From anti-racism to interracial trust: A cultural perspective

Racism is, has been, and remains, a serious and endemic problem in Australia. The community consultations carried out by the Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr. William Jonas, have clearly indicated that racially discriminatory practices are widespread, institutional in nature, and practised at all levels of society.

One of the saddest and most troublesome after-effects of the Tampa crisis and the events of September 11 has been the public legitimation of intolerance in Australia. Tolerance is not enough. Indigenous people and migrants don't want to be tolerated - they want respect and equality.

But especially now that intolerance has gained renewed credibility in Australian society, we need to defend the value of tolerance as a necessary precondition for a harmonious society. This means, it is crucially important for us to develop initiatives and create circumstances, which enhance the practice of toleration in civil society - minimally needed as a basis for a more proactive and positive social campaign for respect, equality and justice for all.

The most well known approach to the struggle against racism is the legal one: the attempt to combat acts and expressions of racism by outlawing them. This is indeed a crucially important aspect of the task. Anti-discrimination and vilification laws are absolutely necessary to provide official protection to those who are most vulnerable to explicit racist attacks and other discriminatory practices (for example, in the workplace).

However, the legal approach alone is not enough. Education is another key area of intervention. Much remains to be done in the development of appropriate and effective educational strategies in this area. Especially about popular and public pedagogies, aimed at countering the reactionary trend in public opinion, seen in the past half decade.

Too often, antiracist education itself is conceived in a legalistic and overly rationalistic manner. People are told that racism is 'wrong' and therefore they should refrain from it. Such an educational model is based on the assumption that people expressing racist views are somehow irrational, stupid or misguided, and that they should simply be helped to see the light.

The problem is that the politics of blame and accusation involved in such programs, will eventually only push racist attitudes underground. People know that they are not allowed to say negative things about Aborigines or migrants, for example, so they won't do so in public, but they will share them in private - until someone like Pauline Hanson comes along who gives them permission to express their discontent.

How often do we hear people say, "I'm not a racist but…" This signals that official anti-racist discourse and legalistic educational programs can produce profoundly counterproductive effects!

Anti-racist education should not be based on a legalistic approach, but on a nuanced cultural understanding of the operation of racisms in particular social contexts.

The main long-term goal of anti-racist educational programs should be the gradual development of a general culture of what I want to call interracial trust. It may be the case that some fundamental form of racism - associated with ethnocentrism and intolerance against those who are different - is part and parcel of human nature: it is deeply embedded in the very culture of human society. Often these attitudes are the function of plain self-interest, as well as prejudice, ignorance or misguided parochialism.

None of us should take up the position of blamelessness. We all share a human capacity to be intolerant. What matters is the creation of a society in which such imperfect human behaviour is held in check to prevent it from causing harm. That is what a civilised society is about.

From a legal point of view it is necessary to draw a clear line between what constitutes an act of racism and what does not. However, from a cultural psychological point of view we must recognise the situation is more complex. There is a substantial grey area in which it is very hard to determine with any certainty exactly what is going on, who is being racist or not etc.

Furthermore, racism is not a single and homogeneous phenomenon: it varies, it changes, and it is always uneven, especially in everyday contexts. "Where are you from?" is a question often asked by Anglo-celtic Australians to people of non-anglo origins. This is especially offensive to people who were born and bred in Australia.

Here we have a situation in which the meaning of a conversation is radically different for both sides. Many Anglo Australians are not aware of the fact that their very asking of that question tends to place them in a position of power and entitlement vis-à-vis others: their belonging to Australia is unquestioned, that of the others made doubtful. This very presumption of white privilege is based on a very old, racially exclusionary image of the Australian nation.

But it may be too simplistic and unforgiving to condemn anyone asking us, 'Where are you from' as simply racist. It is more complex than this: the interest and curiosity may be genuine, perhaps the uneasy beginning of a more open and mutual exchange and critical dialogue.

A second example is a much more troublesome and explosive one. Recently, I was walking into a shopping mall, when I saw a young man, of Anglo appearance rushing out of the mall while screaming, "You think I was going to steal something, don't you - you fucking Chinese!" He was obviously upset at the female shopkeeper, who was indeed of Chinese background. She said nothing, and the man walked away.

We have to ask the question: is this man a racist? It is obvious that he has made a very offensive racially charged comment, and I am pretty sure that it has inflicted pain and distress on the woman, though she suffered it stoically. But did he make the comment because he is a racist or did the circumstances make him utter the comment? This is a very ordinary but complex incident.

The word "Chinese" became the shorthand for his anger: it was an easy label for him to resort to give a name to his anger and frustration. The upshot may be that he would go home and tell his mates how he hated "those fucking Chinese", and this in turn may reinforce the interracial hostility that was articulated and expressed in what was just a small incident.

Was the Chinese woman right in her suspicions that the man might be a thief, or was she acting prematurely on prejudicial assumption based on the young man's less than respectable appearance. Did she discriminate against him because he was young, male and working-class – the category of people most often associated with criminal behaviour, irrespective of race?

What is clear from this example is how ordinary people deal with volatile conflicts by resorting to old stereotypes or antipathies. They need some way of coming to terms with the stressful situations. It makes little sense, in a situation like this, to simply condemn the Anglo young man for being a racist, even though his comment had undeniably racist overtones.

We need to place the comment in its context, which was one of evident social antagonism and mutual suspicion. At the same time, the Chinese woman may, understandably but perhaps unnecessarily, have offended the young man because she was afraid that he would steal something.

Unfortunately, such indeterminacy is a very common feature of contemporary social life. As the scale of social organisation increases with globalisation, and the proliferation of difference and diversity, we have to be mindful of this complexity.

We can define culture in anthropological terms, as the process by which people make sense of themselves and the world they live in, and construct their identities. Concepts such as race, ethnicity and religion are only some of the categories through which this ongoing process of meaning-making and identity construction takes place: they intersect with class, education, gender, and so on.

Moreover, this process does not take place in a level playing field. There are dominant meanings and identities, which exert power and constrain the cultural self-construction of those groups who are not part of the dominant culture. Above all, the formation of culture is a collective social process: we form our identities and make sense of the world dialogically, through encounters and interactions with others.

It is difficult for people from all walks of life to develop a secure sense of who they are and what their place is in the larger scheme of things in society. Rapid economic and technological change has ensured that many traditional certainties are no longer valid today.

The purely instrumental values of economic rationalism have elevated competition and self-interest as major values to live by. This has created an ethical void in the cultural centre of our society: values such as equality and justice are no longer universally seen as indispensable assets of a good society. In such a context, it is hard for people to be sensitive to the moral calls of anti-racism. Many people either dismiss such calls as not moral but moralistic (witness support for the government's tough and inhumane anti-refugee stance), or they feel, rightly or wrongly, that they themselves are having it tough, so why should they express tolerance towards others?

Racism today is no longer the same as it was twenty years ago. Indeed, the very gains we have made through the processes of reconciliation and multiculturalism have also, paradoxically, produced a cultural atmosphere where there is more resistance to the duty to be tolerant today then in the 1970s and 80s.

A social consensus over what kind of society we would like to live in is much harder to achieve now. Instead we have a profoundly divided, fractious society governed all too often by suspicion and distrust.

It is in this precarious socio-cultural context that the value of 'tolerance' needs to be firmly defended.

The task of bridge-building - the most important of which is what we now call 'reconciliation' - has to be taken much more seriously in anti-racist educational strategies. Many educational philosophies have focused on legislating against racially biased behaviours and attitudes. It also tends to be seen as of benefit only to the non-white victims of racism, just as multiculturalism has been presented as applicable only to people of NESB.

One of the most important tasks ahead is to overcome this particularism and to find a universal justification for the need of tolerance and for respect for difference. This is why an emphasis on bridge-building is important. Bridge-building can be a unifying and empowering cultural process, where cultural difference and prevailing power relations are critically interrogated and through which a shared sense of civic identity is developed, a shared sense of ownership of the society as a whole.

Interracial trust should not be conflated with the much-maligned idea of racial 'harmony.' Establishing trust does not mean the erasure of difficult differences and the denial of race privilege. On the contrary, it can only be achieved through an honest acknowledgement of it and through a working through of those difficult differences.

Trust is a difficult thing to achieve in a world dominated by mistrust. It is the 'leap of faith' in overcoming divisions and hostilities, and it is the medium through which practical reconciliation can emerge. In their preparedness to engage in this process, indigenous people have given us the gift of their trust, and it is up to us, non-indigenous Australians, to earn their trust.

At the same time, those of us who are so frequently at the receiving end of racisms should be willing to place trust in the goodwill and best intentions of many white Australians to work together towards change, however difficult this may be and despite their many inevitable mistakes and blindnesses. It is that kind of mutual generosity and ethical care of the other that we need to encourage in our struggle against racism, to overturn the 'hardening of hearts' in Australian public opinion.