t. If you don’t have an argument, don’t engage.
What is most encouraging, from the second link that Nick has given@239, is the federal government response to dodgy colleges and the immigration scams that surround the Indian student matters.
It will take a long time to fix up the mess that Howard and his idiots created but there is movement and legislative change in the wind.
Merc @152,
Thanks for the response.
In your formulation, racism [can only be] individual and agentic [that's
wrong]…
Fair point. I agree. I do think that racism can be structural, unwitting,
unconscious, even well-intentioned.
To the issue at hand, however, the supposed racist structures (see
Mark @205) that are causing the attacks on Indian students, do not exist.
There are none. Sure there are rules, regulations and practicesthat create disadvantage amongst ndian students but they are not racist. For a structure to be racist it needs to built of racism.
The 20 hr work rule is not racist (students should study), the work experience rule is not racist (qualifications often include work experience), the bad information propogated by poorly-run private colleges and (Indian)
agents are not racist (profit motive). The crummy employment opportunities
are not racist (open to all), the fact that the private education sector is poorly regulated is not racist (profit motive), the fact the students come to Australia
with little money is not racist (bad info.), The fact that Indian students are unfamiliar with our legal and bureaucratic system is not racist (what student understands another country’s legal system), The fact that the private educators do not correct their Indian agents is not racist (profit motive), that Indian students are unfamiliar with the cultural, safety and social aspects of Western Melboune or Sydney is not racist.
This is the lunacy of the theory of structural racism: all you need
is a pattern of disadvantage or negative outcome in a racial group to
‘prove’ it: Indian students have a pattern of being attacked in
Western Melbourne therefore the cause is racism.
Merc, its a non-sequitir as plain as can be.
Why aren’t white collar Indians (like my work colleaues) being bashed and robbed ?
Why aren’t older Indians being bashed and robbed (like the Indian folk
in my church)?
Why aren’t Indian non-students generally being bashed and robbed ?
Strange racism that only affects the poor…that only have
certain jobs…in certain areas…at certain times of the night
,..until they graduate and drop their crummy jobs in crummy areas.
The fundamental reason that Indian students are being attacked in
Western Sydney is that they have zero qualifications and not much money,
so they take crummy jobs, often in high-risk occupations. I did the same.
Let them come to Oz with more money and a warning not to work and rent
in Western Melbourne/Sydney and viola – Australia will no longer be structurally
racist. Miracle cure.
Here are some rules/laws/structures I agree are structurally racist:
Apartheid.
No Indian may obtain a bank loan.
No Indian may eat at the front lunch counter.
No person whose name contains the strings ‘Siv’, ‘Ram’
or ‘Krish’ may Bite The Wax Tadpole
For real structured racism you need racist laws and rules, which,
to my point @132, are framed with racist intent. A law framed without racist intent which disproportionately affects some racial group hds created structural disadvantage not structural racism.
For academic-brand structured racism you just need to put
Humpty-Dumpty in charge of the dictionary and an advanced ability
to swallow non-sequitirs.
I agree the non-racist structures listed above are impacting horrendously
on Indian students. Let’s fix them: Better public transport,
better regulation of private education, better information to Indian students,
more policing, better lighting of streets, cab vouchers, more student housing,
you name it. Everything should be considered.
But claiming racism where there is no racism is a basic error of comprehension. The problem Indian students face is structural but it’s not racism.
Just to finish off on Marks list @205:
Substandard Courses allowed to prosper – not relevant to being
attacked while being enrolled in them, but could be racism if
complaints ignored or not properly investigated.
Views Of Victims Ignored – they aren’t. Some victims and community
leaders say the crimes are not racist. Most say they are
victims of racism, some changed to ‘its racist’ to get more action from the State.
Police agree with victims/community leaders that there is a
mixture of racism and opportunistic attacks but reverse the
proportions reported by victims.
“For a structure to be racist it needs to built of racism.”
Not at all, Baraholka. For a start, your general premise that “intent” is required ignores the principle of indirect discrimination, recognized by Australian law for 20+ years. That is, a purportedly neutral rule which systematically discriminates against one group.
For example, everyone has the equal right to enter public building x. That’s great – unless you’re in a wheelchair, and there’s only stairs. Thats called indirect discrimination, and it doesnt require any ‘intent’ to be found.
I can assure you the equal opportunity commissions do as many cases like this as they do direct discrimination.
On specifics – the purportedly neutral rules here (that we have visa and industrial regs) are not even being enforced. The outcome of that is not imapcting equally across all groups, because the non-enforced sector is dominated by the only people to have no other economic options here: overseas students.
This is starting to remind me a bit of workchoices “protected by law!” spiel. Everone is theoretical protected, but actually, unskilled workers get shafted under the indiviudal contracts regime. Oh look, 95% are working class or migrants. Irrelevant to you? No class angle there? No intent is evident.
Anyone could have applied for indentured labour schemes on the canefields in the 1890s too – but surprisingly, few wanted the Kanakas’ jobs, especially at those rates. Still, no ‘racist intent’ I guess, so no problemo.
Merc @184
Saying that Indian students would be safer in Toorak than in Footscray (as I do) is not Blaming The Victim. Its a recognition that some suburbs are safer than others, as I am sure you realise. I see this as a further indication that you are a little over-eager to identify racism, even to the point of locating it where it does not exist.
Mark has indicated that the fact that Indians are forced to live/work in Footscray is proof of structural racism. Now youseem to be saying that advocating Indians get a chance to live somwehere else of Footscray is a sign of personal racism.
I think you are both a little over-eager on the racism issue.
In regard to you @176 that ‘opportunistic’ crimes imply a ludicrous context-less random event, really an excuse for ignoring racism as the real motive, again you are too eager to build a charge of racism.
‘Opportunistic’ implies the usual contexts for robbery with assault i.e. theft, greed, drug addiction, being a thug, anomie of long-term unemployment, venting frustrations at one’s own powerlessness, pent up anger at being physically abused oneself to name a few.
Merc, was the ‘Home Invasion’ crime phenonemon where originally Chinese/Vietnamese homes were targeted for cash/jewellerey and gold a racist or opportunistic phenonemon? Does this change when the perpetrators are Anglo ?
Also, in the suburb of Harris Park, Sydney, many elderly women were bashed and robbed. Were the attackers ageist (hating the aged) or just opportunistic crims ?
Helen @178
Of course I do not think that stabbings cannot occur in Toorak or ‘nice ‘ suburbs. Just noting, agreeing with Mark, that it would be better if not so many Indian students carrying cash, laptops, MP3s and iPods were travelling through Footscray (or Port Melbourne) alone at midnight. Nice suburbs have plenty of problems of their own, but far less street crime.
LO @114
Great example of how structural racism is a crock. Humanitarian Visas lead to residence in Western Sydney and are therefore racist. I notice you received no serious rebuttal.
Lefty,
your general premise that “intent” is required ignores the principle
of indirect discrimination
You are missing my point.
I agree that laws, rules and practices (taken together: structures)
can indeed systematically even though unintentionally or indirectly
disadvantage some group.
What I am saying is that, to the issue at hand, such structural disadvantage
should not properly be termed ‘structural racism’.
Racism is far too important a term to be sheared from its core meanings
of hatred and contempt for a racial group. To use the term racism where there
is no racist intent or motive is to irresponsibly drain the term of all
significance. Racism is too serious and deadly a term to be blurred
and muddied in this fashion.
The predicament of Indian students is terrible, but should be termed
sructural inequality or structural disadvantage because these terms
accurately desscribe their predicament. There is not one racist
law in place that has caused them this mess. In fact, most
of the problem would be solved if they simply bought more money
with them to Australia.
That’s not a racist problem, Lefty. Its a money problem.
Strange racism that only affects the poor…that only have
certain jobs…in certain areas…at certain times of the night
,..until they graduate and drop their crummy jobs in crummy areas.
Mukesh Haikerwal, who is an upper-Middle class medical professional and ex-AMA head, was nearly killed in a public park in Williamstown, which is not too far from where Nitin Garg was killed but is a world away in terms of suburb type – closer to South Yarra than Footscray socially. It’s not just poverty and living in a “bad area”.
Helen,
It’s not just poverty and living in a “bad area”.
I agree. As The Vic. Police have said and I agree, some of the crimes are clearly racist. The ‘only’ of mine that you quoted should not have been absolute.
Perhaps you think the crimes are mainly racist with few genuine robberies, the opposite to Vic. Police ?
Baraholka @ 252: I do think that racism can be structural, unwitting, unconscious, even well-intentioned.
Baraholka @ 255: Racism is far too important a term to be sheared from its core meanings of hatred and contempt for a racial group.
No offence, Baraholka, but this is difficult to follow. Well-intentioned hatred and contempt for a racial group??
Nick@258,
The point is we need a term to identify the beliefs behind the Nazis, the apartheid, the genocides in Africa, the slave trade, etc. Or rather we have that term: “racism”. It’s a very different concept to the one being presented here, hence the point that it’s an inappropriate use of the word.
Bara, I get that you’re sincere, but @255 is self-parodying.
So racism is “too important” a term to be used in these cases? Uh-huh. Not that I don’t sympathise with their predicament, mind you, it’s just that I don’t think a few beaten-up Indians are important enough to waste a precious, important concept like ‘racism’ on?
Do you ever wonder why us Cultural Studies types get a flea in our ear about the way the dominant group controls the discourse, even down to the level of selecting and judging which victims are “worthy enough” to receive the Gold Standard – the precious appellation de raciste, whose supply and demand we shall control and whose scarcity we shall regulate such that only the worthiest wogs qualify?
Again with the ‘unless the Ainsley Heights Bowls Club Annual Report minutes show a specific Chairman’s Resolution voted and passed by a two-thirds majority banning blacks from membership, there is nothing racist about the club. Now, Jimmy, please go and fetch the lemonade, there’s a good chap.’
Or how about we solve it by keeping the wogs in Mumbai? How’s that work for ya? Can I please request a moratorium on the victim-blaming? It’s like a pavlovian reflex with some of you guys and it makes me wanna puke.
Goodness, we’re all getting so nuanced with our definitions aren’t we? So precise. It’s so terribly, terribly important to be precise about the problem, before we actually, you know, do anything, isn’t it? The veneer of poised, clinical skepticism is nauseating:
“Well, yes, you are correct sir, I do smell smoke and, like you, I sense that it’s getting warmer in here. We’re both careful observers, and finely-tuned rationalist skeptics, and we both agree that there does indeed appear to be an odour of roasting meat permeating the atmosphere….
…But unless we work out whether it’s your arse, or mine, that is on fire, how will we ever solve the problem”?
@desipis,
You’re making a category error there. Beliefs are not categorised simply according to the enormity of their consequences, or according to whether those beliefs are applied en masse or at the individual level. It is perfectly adequate to qualify extreme manifestations of racism by using extra adjectives such as authoritarian, genocidal and/or profiteering – that’s what adjectives are for.
Your argument is like Pat Robertson/Jack Chick saying that Catholics aren’t really Christian.
To rescue the term racism from enthusiastic positivism herewith Franz Fanon on the subject of race consciousness in the oppressor:
“It is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization.
“The racist in a culture with racism is therefore normal. He has achieved a perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology. The idea that one forms of man, to be sure, is never totally dependent on economic relations, in other words – and this must not be forgotten – on relations existing historically and geographically among men and groups. An ever greater number of members belonging to racist societies are taking a position. They are dedicating themselves to a world in which racism would be impossible. But everyone is not up to this kind of objectivity, this abstraction, this solemn commitment. One cannot with impunity require of a man that he be against “the prejudices of his group.”
In short: racist consciousness among the victorious colonizing groups is normalised to the degree that some elements of the society are able to struggle against practices of racism. These elements become upset when the label racist is applied to their culture because they insist it does not apply to them. Australian history makes racism a normative institutional stance.
Indian sudents indeed find their new conditions disturbing:
“Acculturized” and deculturized at one and the same time, the oppressed continues to come up against racism. He finds this sequel illogical, what be has left behind him inexplicable, without motive, incorrect. His knowledge, the appropriation of precise and complicated techniques, sometimes his intellectual superiority as compared to a great number of racists, lead him to qualify the racist world as passion-charged. He perceives that the racist atmosphere impregnates all the elements of the social life. The sense of an overwhelming injustice is correspondingly very strong. Forgetting racism as a consequence, one concentrates on racism as cause. Campaigns of deintoxication are launched. Appeal is made to the sense of humanity, to love, to respect for the supreme values. . .”
It may be the case that in coming to Australia some Indian students find their transition from the top of caste relations to the bottom of the Australian heap perplexing but this does not detract from their capacity to identify racist culture.
http://www.tamilnation.org/ideology/racism.htm#We%20must%20look%20for%20the%20consequences
Perhaps you think the crimes are mainly racist with few genuine robberies, the opposite to Vic. Police ?
I think it’s capable of being a mixture of both in any instance. The difference is that the Victorian government would rather it was the latter, because the impact on their commercial education industry will be slightly less deleterious.
People either have an absolute right to personal safety, or they don’t. Pick one. It shouldn’t take you very long.
I’m a languages teacher, so here’s an exercise in the third conditional for everyone to try. Complete this sentence:
They wouldn’t have got bashed if…
The only ethically defensible way to complete that sentence is “…somebody hadn’t bashed them.” Any response that makes reference to the location of the victim’s apartment, job, or their bank balance, is an attempt to shift the risk and blame onto the victim, and is ethically unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Bara @254 invoking the ‘ageist’ example is conflating the two analytical frameworks of racism that are under discussion:
There are the proximate motives for individuals attacks. And there are structural issues. If you insist, as Bara does, on sticking solely to the ‘individual motive’ framework as being the only valid analytical framework, you get the kind of absurdities he has raised – i.e. that attacks on old people are ipso facto ‘ageist’. The fact that Bara’s analysis produces such absurdities suggests he’s doin’ it wrong. He’s assuming a ‘structural’ input to reach an ‘individual motive’ conclusion. Or possibly the reverse. Either way, the absurdity arises not from the concept of ‘structural racism’, but from Bara’s inability or unwillingness to work the problem from a different analytical framework than the one he views as the only possible valid framework. Must try harder.
Mercurius
As I’ve already said, I doubt that any poster here is supporting violence, or doesn’t wish that it didn’t happen. I’m sure we’d all prefer that Indian students weren’t getting bashed. In fact, we’d all prefer that nobody was getting bashed.
You can play with language all you like: the question this thread examines is whether Indian students getting bashed is racist in nature or is the result of ordinary violence, not directed at them particularly.
To keep trying to derail the debate by definiing racism as something else because that suits your argument isn’t intellectually honest. To keep insulting and denigrating those who disagree with you, instead of tackling their arguments, is intellectually dishonest.
To cherry pick arguments such as Bara’s, taking random sentences out of context, is also intellectually dishonest.
You are the one who is blaming the victim, focussing on the colour of their skin as the sole reason for the misfortunes which befall them.
If only they weren’t black, this wouldn’t be happening, seems to be your argument, so by your definition, the safest thing for them to do is to stay in Mumbai, because we’ll never ever be able to guarantee that they won’t get bashed, no matter what we do….just as we can’t for little old ladies, or for the white Anglo Saxon teenager heading home from the pub.
What a load of rot. Attempting to understand or describe the complex causative relationships behind the correlative patterns of violence is not “ethically unacceptable”.
The problem with identifying the perpetrator as the only cause of the outcome is that the perpetrator is the one thing we (as a society) have the least control over. There’s nothing about identifying the students actions as a common and easier to change link in the chain of events that typically lead to such assaults that ‘blames’ the victims or says they deserved it. Even the report in Nick’s comment at 239 sees this and identifies providing information to students in order to change their behaviour as a way to reduce these incidents.
Nick @258
Fair pick up Nick.
Racism also has the essential meaning of inferiority based on race. So here’s a well-intentioned racist scenario: “White people aren’t very smart so let’s only give their kids easy books in school.”
That would be structural racism.
Here’s a structural, disadvantaging scenario that’s not racist. “People on student visas should study so let’s limit their work hours to 20 hrs per week”
Tigtog:
I’m not saying it’s inappropriate do that, in fact I was choosing extreme examples. Believing it’s ok to bash a student on a train because of the colour of their skin would be a less extreme example.
However the common theme, and meaning of the word “racism”, is the beliefs of the people taking those actions; beliefs that explicitly judge people on their race. Such beliefs are not present in the structures being referred to here therefore they are not racist structures.
“There’s nothing about identifying the students actions as a common and easier to change link in the chain of events that typically lead to such assaults that ‘blames’ the victims or says they deserved it.”
Yes, desipis, there is.
To assert that the victims actions are easier to change – that they should simply not have gone out in public at night, and that this would have been the easiest way to prevent attacks against them – implies falsely that the victim has made a personal choice ie. the wrong choice, and that they could have just as easily chosen otherwise.
It ignores that many students take night jobs because they have no other option but to take night jobs.
It ignores that many students are already aware that the necessity of taking night jobs will place them at risk.
It encourages and promotes facile stereotypes and face-value explanations like – ‘they were all flashing laptops and ipods, the duffers – they were asking for it’.
While it’s certainly good that the government has acknowledged – in action, if not at all publicly via our domestic press – that it has been derelict in its obligation to ensure incoming students are aware Australia is not a crime-free paradise, and alert them to the cultural realities they can expect to encounter and become a part of – it’s patronising to advise students who are already here of the bleeding obvious, and to tell them how easy it is for them to prevent attacks against themselves.
“OK, Lefty E, but that improved regulation is also going to catch the students working >20 hours, isn’t it? If the employers are now paying the full rates, and declaring everything to the ATO, as they should, it only takes a little data-matching to identify the students who are working >20 hours. And then it’s bye-bye for them as their visa gets revoked.
A good outcome?
123 Lefty E
Jan 15th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Yes, a good outcome Paulus. The whole thing is a rotten borough, from dodgy college, to dodgy employer robbing em blind, to the potential for casual violence from racist idiots after the midnight shift.
It will mean the entire industry will have to think (for a change – and I really mean it when i say that they *never* do) about how international students are supported here, and parents back home will have to do the same, and be realistic.
It means employers cant get away with underpaying vulnerable visa classes. Once they have to play by the rules you’ll find all those sectors less dominated by one ethnic group, and less prone to attracting people looking for ethnic targets, or economic resentment from unemployed permanent residents.
Nobody jumps up and down about regulating 457 visas, or Pacific seasonal workers, or people on expired work visas – but its hands off the students? How convenient for dodgy colleges, and dodgy employers.
All upside, as far as I can see.”
Okay – I have cut and pasted these two comments because the thread is so long and I think I am missing the bits that allow me to see comment numbers, so sorry.
But my comment would be: Lefty E, with friends like you, the students hardly need enemies. Deportation of students who have spent in many cases all of the family money, with no degree, massive debt, a ban on entry into the country for a period of several years cos of visa breach, is an upside? No wonder my international student mates are fearful of unions: in discussion with student cabbies after their first CBD demo in 2006 (after the murder of Rajneesh Joga), they suggested to me that they would be offered as sacrifice to the union desire to re-regulate and therefore regain control (a good outcome for many workers, but not the students) if they invited the union into their struggle. Cos it seems unions need an invitation these days – and a guarantee of a certain number of paid-up members out of the struggle before they want in (discussion with TWU recruitment organiser in March 2009, just before a cabbie demo against the issuing of new taxi licenses).
I would jump up and down about immigration raids against students, as I think that they have the right to work, which I have some vague memory used to be a common catch cry of the union movement the world over. Taking away the 20 hour work restriction will not magic away the problems for students. It will make many a little less fearful of co-operating with those unions who do care, and assist to reduce exploitation of international students. But I suppose that thought experiment requires a recognition that Indian international students are part of the Australian working class because they live and work here. And apparently we don’t recognise that – if we did, would we really we calling for their mass deportation? And at what point do we recognise them as Australian workers if they do stay on? At the point of a PR grant? Welcome to the Australian working class, only now, even tho you have been living and working here for years? I mean – the piece I did for Overland demonstrates that I don’t think you can expect much better from unions, as their role in protecting workers is so very limited by the borders of the state. But – I just want to hear from you, Lefty E, that you really think a good outcome from this is the mass deportation of desperate students, and immigration raids all over town.
Have I missed something Lefty E?? Let’s make things better for the students by – deporting them???
Elsewhere: Hoyden About Town.
“Have I missed something Lefty E?? ”
Yes, the entire point of my comment. The only person who has mentioned ‘deportation’ on this thread is you – which I’m curious about. I’m talking about enforcing the industrial relations laws that currently exist against employers. And why on earth wouldnt we do that? Why is this the only case we can systematically point to of letting employers take advantage of cheap labour that cant complain about its pay and conditions? I’m sorry, do we have a state run by the rule of law, or not?
How does Australia justify this selectuivity – especially when, as many are arguing here, it seems to contribute strongly to a pattern of violence against overseas students. Even if you think that violence its “opportunistic” – this is what is creating so many opportunties. Indian students are grist for the mill – but employers benefit, and so does the govt, as it generates export income.
It seems your proposal is to continue to turn a blind eye to OS student working and isolated low paid late night jobs that no one else wants? Im sorry, I dont think that has a future, given the recent problems.
Once the state starts coming down on employers about this, youll find they wont hire OS students for longer than 20 hours. You’l also find hese late night jobs become less ghettoised by Idnian students with no rights. Then they’ll have to pay better if they want the same alte night workforce – then a more dempgraphically representtive worfofoce weill emerge, and be less of a target for these sort of attacks.
Then future arrivals will have to think more carefully about their ability to support themselves – and likewise, the govt will have to think about better housing and other support arrangemetns, if they want to attract the same numbers.
All upside.
Here’s the bottom line: Australia has been caught out turning a blind eye to a nasty little scam with many poorly regulated “colleges”, which we’ve ignored for monetary reasons. We dont support OS students anywhere near adequately. As Tigtog points out, where’s the on-campus accomodation, where’s the support for students in trouble, where’s the financial counselling, where’s the loan options? Where’s anything to show this is an industry we invest in, not just harvest it?
Instead, our ‘solution’ is to let certain employers rip them off in dangerous late night work environemnts whuch have become – effectively – racilaised ghettoes. A punching gallery for any one with a grievance after 10 beers at midnight. No problem finding an Indian if you want to – find a taxi, or a 7-11, or a late night fast food joint.
Its structural racism, and it has to change.
Okay – Lefty E, a breach of the 20 hour work restriction means automatic cancellation of the visa, with no discretion, no exceptional circumstances. International students, those suspected of trafficking weapons of mass destruction, and those suspected of terrorist offences are the few in the category of automatic visa cancellation. Hence the deportation bit.
The mechanics of this are kind of explained here:
http://www.unite.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/UNITE%20submission%20to%20Overseas%20Student%20Taskforce-1.pdf
I have no problem with the state coming down on employers – but as the previous post to your original one suggested, without removing the 20 hour work restriction, your proposal will simply lead to visa breach. And visa breach leads to cancellation, no ifs, not buts, no discretion, no right to review.
Lefty E,
Hypothetically, if the only economically sustainable way for some of these students to study in Australia is to take on these undesirable jobs, would you prefer they didn’t come at all or do you expect the Australian tax payer to subsidise the Indian education system?
I agree about structural racism. And the Overland piece was an attempt to better explore the actual structure. But if those proposing solutions don’t understand how the mechanics of border policing overlap with things like attendance records, state regulation of workplaces etc, you will just end up continuing to pose solutions that in fact shoot the messenger.
@275 – false dichotomy.
The point is to ensure that safe jobs with mandated legal rates of pay are available.
That was all too hard for you on the other thread, remember?
“Okay – Lefty E, a breach of the 20 hour work restriction means automatic cancellation of the visa, with no discretion, no exceptional circumstances.”
“And visa breach leads to cancellation, no ifs, not buts, no discretion, no right to review.”
liz, a visa breach doesn’t have to mean automatic anything.
Unless I’m missing something, and I might be, your statements don’t appear to keep pace with the government’s current lines of thinking, and recommendations for amendments (see Welfare of International Students, linked to @ 239).
You wont find me disagreeing with you about the problems with our ‘automated’, zero discretion Migration Act provisions, Liz.
But govt can choose to police these issues as industrial relations, rather than migration issues. I would certainly encourage them to. Its a total mess that needs careful fixing. Penalising students just wouldnt solve the problem anyway – more would still be arriving without adequate support, until we change the way we do this.
“Do you expect the Australian tax payer to subsidise the Indian education system?”. Desipis, try that the other way around. What you’ll find is that Indian student fees are currently subsidising the Australian education system. More than one university is kept afloat by the revenue – literally.
Im suggesting we invest in supporting that critical income stream – not just ‘harvest’ it with this sort of indifference. It wont pay in the long run – you think these dodgy colleges collapsing will lead to higher returns? Or these issues with visas, unregulated late night work, and violence?
No way – and declining enrolemnts are already evident, even taking into account the ‘GFC impact’. We’ve got a lot of high quality competitors for this market. We should stop taking it for granted.
Sorry! I think I misread you…
“Once the state starts coming down on employers about this, youll find they wont hire OS students for longer than 20 hours. You’l also find hese late night jobs become less ghettoised by Idnian students with no rights. Then they’ll have to pay better if they want the same alte night workforce – then a more dempgraphically representtive worfofoce weill emerge, and be less of a target for these sort of attacks.”
Lefty E – I am not sure if these assumptions are correct. Firstly, the state will find it difficult to come down on employers without offering assurances to students that they won’t get deported for visa breach. It can be very difficult to do these kinds of investigations without the co-operation of the workers, as many unions can tell you. even if they did – again without a change in work rights, what other jobs can these students get? What type of job can you get as a student if you are not super-flexible (which you’re not if your boss is a stickler for immigration law), and cannot work for more than a standard 2 day week (standard 3 days would be 21 hours – I am thinking white collar office job world now).
My proposal is nothing like turning a blind eye – I authored the linked UNITE submission ( I do volunteer stuff for them), and the Senate submission by the same organisation, and several other pieces on international student work rights in both reputable, but mostly dis-reputable, journals and publications. The job I see here is making sure that the sympathetic but poorly informed don’t propose solutions that will actually fuck over those they re claming to help. If you want to talk about structural racism, I suggest informing yourself of the existing structures would lend credibility to your arguments.
Well, what are your proposals then Liz, if it isnt turning a blind eye, status quo as is? Im not being shirty – Im interested. The status quo simply cannot continue – and the govt, I suspect, now thinks as much too.
As I indicated above, Im all for students being given an amnesty to investigate employers, so Im not sure what your last post is actually criticising in mine.
And I stand by this: if cheap, non-complaining, irregular labour is not available, those late night employers will have to either shut up shop, or pay more. Where the latter happens, a more demographically representative, non-ghoettoised workforce will emerge. At the moment its an easy target for any recialsied resentments – and equally, opportunity -generating for any ‘opportunist’ crime.
Hi Nick,
For all the suggested amendments, currently a visa breach is automatic for breaches of workplace rights. And while I hope at the very very least that the discretionarypower in inserted, I doubt it will happen, firstly, and I doubt it will make much of a difference in isolation, if it does happen because of the fear of having to deal with immigration that is pretty general amongst international students.
And according to the CFMEU head, John Sutton, at an anti-trafficking meet in July last year in Sydney, the ACTU sought assurances from the minister, Chris Evans, that the 20 hour work restriction would not be touched by this review.
Lefty E: As for policing as industrial rather than migration: but what would that look like? Does that mean promises from official (Workplace Ombuds) of one government department not to report to another one (DIAC)? Of course, DIAC officials can use their discretion too. But wow, that is a pretty shaky basis on which to convince an international student to come forward when one considers the consequences for themselves and their family. Especially when some of our unions, like the NSW CFMEU, are pretty supportive of immigration raids.
I don’t think you can make cheap, non-complaining labour available if the 20 hour work restriction remains in place. For starters – though in no way do I think that this alone will fix things. The proposals in the UNITE submissions, from most pathetic tinkering to something substantial, include: insert “exceptional circumstances” for work breaches in Migration Act; substantially alter the way work rights are calculated, say by averaging over semester, or abolition of the 20 hour visa restriction. Personally I would advocate abolition of the work restriction.
In itself even the abolition of the work restriction will not fix the problem of racialised low wage labour markets, when there are so many other factors, such as the constantly changing hurdles for PR forcing people to commit more money than they expected, basic discrimination, either for reasons obviously racist or for reasons more usually described as being about language capacity and skill set, etc etc. But it creates some breathing space for student/worker self-organisation by taking away a very powerful weapon currently wielded against students by employers.
And again – considering how little is understood about the mechanics of the students working lives by many commentators, it may be that the solutions come from the students themselves. But I suppose the least we can do, as those who don’t have to live with the consequences, is to NOT make suggestions that will only strengthen those forces hostile to students: ie more vigorous policing of student’s work restrictions.
As for the rest of it: you would have to have a crack at the broader mechanisms of exploitation embedded in our third largest export industry to get close to resolving other issues not just to do with work.
Liz, you’ve been brilliant. Thank you, I’ve learnt so much from what you have written here.
Mark,
My point is we can’t even manage that for our own population, so I think it’s unreasonable to demand it for international students.
“But it creates some breathing space for student/worker self-organisation by taking away a very powerful weapon currently wielded against students by employers.”
yes, I can see that would help (lifting the work limit) with the threat element used by employers. But it then raises the issue of whether its a cheap labour scheme, or a student visa. No students can study effectively working 20+ hours. Thats what we tell both domestic and OS students at my uni.
Ive just looked at the visa subclass 573 regs, and I note that “No work limits apply during recognised periods of vacation offered by your education provider” – so this is primarily a semester time issue.
I personally think that makes it the sort of thing that can be dealt with by reducing living costs – eg dedicated OS subsidised housing on campuses, uni-run workplace pick up bus for OS students (of the sort that many campuses used to run for women at night) etc. Those amendement to to the Mig Act sound good – there’s definitely needs to be a visa-amnesty for students to tackle this. However, this is not unprecedented – permanent visas have been offered in sex trafficking cases where a criminal investigation took place. There are some issues here, a Amnesty noted, but its not the case that such things cant happen wihtout automatically triggering Migration Act penalties.
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news/comments/21207/
Thanks, liz – lots to think about.
Same goes, Lefty E.
No probs with any of your proposals, lefty e, except to point out that many of our local students, particularly those from the regions, face similar problems. I hope that any such programs would be available to students in general, not necessarily just OS ones.
For example, should an Indian student from a very wealthy family be given access to subsidised accomodation at the expense of a poor rural local?
Fair questions Mehitabel – and no doubt ones to be considered in a proper policy debate on these issues at govt level. Obviously urban locals have family networks, and rural students are the relevant comparator.
Id just note that unis earn a LOT of operating revenue off OS studnets – which increasingly subsidises the costs of education provision to Australian students, and in a critical way (as in, it literally wouldnt be possible without it – unless the govt and taxpayers increase other sources of uni funding).
So, maybe we’d be protecting an investment – and the interests of domestic studnets as well. I tend to see it as I would the roads thats the state builds to mining towns – necessary public infrastructure to support export industries.
So who should be doing the subsidising – the Universities or the government?
Not always.
Merc @260
Not that I don’t sympathise with their predicament, mind you,
it’s just that I don’t think a few beaten-up Indians are important enough
to waste a precious, important concept like ‘racism’ on?
Incorrect. I have already said many times that a proportion, but not all,
of the attacks are due to racism (but not structural racism). In this,
that some but not all of the attacks are racist, I agree with many
well-regarded commentators here: Myriad74 and Helen to name just two.
Where I may depart from them is that I think ‘structural racism’ as defined
by yourself and Mark is a gross misappellation of the disadvantaging
structures facing International students.
Do you ever wonder why us Cultural Studies types get a flea in our ear
about the way the dominant group controls the discourse
I understand the point about discourse control by the dominant group
and I think it is a valuable tool for analysing public debate. Hey,
whaddaya know I’m in the dominant group, that’s a first.
judging which victims are worthy enough
To state the obvious, all victims of racism are ‘worthy enough’ to
be judged victims of racism. Where you and I differ is in the definition
of ‘structural racism’. You say that identification of a pattern of
disadvantage in a racial group is enough to prove structural racism.
Me, I want to see laws framed with racist intent to prove structural racism,
of which I have given many examples, but see none in the framework in
which International Students operate.
Merc, the terms Structural Inequality and Structural Disadvantage contain
plenty enough leftist weight to critique the conditions in which International
students operate. They are supersets of Structural Racism which is a specific
form of Structural Inequality. To prove the specific case you need to show
racism not just inequality . Agreed ?
There is not one racist law in place that has caused this mess.
Again with the ‘unless there is a specific racist law there is no structural
racism’
Axiomatically, yes. The number of racist laws facing International Students
is …well let’s count them…zero. Looks bad for your case.
Merc, I have engaged with you on Structural Racism and argued that you are
mislabelling Inequality/Disadvantage as Racism, substituting a specific case
for a general case with no evidence to support the specific. (NB I say the bashings
- personal racism – may be regarded as racist, as opposed to the structures which are
not). I think its now up to you to explain why Inequality is, or can be regarded as, the same thing as Racism.
In fact, most of the problem would be solved if they simply bought more money
with them to Australia.
Or how about we solve it by keeping the wogs in Mumbai? </i?
Not my preferred solution. And as you well realise I did not make that suggestion
in my list of possible actions @252.
Merc, Mark in his list of approaches to tackling structural racism repeatedly
advocates giving Indian students more money or subsidies: cab vouchers,
student accommodation, remove 20 hr work rule, remove work experience rule
and recognise foreign qualifications, correction of bad information (presumably including Oz living costs) provided to Indian students.
Does Mark make you puke too ? Is Mark blaming the victims for being poor ?
Strange 'racism' that is solvable by money, this structural racism…which
indicates that it is not a racism issue at all, but something more general,
like inequality or disadvantage.
Lefty put it this way
structural racism is enabling soft targets for racist individuals. And its about actual, real stuff too: [including] relative economic need among a class of students
Economic need. That would be money. Lefty makes you puke too ?
It’s so terribly, terribly important to be precise about the problem,
before we actually, you know, do anything, isn’t it?
No..and As you well know I suggested a number of specific actions @252 that
should be considered at once. Very unfair of you to state that I say no action
is necessary. You should retract.
Merc @264
Any response that makes reference to the location of the victim’s
apartment, job, or their bank balance, is an attempt to shift the
risk and blame onto the victim, and is ethically unacceptable.
Well, the great majority of the remedies for structural racism proposed
by your mates focus on these very factors. See Mark’s list @205.
Your position on this aspect is quite extreme, Merc. Many (nearly all?)
of the commentariat on these threads have noted that Indian students might
be more likely to be ‘in harm’s way’ as Katz put it on the original
thread, but not through any fault of their own. You might consider
a move more toward the centre on this aspect.
Meanwhile, Bara @254 invoking the ‘ageist’ example is conflating the
two analytical frameworks of racism that are under discussion (structural
and individual)
Actually no. I was just asking you a question.
I asked the same question on the ‘Structural Racism’ thread.
At least one commentator thought that attacks that I described
were indeed ageist.
I would say they are opportunist, like the majority of the
attacks on Indian students.
If you insist, as Bara does, on sticking solely to the
‘individual motive’ framework as being the only valid analytical framework,
As you well know, I do not insist on sticking solely to individual motive.
Rather, I have agreed that Indian students face significant Structural
Disadvantage which propels them into risky jobs in risky suburbs and
into harms way.
This structural disadvantage is not IMO racist, however.
We appear to agree that where there is no sufficient structural cause,
then the motive must be opportunistic, what you call ‘individual’.
Are you sure, though, that there are no structural causes for attacks on old
people ?
Meanwhile, Hooray for Cosgrove
Hey Bara,
My approach to this problem is informed mostly by the decades-old ‘Risk and Blame’ thesis of Mary Douglas. If you haven’t encountered her before, I can recommend.
Despite our veneer of hyper-modern rationality and empiricism, we’re the same type of creature that used to sit in caves and make up superstitious just-so stories in an attempt to explain misfortune.
There are three possible loci from which to begin that investigation:
a) The victim’s actions.
b) The perpetrator’s actions & motives.
c) The surrounding circumstances (dare I say it, structure).
I believe that all of us have a pre-cognitive bias to begin our journey from one of those three loci. That is, it’s the place where, before we engage brain, our ‘gut feel’ directs our attention. Later, once we switch on brain, we take in other facts and information and focus more attention on the other loci, to hopefully arrive at some sort of useful explanation.
However, I believe it’s ethically deficient to begin our work at locus [a] (and in my “extreme” position, locus [a] is a no-go area). The victim has no possible reason to invite disaster (indeed, the term “invite disaster” is oxymoronic when you think about it), yet so often we see explanations that start with a focus on the victim’s actions.
I believe anybody who has such an impulse needs to stamp on it, hard, to avoid ethically deficient reasoning. I think such talk is in the same category (though obviously not the same extremity) as a Sheik Hilaly talking about “uncovered meat” for rape victims, or a Pat Robertson talking about Haiti’s “deal with the devil” on earthquakes.
So upthread when I see people repeatedly raising points about the victims’ job, apartment location, or bank balance, I see red flags. Even the fruitful discussion that follows about possible actions that could broaden their economic and social options in Australia are a way to enable a return to the default “it’s their choice” position. After all, if we make it possible for visitors to live in Toorak and drive cars to work at 2am, and they still get stabbed, then observers can feel really justified in shrugging their shoulders and saying “it’s their choice”. The pre-cognitive bias is as old as civilisation. It’s not going to go away just because the Victorian and Federal governments might take steps to improve circumstances for international students.
But, here’s the problem. If you really believe that people shouldn’t do violence to others, period, then there’s no logical way to escape the notion that a person should be as safe in Wilcannia as West Pymble. The victim’s actions, where they go, what they do, can’t be validly examined as a contributing factor. We either have an absolute right (note: not a guarantee, of course) to personal safety, or we don’t. And if we find that somebody’s right to personal safety has been infringed, I believe the ethical imperative is to look at the perpetrator, and the surrounding circumstances, and nowhere else.
As this thread has lengthened, and as I’ve propounded this position forcefully, the rap-sheet against me has grown. A participant wants to inform me I’m an ‘inverse racist’, ‘closed-minded’ and now, lately, ‘intellectually dishonest’. But ad-hom remarks, even if true, don’t detract from the validity of an argument, assuming it has any.
Our cultural assumptions erect “life-savers flags” on the hazardous ‘beach’ of our urban society. As people navigate the urban currents, some get into trouble. When they’re swimming ‘between the flags’ (note, the dominant group decides where the flags are), out come the life-savers, and it’s all sympathy for the victim. When they venture outside the flags “it’s their choice”. We withdraw sympathy. They shoulda stayed between the flags if they wanted to stay out of trouble.
But this isn’t the surf, and these aren’t blind forces of nature at work. We, us, our society create the dangerous currents, we harbour the killer waves among our midst, we decide where the flags go, and yet we remain all too willing to attribute disaster to the victim’s swimming style. If saying so makes me a ‘closed-minded’, ‘intellectually dishonest’, ‘inverse racist’, ‘extremist’, so be it.
Ho hum.
Well this is interesting.
Criminals preying on Indians: Cosgrove
Of note
Women, Mercurius, are already familiar with the tendency to focus on a crime victim’s activities / location / dress / demeanour. The corollary of the tendency to hammer on “crime prevention strategies”, making it the responsibility of potential victims rather than the perpetrators, is to limit peoples’ freedom of movement. In the process, we are condoning that and giving tacit approval to young thugs “owning” the city at night (or some parts of the city by day.)
While it’s obviously not possible to make life 100% safe, it would be an excellent thing to push for the media, government and society (e.g. parents)to focus on the people doing the bashing, robbing or raping, and make a concerted effort to address this behaviour.
Some of this debate reminds me of the bad old days when I was bullied during a short period in my school years. This ranged from taunts (and who cares about that) to theft/vandalism of my stuff to more seriously several occassions of assualt, the worst being a group of ten who bravely kicked the crap out of me until I just stopped getting up. And I was lucky.
But when this was raised with the relevant authority figures at the school…wel they had some easy solutions and advice.
“You must of said or done something to deserve it.”
“Maybe you need to be more careful where you go during the day.”
“Maybe if you were more friendly to those hassling you.”
And it worked. I would go straight to and from school during those two years. I would avoid any other movement. Lunch was spent in the library. Toilet breaks taken twice a day between periods furtivly. And the weekend would be spent indoors.
And it worked except on the odd occasion where I would be out in the open at the wrong time and be totally pounded. I became invisible and lived those two years as a prisoner. The offenders got off scot free.
And it was the wrong thing to do at the time. It’s the wrong attitude. We should be making offenders fear the law, fear getting caught. Not tut tutting at the victims and telling them to modify that behaviour. What next if we continue on this path. Charging the victim for assualt? “Your ‘onor he maliciously attacked my hands feet and knee with ‘is face. It was awful!”
Mercurius
the reason I applied all those labels to you was because of your refusal to look at evidence with an open mind. The fact that you ignore the arguments to focus on the labels – and I might point out, you’re not adverse to labelling yourself, but of course, it’s OK when you do it! – again demonstrates your reluctance to engage with the evidence.
The question under examination was not whether or not the students should be attacked (which everyone agrees they shouldn’t have been) but whether or not those attacks were, in the main, driven by racism.
Unless we simply take the inherently racist position that ‘of course the attacks were racist because the victim was black’ then we need to examine the circumstances surrounding the crimes to determine if racism was a factor or not.
So it’s not ‘blaming the victim’ to point out that people who work in convenience stores, drive taxis, walk through dark parks late at night, carry high value equipment on their persons, and are of a certain age and gender, are more likely to be assaulted, regardless of their colour.
This also means that noone is letting off the perpetrators. It’s simply that the question of their motivation is presumed to be the same, regardless of the colour of their victims. How we prevent crime against persons in general is a different topic to whether or not certain attacks were racist.
I’m all for threads going off on tangents, it makes the discussion far more interesting and human. But to interpret threads out of context, because you’re lost sight of the original argument, is always dangerous.
The context of this thread is the victim, so discussion of the victim is entirely appropriate.
Mehitabel, the only ‘reluctance’ I have as regards evidence, is a reluctance to submit to the notion that only the things you say constitute evidence, constitute evidence. Your positivist approach actually forfends consideration of a great deal of material that could prove helpful and/or enlightening, if you were willing to be more flexible in your evidentiary parameters. You’re perfectly entitled to maintain your framework of course, but you’ll see an awful lot of nails everywhere unless you put down that hammer.
Our epistemic approachs are incommensurable. That doesn’t make me ‘closed-minded’.
Tssk @297: re. Cosgrove’s speech – he’s right and may have access to better information than the rest of us. On a prior LP thread someone posted a link to the activities in Melbourne of a group known as ‘National Alternative’ who appear to fly just below the radar on on racist politics and whose ideological rantings are the usual odd mixture of grievance politics, analysis and dog whistle racism. Remember National Action? I’ve come to the conclusion that the attacks are racist and suspect that this mob may be inspiring some of the violence. If the coppers aren’t all over this mob then they aren’t doing their job properly.
and in another minor miracle
about time
Groups such as National Alternative and “Fuck off we’re Full” are a symptom, but I would argue that it’s the low-level, pervasive, background-noise racism that provides the primordial soup in which the opportunistic attackers and the racist organisations grow.
You know, the little snide remarks like “It’s spot the Aussie around here these days!”*, “They come here and take our jobs”, “the government gives them a car when they come here”**, “It’s so rude when they don’t speak English”, “They should assimilate more”, “There’s too many f**ing {whatever ethnicity}”, etc, etc, etc.
*”Aussie” being defined as white English/Irish/European, of course.
**You may think I’ve made this one up, but sadly no. I’ll pay that it’s a rarity in itself, but I included it to show how deluded and OTT some of the urban myths are that uneducated youths are exposed to.
True Helen.
Another one to file under ‘so-obvious-it’s-a-shame-to-have-to-point-it-out’.
I was once assaulted by an east Asian kid (me 13, he maybe 16) in Perth, after he overheard me making the following comment to a friend:
“They all look exactly the same, and they all have exactly the same food – why so much Chinese in one place?”
Of course, he missed the bit just prior where it was clear we were discussing the three identical Chinese outlets in the one foodhall, and punching me in the back of the head was probably an overreaction anyway.
In relation to Overland’s comments: now what will the doubters say? As this thread has gone along some have increasingly tended (in my opinion) to argue that the original premise of the post was that “the attacks on Indiian students are primarily based on race”. As many have tried to point out this was never the assertion, just that race may be a factor and that we would be sensible to look at the forces at work in our society so we might be able to better understand what is going on, and thus do something about it. The denialists (if I might call them that) have persistently argued that without direct evidence, we are not allowed to argue that race might be a significant factor. However others have tried to point out that the racism (that they think exists) can be expressed through individual actions or indeed through the structures that our society creates. Now finally with Overland’s comments out in the open, saying that racism is a factor we might be able to move on and talk a little more openlty about racism, how it works, how it is supported wihin Australia (within individuals and strucutres), what effects it has on people and as a consequence of this discussion we might be better placed to do something about it. The perverse result of course of denying the rpossibility to racism being a factor it that we are unable to do anything about that particular aspect as we seek to make people safer (regardless of course of their ethnicity). This discussion I think would be a good thing (and hopefully there is a follow up post).
Also thanks to all the posters. I have appreciated this thread and have gained a lot from it.
Mercurius
Yes because you seem to define ‘gut reactions’ as evidence (certainly you’ve offered little else). I – funnily enough – think that statistics, statements from the police, media releases and other documents are evidence.
And noone I know of on this thread has denied that racism played a part in these attacks, or that it shouldn’t be tackled.
Myriad @303
These are identical to teh comments Overland made in July 2009. Easily Googled.
Yes because you seem to define ‘gut reactions’ as evidence (certainly you’ve offered little else). I – funnily enough – think that statistics, statements from the police, media releases and other documents are evidence.
You seem to be implying that one can either have a gut reaction or pay attention to written evidence, never both. Your own gut reaction seems very much to defend the Vic government to your last breath. Wev.
Mehitabel, how does that last comment 307 tally with these statements of yours? Especially in light of Overland’s comments today and those he apparently made in July 2009? It seems to me that you have persistently argued that although racism might exist, it has not been a factor worth worrying about in the spate of recent assaults, because (you say) the evidence says it hasn’t been. Do you have a different opinion now (particularly see 181 and 187). The reason for trawling back over these things is that the tenor of you postings is that anyone who thought that racism might be an issue were just making things up, their ideological blindness preventing them from seeing things as they really are.
3 My understanding is that the police analysed the information they did have (and which I hadn’t seen released prior to reading the above) and concluded that the attacks on Indians correlated not to race but to circumstance – that is, they were attacked at exactly the same rates as any other person of any other skin colour were at the particular time and place they happened to be in at the time.
111 Again (and one of my posts has been apparently stuck in moderation for a long long time, no idea why) there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the issue hasn’t been swept under the carpet but that, in fact, the police were well aware of the attacks long before the media were.
They investigated them, correlated them with available data, and concluded that the problem wasn’t a racially based one at all.
174 I have very carefully, in virtually every post, made it clear that I believe racism exists and that some of these attacks were likely to be racist in nature, but the simply fact is that the stats have been analysed by both the police and academics and no supporting evidence can be found to demonstrate that these attacks are racist.
181 I’m also open to persuasion.
187 When I first became aware of this issue, several months ago, mainly by regularly reading in the paper that these attacks were happening and were racist in motivation, I accepted that premise at face value.
Before rushing to judgement, however, I thought it would be wise to check a few things.
1. Was there any evidence to suggest that assaults on Indians were greater than those on the general population? (rather than simply reported more).
The answer is, yes they are.
2. If so, were these assaults greater than one would expect for people in particular circumstances? (Place of work, for example).
Apparently, from all I’ve been able to find, no they’re not.
Willing to be proved wrong on 2, please do so providing evidence.
And just a back back at you in relation to 195 “So, back at you — what evidence would you accept before you believed that the attacks on Indians was not racist? (structural or otherwise)?” What evidence do you need to accept that race was a factor?
And the point about place of work goes back to the many reasons adduced why Indian students and residents have a heavy concentration in these occupations…
Mercurius@296,
Wow. You think it’s unethical to analyse a potentially significant input into a complex system of harm. I mean… wow.
We (society) are not responsible for the actions of free individuals who break the rules of our society. At all. The individuals in question are responsible for the danger they pose.
What we are responsible for is taking reasonable actions to minimise the risk of harm from the danger. These actions will include police action, community action and individual action. Where individuals take actions that increase that risk to themselves (or others), we should take note. Where such actions are irrational or ill informed then we can take actions to correct those decisions, such as improved information measures. If we don’t consider the role actions of the victims had we could not take such action. Where an individuals actions are based on values that differ from our own, we need to respect those values and acknowledge that the individuals with those values are, at least in some way, responsible for the outcomes of their actions.
20/01/10 Simon Overland: On Nazi Salutes, Racist Attacks and Anti Hoon Laws
http://blogs.abc.net.au/files/hectic-20-1-10.mp3
7m 20s – 12m 30s
16m 0s – 17m 50s
22m 0s – 23m 45s
Please don’t be boring, Effective Service Delivery.
When I’ve qualified my statements, as I have repeatedly, by saying that racism is a factor but doesn’t show up in the statistics, I get accused of contradicting myself. When I don’t, for the purposes of brevity and not waffling, I get accused of dismissing racism as a factor.
As for Overland’s comments, I would point out that one of my earlier links were to one of his articles, so I’m scarcely unaware of them.
Yes, Helen, I know I sound like an apologist for the government. Surprised me, too. But sometimes, governments do get things right, reluctant though we might be to admit it.
Hardly a surprise but not much talk on here about the IPL (Indian Premier League) player auction yesterday in which not a single player from Pakistan was drafted despite them being the world champions in Twenty/20 cricket.
Yep, just double checked; the article I linked to at 20 is by Overland, and basically says what I’ve consistently argued, that a small % of these attacks are undoubtedly racist but the majority are opportunistic. It also points out, as I have repeatedly, that the police were aware of the problem long before it was raised by the media and have been working with the Indian community to tackle it.
Even your own post of my posts, ESD, contains references to me saying that I thought some of the attacks were racist in motivation.
So I’m not sure what your problem is.
Jacques – my understanding (and I am not holding myself as an expert by any measure on this) from listening to an ABC interview on the radio is that there are huge question marks on the availability of the Pakistani players plus some politics – so the franchises took the safe option and didn’t buy any. Only 8 players were bought in the auction out of 60 available.
Merc @296
I agree that no portion of the blame (guilt) is attributable
to a victim of an unprovoked attack.
The proposition ‘Victim deserved to be bashed’ does
not follow from the proposition ‘Victim was in
a risky position’. I don’t know why you should argue that
they do.
I don’t think anyone has argued that particular line,
though many have argued ‘victim is more likely to be bashed’
following from ‘victim is in a risky position’, which
is quite logical AFAICS.
I believe the ethical imperative is to look at the perpetrator,
and the surrounding circumstances, and nowhere else.
In terms of blame (guilt) yes; in terms of how the problem
can be addressed its essential to look at all surrounding
circumstances including Structural Inequalities facing
the victim that may have propelled them into more
risky behaviours.
Razor @ 317,
There really were not any questions about the players availability and the Pakistani players had all the required visas and what not from both the Pakistan & Indian governments. Given the fact Pakistan’s captain Shahid Afridi was expected by most to be the #1 pick in the auction and he and all of his world champion teamates from Pakistan went undrafted by every single team it doesn’t take much to work out they were frozen out due to pressure from the top, here’s a local report:
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26611221-5006372,00.html
Simon Overland reportedly now says that Indians are “not over represented” in assault stats. I wish he would publish this data online, otherwise I don’t know what to think about this issue any more.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/20/2797173.htm
Flavian,
it isn’t really that hard, but demonstrates what many of us here have been saying all along: undoubtedly, race is a factor in some of these attacks, but not to such an extent that it’s statistically significant.
And (tiredly) no, that doesn’t mean we should be complacent about it.
VICPol has also said Indians *are* overrepresented in robbery stats, and police spokespersons have publicly stated just about every possible variation on whether or not race is a factor.
Given certain potentially relevant data isnt even routinely recorded, and Overland himself has recently said that police have been too quick at tmes to rule out race – I dont think Overland’s commentary “demonstrates” anything conclusively.
321 I keep hoping Mehitabel that this view, already iterated many times by similarly tenacious, but surely by now equally tired, contributors, will really be the last word on this. The clear accord of anti-racist sentiment between almost all of the commentators should by now be enough for a truce and at least an agreement to disagree. I yielded to this view many days ago when acrimony seemed to be creeping into an exchange between people who would normally share the same view on issues of ethnic or racial bias.
mehitabel who’s arguing the merits complacency? I would just like to see some hard data. This entire debate seems to be taking place in a fact free hyperbole zone.
Well, the trouble is the data doesn’t say anything!
The best analysis of it I know of is:
http://proceedings.com.au/isana2009/PDF/paper_Spolc.pdf
“And (tiredly) no, that doesn’t mean we should be complacent about it.”
mehitabel, this is belated, but I’m very sorry for being so short the other day – and for directing my impatience (terrible trait of mine) personally towards you in such an accusatory fashion, which wasn’t my initial intention. Not helpful or pleasant for anyone taking part in the discussion.
I very much concur with Lefty E @ 322, and I’d like to reiterate my sentiments from the first of these three related threads.
Vic Police desperately need to improve the quality and detail of the statistics they record and release, and the quality of their communications with the general public.
I find it depressing that, as per Overland’s recent remarks on the ABC, it appears they’ve been quantitatively shooting around in the dark almost as much as we have, to form the bases of their reports to the media and the government.
Ta, Nick. Appreciated – and understood!
Have a look at the link.
Aye. Where there’s a lack of objective empirical information, there’s ample of room for sensationalism, hyperbole, and idle speculation dressed up as fact. Simon Overland may resent the “hysteria” of the Indian media, but in part he has himself to blame, for giving it a vacuum to expand into.
Here’s some objective empirical information for the positivists to consider:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-urged-to-switch-off-hate-sites-20100123-mrow.html
54,000 FB Australian members of ‘Speak English or Piss Off!’, growing at 2000 per week.
Other FB groups online…
- I think Indian People Should Wear Deodorant,
- Stop Whinging Indians,
- Australia: Indians, You Have a Right to Leave
Anybody who feels complacent about this needs to re-read their history books.
Wow, a group started by a 15 year old Indian student, commenting on the hygiene habits of other Indians. We’re doooomed!
Is it the rise of the Self-Hating Indian?
Wait, desipis, are you a secret advertisement for Subcontinental Watersport Fetishism?
This is kind of what I’m on about. I ask for accurate statistics, so we can find out whether Indians really are over represented in assaults in Victoria, and people insert facebook groups into the conversation to try and prove they are.
Race issues are very emotional issues, and people get very hyped up about them. But I think the very first thing we should be lobbying for is decent information, so we can get some vague idea of what actually is going on. Then we have solid grounds on which to lobby for solutions, hyperbole just won’t cut it.
Clearly they’re appropriating the culture of Anglo progressives.
flavian: the insertian of face book groups does not seem to me to be about who may or may not be overrepresented in whatever statistic…
however it does seem to me to be clear evidence of structural racism, thank you mercurius.
Don’t worry Eric. There are some people in this world who need to see the results of a double-blind study, a stack of notarised witness statements, and a write-up in Nature, before they will concede that their arse is on fire.
Eric Sykes nobody’s denying that there’s racism in Australia. But some people still want an excuse to get hot and bothered anyway. Sure makes it difficult to discuss the issues openly.
Mercurius,
Word. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
True Roger, but here there’s no absence of evidence anyway.
FDB,
yes. I thought that as soon as I hit submit. But it’s a kind of filter as to what can be falsified in an objective sense. So I meant “scientifically valid” evidence.
Risk requires different levels of evidence. If there is a perception that cannot be justified according to the available evidence and reasonable interpretations of that evidence, then communication and further analysis needs to counter that perception.
If there is widespread perception of a risk, a great deal of evidence but with competing explanations, then all those alternative explanations need to be managed in communication and risk management. More knowledge may be gained over time but there is an immediate problem that needs to managed with the info at hand.
To maintain that one has to hold back until a single explanation can somehow be proven, while discounting alternative explanations beyond some “accepted” official line which is going to be very cautious (i.e., no apparent racist motive), negates the experience of those who have experienced that risk (even through bereavement) or feel they may be subject to greater than normal risk.
If structural racism is too “inflammatory” for some, then try structural violence. The closure of The Tote and potential of the Arthouse to go (licensing risk in Victoria) illustrates this nicely. Band crowds, including punk and metal, are pretty much non violent because they want to see the music and sit on anyone who looks likely to put that at risk. However, on King Street, there is reduced social mediation of violence and for many it’s part of a big night out. They can do whatever they like and the venues are not at risk. So there is structural violence in one environment and not in the other. The risk factor is not just crowds plus alcohol plus time. It’s who those crowds are made up of and the socially mediated behaviour of that crowd.
All very true Roger.
Although the Tote looks like being rescued, which is orsum. Although I’d have loved to get my hands on one of their vocal mics or a piece of the carpet, so science could learn more about the peculiar chemistry of rock and roll putrefaction.
Has anyone presented a risk management approach to the situation? One that includes the “widespread perception of a risk” such as those held by people exampled by the ‘Speak English or Piss Off!’ Facebook groups as well as those held by Indian victims?
Hmmm, and holders of that sensitive disposition are at risk … how?!?
Most Indian students either know English or are studying it or both. Australia has very good ESL capacities in the public education sector, for instance.
That comes back to this: if there is a perception that cannot be justified according to the available evidence and reasonable interpretations of that evidence, then communication and further analysis needs to counter that perception.
Fear of strangers or the other is a feature of primate groups, including humans. It has outlived its evolutionary utility and should not be a feature promoted in civil society.
It’s not helped by dog-whistling politicians, sensationalist media and the assertion that free speech means that all public comments are of equal value.
So Desipis, are you being provocative in the Athenian teacher mode to draw a considered response from the hoi polloi, or just being provocative?
People power saved the Tote. Woo hoo!
Apparently Shane Warne is going to meet with Brumby to talk about the issue. I have no idea what he thinks. Celebrity power also seems to work.
We also have anti-discrimination legislation, so that racism problem is solved right? Perhaps if you’d spent all of a minute reading the group you’d have realised that it’s more than just about language.
I was hoping that people might make an honest attempt to understand the ‘other side’, but obviously that was expecting too much (from you at least). If you had you might have realised that there is a common theme of a minority being under threat from a majority. The difference is while some people view this in a national context, seeing the Indians as a minority, others view this in a global context and see Australians as a minority.
Desipis,
I was just using the English and education points as examples to show that the perception of risk in “Speak English or Piss Off” showed that the perception was quite divorced from the reality. I see the work around for that one of education, communication, exposure, open language. Not appeasement for example.
I’ve read all of this group, all of the previous posts on racism and give it serious pause. It is more than language – there is basic psychology in terms of fear of the other that extends across species. There are layers of response and meaning that have their response in language and behaviour. Risk is a useful way to think about it.
Your last comment is puzzling – Australians in a minority? Is this a resurfacing of the fear of the yellow hordes? I’m not reflecting this back on you. It’s seen in some of the US rhetoric to China for instance. What do you think is the best way to work through these?
There are fears (i.e., perceived risks) that have a logical basis and fears that don’t (though it’s not easy to distinguish one from ther other). I’m saying that how these are acknowledged and communicated is different. And those that do not have a logical basis should not be appeased, although they can be acknowledged. If you think I’m being less than honest, that is your problem.
“A minority [Australian racists] under threat from a majority [who exactly?].
Please explain, desipis.
Desipsis, every nationality is a minority “in a global context”. What’s your point?
The only majorities “in a global context” are female (50.1%), heterosexual (80-90%ish depending on how and what you count) and human (100%). Every other ethnicity, religion, language group, lifestyle or political outlook are minorities.
Except possibly ‘xenophobe’.
For those who’ve had trouble keeping up, here’s a list of threats to “our way of life”:
2010: People who don’t speak English!
2000: Postmodernism!
1990: Saddam!
1980: Commies!
1970: Vietnamese Commies!
1960: Contraception!
1955: Rock ‘n Roll Music!
1950: Korean Commies!
1946: Nylon Stockings!
1940: Nylon Stockings worn by Gestapo!
1930: Botulism!
1920: Automobiles!
1910: Electric lights!
1900: Immoral messages sent by telegraph!
Get the picture?
Eric @334
How is the existence of a xenophobic Facebook group proof of structural racism ?
Say NO! to Structural Racism!
A very, very good article in The Australian by Neville Roach of the Australia India Business Council. He pretty much says what I’ve been saying.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/time-to-allay-fears-with-facts/story-e6frg6zo-1225826075895