Categories: Racism

28 Feb 2010, Comments (6)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means

Author: Helen

You know when a government come up with something that just really stinks of “cooked up by a PR company”? To give him credit, our State Premier John Brumby took on board that the recent attacks on Indian students and workers in Melbourne really did have a racist component and didn’t try to take the “Racist? Who? Us? How dare you!” route. But. Come on. Wasn’t there anyone in the State PR machine to say “hang on a minute guys, I think this might cause widespread uncontrollable laughter, eyerolling and blowing of mighty raspberries from the people we are trying to impress with our Sincerity™?

A FORMER AFL footballer is the nation’s first “respect” minister after being appointed by the Victorian government to tackle the growing racism and alcohol fuelled violence problems in the state.
Premier John Brumby announced Justin Madden would be the minister for the “respect agenda” as part of his election year cabinet reshuffle following the shock resignation of embattled Transport Minister Lynne Kosky this week.

I mean… Madden! Not only does he come from the background of Australian Rules football – a milieu which is trying with limited success to shake off its reputation for a lack of respect when it comes to women and people of other races and cultures. He’s also the minister least likely to be associated with the word “respect” by the long suffering inhabitants of Victoria. He has a long history of showing respect to developers and money, and none to architecturally significant buildings, grasslands, coastal communities or the planning rules set up to make our city livable. This leaked email about setting up a false public consultation process for a development has shown just how much respect Madden and the Vic Government have for the people of his State and the iconic buildings and places which they love.

Really, I’m not under any illusion that the Victorian government has our best interests at heart – let alone those of international students – but you’d think with all the money from developers pouring into the party coffers, they’d be able to come up with a more sophisticated PR response to the problem.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T – Find out what it means, before you create a ministry of it.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Larvatus Prodeo, with bonus Bernice

24 Sep 2009, Comments (7)

If they were super athletes, they’d be in

Author: Helen

There is absolutely no reason why Grace Gichuhi and Teresia Ndikaru Muturi shouldn’t be offered asylum in Australia under the provisions of existing international treaties: ”race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”.

So, Immigration spokespeople and Senator Evans and Refugee tribunal, you think being a female member of a social subgroup which practices forced genital mutilation on women doesn’t constitute being a member of a particular social group?

There’s legislation set to go through Parliament to offer “complementary protection” to cover such cases, if their supporters can keep them here until then. Senator Evans, though, also has a measure of discretionary power and could have approved their application already. For reasons which I can only guess at, in this case, “can’t” means “won’t”.

Fuckers.
 
 
 
 

(Contact Senator Chris Evans)

3 Mar 2009, Comments (2)

May I take this opportunity to apologise to the entire expat Indian community?

Author: Helen

There has been an increase in attacks on Indian students and workers in Melbourne’s inner west. Clearly, it was time for the police and other community leaders to take notice and do something about these race-related crimes. Did they they put a spotlight on the people who were doing the robbing and bashing? Did they talk about their intention to bring the perps to justice and enhance the safety of public spaces generally, and work with the Vic government to help change the attitudes of Bogan Youth? Hardly. The response of the Victoria Police was to recommend that young indians should stop talking so loudly in their own language and should not be louchely and recklessly carrying things like iPods and laptops on their daily commute. In short, pull your head in and stop flaunting your great wealth before our simple peasant folk, in case you get yourself bashed. And robbed.

Inspector Scott Mahony complained that the police had been blamed unfairly in the story, because “members of the indian community” had complained at a public meeting that their countrymen were noisy and obnoxious. Right, that lets the Victoria Police off the hook completely, because if someone’s fellow-countryman says something denigratory towards them, of course you take the totally unbiased opinion of this codger and publicly run with it!

This reminded me of Lauredhel’s article about other victims of crime and how the use of the passive voice, and constant advice to the crime victims both actual and potential to take defensive action themselves to not get themselves raped, or get themselves robbed, makes the perpetrator invisible and takes all the light and heat off the people doing the crime.

It’s not the first time this has happened. A Sudanese boy, Liep Gony, was bashed to death by two white thugs in October 2007, and the police blamed the incident on the Sudanese community who, they thought, had failed to assimilate properly.

I use a train and a bus daily on the routes to, from and around inner Western Melbourne and I can tell you from long experience that a lot of students are deafening. Not Indian students – students. Anyone who says that’s an Indian thing really hasn’t been out lately. It’s a function of being young and silly. (Some) students travel in packs, yell to each other, and generally seek attention. They’re immature and sometimes quite irritating. Duh – they’re young! This in no way excuses crimes against them, I would have thought. The idea that Indian students are somehow “flaunting” their iPods and laptops, also, is simply racist. I see thousands of caucasians and others using their laptops and ipods, and schoolkids carrying valuable musical instruments, every day. It’s good defensive practice to keep smaller items packed away, but to say that one ethnic group may have their laptops on show and the others are “flaunting” them simply betrays an underlying idea that one group is entitled to have these things and the others are behaving in a manner not befitting their station.

The Victorian government should examine ways of improving community attitudes on the one hand (well, not making them worse’d be a start), and the appalling lack of any personal safety on the “public transport system” at night, instead of blaming the victims of the crimes. And they should start to get a bead on the invisible perpetrators.

Sushi Das has more well-crafted scorn.

31 Jan 2009, Comments (9)

I know you are, but what am I?

Author: Helen


See these people here? Bloody Caucasians! Wouldn’t you know?

I can’t pick up the local news without reading about some f**king Caucasians in some break and enter or stoush or something. Now here they are giving the country a bad name just by being crass and stupid. Why can’t these people just assimilate?

Go back to Caucasia where you came from!

(H/T: Hoyden about Town.)

19 Jan 2009, Comments (11)

ObInaugration: AGE, why are you so stupid?

Author: Helen

So, the inaugration of President Obama is not quite two days away, and what does the AGE opinion page have to say about it? Well, just a shortish piece from a guy called Steve Harris who thinks that it isn’t all that historically significant really, because Obama isn’t really a proper black person anyway. And even if he was a “proper” black person, everybody knows racism is over. Because Steve has gone from being a white dude in a suit editing both the AGE and the Herald Sun, to a suit in the AFL – that bastion of social progress – to running a think tank, or rather a marketing company. And as far as he’s concerned, he’s never encountered racial discrimination! At all. So there.

Harris knows all this because his job is, wait for it, visioneering! But the details of what Harris’s marketing company actually does are a mystery, since it seems to have no online presence whatever. X-ray vision required, maybe.

26 Dec 2008, Comments (22)

‘Tis the season to be gritting our teeth and smiling gamely and maybe reconsidering the Vodka supply to the younger ones

Author: Helen

I don’t believe in interbreeding, myself. We need to preserve the Aryan race. That’s what I think.

…Actual conversation at the annual Christmas party of the Eartha Kitt Memorial Dog’s home and Cattery. She’s a relatively recent starter, has been there about a year. Has young children but looks all of twenty-one, bubbly, pretty, enthusiastic like a golden retriever. She’s already done and said one or two things that make me go “hmmm”.

Yeah, I know some people think it’s a bit shocking. Hitler. You know Hitler? Well, basically his philosophy. (Deprecating laugh). Well, I didn’t agree with the things he did, of course, but yeah, his philosophy pretty much. The Aryan race has to reproduce itself and not be bred out.

Of course, I can’t talk. I’m a bit of a fuckup myself, my husband’s a Kiwi, my kids are mixed race, so I’ve fucked up there.

I sit, clutching my glass of champagne, staring out over the city and wondering what her beautiful kids would think about being a fuckup. Next to me is R, second-generation Indian Australian. His profile gives nothing away. I’d say he’s been here before.

“So, A. Do you know what Aryan means?” he asks.

“Yeah! It means blonde hair and blue eyes.”

R. turns to me. “Do you know what Aryan means, Helen?”

“Um, well, as far as I know “Aryan” refers to people originally from the subcontinent.”

“That’s right. A: Aryans were asian.” A. looks doubtful, but defers to R, who’s a manager.

This woman doesn’t just work where I work. She lives in my suburb and we bump into each other regularly on the train. Her boys play sport with Exploding Boy.

We change the subject.

I watch the evening sun creeping over the steeple of St Patrick’s. I knock my champagne back and make my excuses.

13 Dec 2008, Comments (12)

So many different things to mourn

Author: Helen

So a fifteen year old boy has been killed, and we find he’s been hanging out with a violent neo-nazi group and making Bundy-and-coke his totem. See also.

Besides the fact that someone’s child is dead, there is so much to mourn in this story.

That an organisation like Southern Cross Soldiers can exist in my city.

That this happened in a suburb I love, where my daughter spent her toddlerhood. And no doubt in my suburb too, I just don’t know who.

That the kid’s friends and associates spew hatred and intolerance (H/T FDB), on his MySpace page, seemingly in inverse relation to their command of the english language, while one of the more literate ones complains about “hearing more foreign languages than we do english“. As the kids’d say, ironic much?)

That this is where the kids who aren’t doing so well with the reading and thinking go to get their ideas.

That drinking Bundy and Coke is celebrated on their MySpace sites like it’s their only identity and their only recreation, besides moaning about ethnicity.

That organisations like Southern Cross Soldiers feed on these poor kids.

That if you think this kind of hatred is confined to the underclass, yer dreamin’.

That Tyler’s parents don’t seem to be at all concerned about the violent neo-nazi milieu their son got into, and his habitual drinking at 15, instead focusing on making him an anti-police Cause Celebre. (There may be circumstances I’m not aware of, but they come across as enablers in the news reports.)

That he was once their baby, a bundle of potential.

Just the waste of it all.

Here’s a comment from his MySpace page: a lonely kid, who doesn’t fit the Bundy-and-Coke party-hearty image of the other avatar pics. She sits with her arms around her knees. Her pretty bespectacled eyes look up into the camera. She projects the sweetness of a kid anxious to fit in. Evidently she’s a bit on the outer but she sees Tyler as someone to look up to. FSM help us.

Special K. ♫
12 Dec 2008 01:22 AM
this is the dew saying her goodbyes.
wow, i’ve just figured out know that it was you.
im sorry mate, i just don’t know what to say.
would have been nice to get to know you more.
rest in peace lil buddy.
stupid lil island.

Give her ten years and she won’t be sweet any more.

20 Nov 2008, Comments (12)

Call the Waaaaaaaaaaaaahmbulance: Queenslanders forced to sit in sports stand without n-word in name!

Author: Helen

Yes, that’s right. The pee-cee, academic (Hiss!), activist (Boo!) Stephen Hagan has been oppressing the good citizens of Toowoomba, in Queensland, who just wanted to sit quietly in their rugby stadium named after a (white) player called E.S. “Nigger” Brown. Then he has the nerve to complain when they express their sadness!

(Transcript): I’ve had police patrol my street because of death threats from the Ku Klux Klan; I’ve had to actually change house because somehow my silent phone number was placed on the internet; My whole life has been turned upside down because I dared to challenge the status quo in Toowoomba. …I had the full weight of the local media and the civic leaders who thought that I was a black interloper who needed to be put in his place… I certainly have experienced a lot of ill-will and a lot of vitriol because of my stance.

Sheesh! Let’s get some perspective! How do you even begin to compare this friendly hazing with the terrible psychic pain of a Queensland rugby fan who’s forced to… sit in a stadium not named after “Nigger” Brown? And this is only the thin end of the wedge. Of cheese. Yes, this objectionable Hagan is going after our wonderful national icon, Coon cheese. Because, as the cheese company and their supporters patiently explain, Coon cheese was totally named after the American Edward Coon who invented a curing process and was thus immortalised. As everyone in Australia knows- which makes everything OK, right? Except that it may not be true, or very relevant to the case. So many poor, poor Australian consumers may eventually be forced to buy cheese in green and blue packets which are named… something other than “Coon”.

Oh, the humanity. Someone call the Waaaaaahmbulance!

(I might even try a packet of that cheese once the name changes; I’ve been boycotting it for more than twenty years, but I never liked it much anyway.)

2 Nov 2008, Comments (4)

Hutchison demands fair and balanced mockery

Author: Helen

Tracee Hutchison comes late to the party in noticing that some of the criticism and abuse of Sarah Palin is pure and simple sexism. Better late than never. But there is no excuse whatever for the way she ends the article.

Why aren’t we similarly learning about the price of Barack Obama’s suits? Or what it cost to deck out Michelle and the kids in those colour-toned matching outfits at the nomination acceptance? I’d estimate $25,000 for the four of them on that night alone — minimum.
It is plainly absurd, but the stories of Palin’s clothing extravagances squeezed her and Cindy McCain back into jeans this week as a counter-blow while Obama spent millions of dollars on a single ad.
And just why has Palin become such juicy fodder for comedians when comment on Obama’s race and colour are completely off limits? Clearly it’s OK to pillory women but it’s not OK to pillory people of colour. Why? I’m not sure. America, after all, has a proud history of burning white women at the stake so it’s not as though discrimination and recrimination have been exclusive to colour.
It would just be uncool to make fun of black people, so let the woman take the hit. Clearly. I don’t like Palin and the thought of her in the White House terrifies me. But playing the woman — once again — as political sport is even less attractive to watch.

Seriously, Tracey, have you been asleep through this whole campaign?
(more…)

13 Oct 2008, Comments (3)

How amusing.

Author: Helen

A story from Yahoo News, via Shakesville:

In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for “Barack Osama.”

This was reported in the AGE.

Where? On the front page.

Good. Because we need to report that kind of stuff so the whole world knows about how Obama is being dog-whistled by some people. (That post was Shakesville’s Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch part 92.)

Where on the front page?

The Odd Spot.

The ODD SPOT? (that tiny section for little info-bites on cute, weird, pratfalls and two-headed chickens?)

Oh.

Good one, Fairfax.

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