A little bit of racial prejudice ...

Some of our citizens have difficulties wearing turbans and bike helmets. Then there is the burqini, an innovative attempt to combine traditional mores with modern lifestyles. Perhaps somebody could try manufacturing a more convenient turban. I was thinking of combination of a beanie and a turban - it could be called “a burban”, which would go very nicely with Australian culture indeed.

Despite our clear success on some levels, there is a lurking underbelly of prejudice that requires only a minor spark to be set ablaze - be it from political leaders, world events or economic deprivation.

Professor Manne argues that our response to asylum seekers reflects an underlying racism, particularly towards Muslims. I qualify this on two fronts. One, the consistent, at least outwardly expressed antipathy towards asylum seekers is that their migration is not fair and is “queue jumping”. Anecdotally, some of the most vociferous critics of asylum seekers exist among ethnic groups. This perception may be incorrect and I agree there is an element of prejudice contributing.

However, I don’t believe it comes as a result of a racist past, but very much a modern response consistent with global trends. Terrorism has increased the prejudice towards Muslims across the globe and so Australians cannot be singled out. There is nothing like TV images to trigger emotional responses. I agree when one considers the small numbers of asylum seekers, our opposition is not justified, but television has a way of highlighting the issue that it can’t for the tens of thousands of other Muslims from Asia, the Middle East and Africa that quietly come off the plane and walk through customs.

We remain relatively unique in that the majority of our Muslim migration, other than Lebanese refugees in the late 70s, are skilled, have entered the workforce and their children are rising up the social ladder with ease.

I contend that our antipathy towards asylum seekers is one most people hold with considerable ambivalence and it is not fundamentally tied to a racist past, but more a feature of modern trends - the dominance of TV images, terrorism and globalisation.

The attacks on Indian students are another example of events where simplistic charges of racism fail to illuminate the complexities of human motives. These attacks were likely to be as much acts of opportunism from desperate predators as they were related to race. Why is it that Melbourne, arguably Australia’s most progressive city, became the eye of the storm with these student attacks?

While Victoria may attract the highest proportion of students, the attacks remain disproportionate: this suggests local factors such as deficiencies in law enforcement were contributors, combined with the vulnerable lifestyles forced on some of the international students. It is worth noting that Victoria has fewer police per capita than any other Australian state.

And consistent with some of my previous statements, there are few countries where class, status and caste infuse the social order to a greater degree than India. As a consequence, any Indian outrage must be tempered by events in its own backyard, such as the pogrom against Muslims conducted by Hindu nationalists in Gujarat in 2002.

As someone who has worked as a young doctor in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, I saw the complete failure of many of the policies championed by progressive thinkers, be it outlandish welfare or forms of cultural relativism. The more recent policies of greater individual responsibility and modified paternalism that some people attribute to our racist past, I would instead attribute to an utter frustration at the failure of past ideas to develop and rehabilitate a people stripped of its historical symbols and traditions.

There is no question that racial prejudice exists. Surveys over the past decade suggest half of us think Muslims “behave strangely”, and that we admit to at least a little bit of racial prejudice and don’t want our children to marry people of other ethnic groups. These feelings are symptoms of a universal human failing. But the reality on the ground, where many of our children have already married outside their ethnic groups, there is little evidence of institutional barriers to ethnic or religious groups. Nothing comparable to the Far Right parties of Europe have had any lasting success in Australia, nor will they. Pauline Hanson will prove to be a blip on the political radar.