Australia racist? Well, der!

Is this an unfair allegation? We need no Hanson to articulate such tendencies. Just sit behind the wheel of your car and fume while someone from XYZ background does something you dislike. Just suffer inconvenience when persons of ABC background do not wait their turn or misunderstand some unwritten rule. We need only hear about a miscarriage of justice at our child's school or our partner's workplace perpetrated by someone from DEF, GHI or JKL background. Suddenly “they” are taking away our jobs, scholarships or neighbourhoods.

However, similar complaints can be heard about newcomers in many countries, so is this attitude especially Australian?

For years we looked down our liberal-humanist noses at apartheid. Then liberal-humanists of the world condemned us for not condemning Hanson. But demonising her is a mistake. Pauline didn't invent bigotry. Nor did she supervise a half-century's systematic theft of Aboriginal children from their parents. Did Australians suspect this was happening? Edmund Burke warned that all it took for evil to flourish was for good men to do nothing. The dubious honour was entirely ours.

Ah, but we've changed since. We've reformed. We now accept our fair share of refugees; more generous per capita than most industrialised nations. We're not like our predecessors; colour-coding and playing favourites, screening people by means less than honourable.

Or could we be in denial about our racist propensities? We might concede some colonial errors, even a massacre or two. Oh, let's not dwell in the past. Myall Creek? Several lifetimes ago. Lambing Flat? Ancient history. Tampa? All a misunderstanding. Mohammed Haneef? Case of mistaken identity. Rationalising is easy. John Howard famously refused to accept there was underlying racism in Australia. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

On today's airwaves we hear obscenities that might've prompted our grandmothers to reach for mouthwash. The world's largest car maker uses the word “bugger” for TV ads, while an international clothing store proclaims “FCUK” across billboards. Yet what advertiser would dare exploit racist equivalents of such words? The only people who can appropriate name-calling with impunity are the insulted parties, reclaiming terms of abuse, as some minorities have done. Racist taunts remain taboo precisely because they're still live ammunition.

In societies where human life is cheap, ethnic groups are often institutionally disenfranchised. Aussies aren't like that. We're good guys: a fair-go egalitarian society in which everybody has rights. But some animals are more egalitarian than others. We enlightened Australians might like to think we left xenophobia behind with the days when we couldn't buy bok choy at the supermarket.

Hanson and her heirs know otherwise. They know our fear of the Other. We heard Pauline's bleating demands for quasi-parental explanation and her claims of Asian invasion by stealth. Could it be that Australian racist statements reflect fear and loathing in the soul: ghosts of our mongrel past and geographical illegitimacy? Lacking the midwifery of independence war myth-making, we were a foundling country, abandoned where we didn't belong, and fearing the Other all around us: in the outback, the Pacific and Asia.

So can we be called racist in 2010? We've enacted laws against our worst tendencies. It's now illegal to dabble in behaviour that offends colour, race, nationality or creed. We have the Racial Discrimination Act, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Act, the Racial Hatred Act, not to mention the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Such legislative niceties offer cold comfort to Indian students attacked in unprovoked robberies and copycat beatings. The official explanation: Indians are soft targets for crimes against the person; often travelling alone, carrying expensive gadgets, and working in high-exposure environments like taxis and late night convenience stores. Really? Is it the victim's fault now? Do we blame a rape victim for wearing a mini-skirt?

Besides, we risk begging the question if we brand these attacks simply as “racist”. They're the symptom, not cause; spawned by ignorant fear of the Other. Der.

Raised in Sarajevo, Marijana had survived domestic upheaval and a ruined homeland after the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent war in Bosnia. In 2005 the former refugee was now a mother of two, working in a Moorabbin factory. She and her family took out a mortgage in the suburb of Endeavour Hills, where streets are named after Cook, Banks and Flinders. Locals ignored her attempts at greeting. Her next door neighbour's van displayed a bumper-sticker that read “I Shoot and I Vote”. This man's wife refused to return Marijana's smiles.