Structural racism in Australia today is a nonsense

At a time when we need analysis that defends the virtues of the liberal democratic experience, albeit without neglecting our own mistakes, we often have simplistic academic analysis that downplays our own social achievements.  

Take academia’s increasing adherence to the concept of structural racism which generally refers to institutional, historical, cultural, and interpersonal practices within a society that disadvantages or excludes a social or ethnic group when compared to others to make them less likely to succeed, thus entrenching or creating disparities between groups over time. 

For example, Larissa Behrendt, one of the authors of the DoBetter report bagging the Collingwood Football Club’s history as racist, told ABC sport that

...structural racism is usually something that sits within an organisation that has sat there since it was constructed with the original philosophy … A really good example is the Australian constitution, which has a structural racism, because when it was set up it was with the view that it should allow racial discrimination to facilitate a White Australia policy.

Of course, Behrendt is referring to the late 19^th century reasoning behind s 51(xxvi) power which allowed the Commonwealth to “regulate the affairs of the people of coloured or inferior races who are in the Commonwealth”. 

But given Behrendt is adamant that Collingwood has entrenched racism, and the report also implies that what happened at Collingwood reflects societal attitudes, such claims are clearly inadequate in terms of academic analysis given that attitudes towards race in Australia have changed dramatically over many decades.

This includes much better attitudes for Australia’s Aboriginals since the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 was amended in 1962 to extend universal adult suffrage to Aboriginal people, and the 1967 Referendum removed discriminatory references to Aboriginal people from the Constitution.

Quite simply, structural racism is a static concept which is incapable of explaining the dynamic nature of Australia’s liberal democracy towards issues such as race which is shaped by interaction between its different peoples mostly for the better, notwithstanding the ongoing reality that incidents of racism are likely to remain and Australia’s Aboriginals are likely to face disadvantage for some time yet.  

To dismiss Australian laws, institutions and changing Australian attitudes towards race, which are today the antithesis of the structural racism that once existed, is indeed proof that such authors are merely advocates for a particular cause rather policy students more willing to reflect developments in an evolving liberal democracy.

Hence, while past racism has contributed to entrenched disadvantage for Australia’s Aborigines, which does produce much higher crime rates and adverse health outcomes, such biased authors will use such data to fuel their accusations of racism rather than consider other research which will show that disadvantage today is not merely caused by racism. 

As one prominent American black commentator Thomas Sowell pointed out in 2002, “nothing is easier than to find statistical disparities between groups. They exist in countries around the world, with and without discrimination”.

Sowell notes that, whereas once discrimination focused on disadvantage,

...a radically different conception of discrimination has a strong hold on many in the media and the academic world today, as well as among political and legal elites. For them, differences in “life chances” define discrimination. If a black child does not have the same likelihood as a white child of growing up to become an executive or a scientist, then there is racial discrimination by this definition, even if the same rules and standards are applied to both in schools, the workplace, and everywhere else.

Of course, I will not argue that racism has and can ever be eradicated. In this competitive world, there will long remain reasons why people find differences with other peoples, whether it be because of cultural practises, income inequality or any other reason.

Similarly, many Australian Aborigines may choose not to interact with wider society with one study focusing on Darwin finding that many Aboriginal people did not feel comfortable going out in public, to restaurants, or to shopping centres because they were scared of being stared at, or being treated differently.

The same study found that many Aboriginals also feel enormous pressure to lose their traditional culture in order to be successful in Australia, preferring connection to family, background and country rather than white man’s emphasis on materialism and individualism.

So what solution is best given that most Australians still accept the idea that policy should be determined by ongoing interaction between different peoples with policy shaped by the perceived strengths and weaknesses of each other’s cultures?

At present, most Australians recognise that Australia’s Aborigines experience disadvantage and require greater assistance with a 2019 publication estimating that total Commonwealth, state and territory government per capita expenditure on Aboriginal people was around double the per capita expenditure on non-Indigenous Australians during the last decade.  

With data from the 2006 and 2016 Census indicating that indigenous employment rates for those aged 15–64 decreased slightly from 48% to 46.6% while the non-Indigenous employment rate remained stable at around 72%, Australian governments recognise that ongoing assistance is needed given lower levels of employment and income can “have adverse intergenerational effects on children from an early age”.

But if Aboriginals accept greater interaction with the wider community where the greatest economic opportunities rest, they will indeed have to overcome perceived cultural differences to succeed, as is the case with any ethnic/minority group.

As Thomas Sowell pointed out in 2002, there are countless examples where minority ethnic  groups do excel when there is no power to keep others out.

They include:

• US professional basketball games where the players “are not in proportion to their representation in the general population”;
• the dominance of Jewish people in the apparel industry in contemporary New York, medieval Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, Brazil, Germany, and Chile, and even once Melbourne where they were just 1% of the Australian population;
• Eastern European Jews in the United States progressing from below-average scores on intelligence tests during the First World War to having above-average scores on such tests within one generation afterward; and
• the Chinese minority in Malaysia earning more than four hundred engineering degrees during the 1960s, while the Malay majority earned just four, despite Malays having preferential access to financial aid for higher education.

In other words, it is the determination of people, whether as individuals or supported by their ethnic/minority group, that will deliver better economic outcomes in the fields they pursue. Nothing surprising about that.

Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent indigenous people and other Australians interact in future years given that an increasing number of Australians identify themselves as Aboriginal, included many from mixed couple families.

On the one hand, one source notes from 2006 census data that 52% of Aboriginal men and 55% of Aboriginal women now had non-Aboriginal partners.

With researchers concluding that Australia's history of cultural division was not inhibiting intermarriage if couples had similar levels of education and earnings, intermarriage was highest in the capital cities.

Yet, another 2012 source indicates that 90% of non-Indigenous Australians do not interact regularly with Aboriginal people with at least half not knowing any Aboriginal people at all, although people in rural areas were more than twice as likely to mix regularly than those from capital cities.

Despite the lack of interaction between indigenous people and other Australians, opportunities and policies do exist to provide Aborigines professional employment opportunities.  

With indigenous people already comprising around 12% of players in the National Rugby League and 11%  in the Australian Football League at a time when representing just 3.3% of the total population as of 2018, the former US National Basketball Association star Charles Barkley is right to stress that black kids have far greater professional opportunities beyond professional sports if they pursue education.    

While issues relating to interaction may long persist given the reality that nobody can force people with different cultural viewpoints to interact and accept all differences, only the willpower of indigenous people themselves will determine their future success or failure.  

I personally doubt that the majority of Australians will ever embrace the idea of Aboriginal people being subject to their own criminal justice system, or have complete control of allocated resources to overcome their 'disadvantage' as suggested by those who argue that services should be run by Indigenous people. 

To conclude, while the term structural racism has now been extended to sport in Australia, as evident by the recent report on the Collingwood Club with its supposed entrenched racism, it is a nonsense to suggest that Aboriginals do not have legitimate opportunities to overcome adverse economic and social outcomes.

Notwithstanding the greater difficulties faced by Australia’s indigenous people when compared to other ethnic/minority groups, improving race relations in Australia and opportunities should not be ignored by academics, including those determined never to forgive Australia for its past racism.