Not coming to Australia now :(

Just reading along... Really interesting discussion, thanks all.

I don 't know for sure,
but I suspect that the victims were unarmed.

Whoever values his life, shoud take the necessary precautions
to DEFEND his life from the predatory violence of man or beast.

The penalty for failure to do so is DEATH, at the discretion of the predator.





David

I suspect that is true, and that you guys, as a general population, have had your consciousnesses raised, as it were, by the history of slavery, and then the civil rights movement.

I think there ARE lots of Australians who treat racial issues, especially those involving Aboriginal people, with the same apprehension....but I don't think it is as general.

We have also had the Howard Government, which used backlash racist stuff about both Indigenous rights and immigration to assist it to power, which sort of legitimized the worst aspects of backlash.

I am not sure about the video? I didn't see people being questioned, I saw some poor drunk Aboriginal man falling off a bridge and being hit by the fire-truck that was coming to help him.

It was bloody horrible!

I don't think Australia is even on the same plateau as the worse of the worst. I think places like South Africa (and do note that another a2k member took serious issue with this observation) make Australia look like Shangri-La. And then there are places where there are ethnic violence on a whole different scale, places like the mid-east, areas of China and so on.

But between Canada, the US and Australia I'd probably say Australia is currently the worst of the three, and Canada the best.

In many respects we (Australia) has been here before, with the migration of Italians and Greeks and other Europeans. The wog and Ities and still with vietnamese migrants (gooks nips chinks) Again that was more out of fear of the unknown and ignorance.
Once our cultures integrate the problems become less.
In general, rather than any notion of racial superiority i see "culturism".

One of the men I work with wanted me to explain to him why the Hey Hey black face sketch was inapropriate. To him it was just a bunch of people in makeup satirising Micheal Jackson. To him the makeup was the same as wearing clothing that identified the butt of the joke. It certainly wasnt about vilifying Black Americans. He just could not understand why some people found it in bad taste.

I recall reading of the overt racism against the Irish by Americans in that countries infancy. job adverts stating no irish need apply and the living conditions some of the irish people endured. This was the result of mass and massive waves of immigrants, and is very similar to what we are expeiencing here (in melbourne), now with indian students.

another note that shows attitudes:
Last snow season an artical appeared in the local paper reporting on a mini bus pulling up in town at a ski hire shop. Some men alighted and proceeded to lay out prayer mats and pray. I found it odd at first that this should be reported in the paper as some kind of newsworthy event. Then rationalised it by coming to the conclusion that we get very little exposure to different cultures and the more exposure we get the better off we will be.

There will always be dissafected people in any culture who believe that "they are taking our jobs, our women, our money, our housing"

That government was awful. Toward the end of the second term and the beginning of the third it did enough damage to Australia's reputation to me that Australia ceased to be my favorite country.



On various sites where the video was reposted I saw discussions that devolved into stereotypes about the "Abos". Here is just one example that I could remember the URL to:

http://digg.com/comedy/Drunk_Falls_Off_Bridge_Slams_Firetruck_Faceplants_Ground?t=15070239

That's my impression, too.

I bet the percentage of each country's population that is an immigrant is also ranked in the same order....

Hmmmm...you mean higher immigrant proportion, higher grace in dealing with it?

Be interesting to see what the percentages are.

Do we count first generation only?


Oz is the most recently colonized, so we're almost ALL bloody immigrants, really!

And I suspect we always had the lowest indigenous population.

Ok...according to Wikipedia:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Australia#Country_of_Birth_of_Australian_Residents

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics[17] in mid-2006 4,956,863 of the Australian resident population were born outside Australia, representing 24% of the total Australian resident population.

24% is a HELL OF A LOT!!!!!!!!


Countries of origin:

Country of Birth Estimated Resident Population[18]

United Kingdom 1,153,264
New Zealand 476,719
China 279,447
Italy 220,469
Vietnam 180,352
India 153,579
Philippines 135,619
Greece 125,849
Macedonia 120,649
South Africa 118,816
Germany 114,921
Malaysia 103,947
Netherlands 86,950
Lebanon 86,599
Sri Lanka 70,913
Serbia and Montenegro 68,879
Indonesia 67,952
United States 64,832
Poland 59,221
Fiji 58,815
Ireland 57,338
Croatia 56,540
Bosnia-Herzegovina 48,762



I would say that table only shows larger goups,..because we have a lot of Middle Eastern folk, and Africans, and Chinese and Islander and Maori. I would also say that since 2006, Oz has targeted areas like Sudan and Somalia, and Afghanistan...so the percentage of very different cultures has increased.

Of course, the Brits tend to assimilate really well, so they hardly count.

Remember, we have a much smaller population that the US or Canada, so immigrants have more impact relatively speaking.


Here's what I could find re Canada;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada

Currently Canada is known as a country with a broad immigration policy which is reflected in Canada's ethnic diversity. According to the 2001 census by Statistics Canada, Canada has 34 ethnic groups with at least one hundred thousand members each, of which 10 have over 1,000,000 people and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. 16.2% of the population belonged to visible minorities: most numerous among these are South Asian (4.0% of the population), Chinese (3.9%), Black (2.5%), and Filipino (1.1%). Outstripping visible minorities in proportion, however, were (non-British or French) invisible minorities, the largest of which were Irish (13.94%), German origin (10.18%), and Italian (4.63%), with 3.87% claiming Ukrainian origin, 3.87% claiming Dutch origin, and 3.15% claiming Polish origin ("North American Indian", a classification which may include in-migrants from indigenous peoples of the United States and Mexico but which for the most part are not considered immigrants, comprise 4.01% of the national population). Other invisible minority ethnic origins include Russian (1.60%), Norwegian (1.38%), Portuguese (1.32%), and Swedish (1.07%).[2]
In 2007, Canada received 236,760 immigrants. The top ten sending countries, by state of origin, were People's Republic of China (28,896), India (28,520), Philippines (19,718), Pakistan (9,808), United States (8,750), United Kingdom (7,324), Iran (7,195), South Korea (5,909), Colombia (5,382), and Sri Lanka (4,068).[3] The top ten source countries were followed closely by France (4,026), and Morocco (4,025), with Romania, Russia, and Algeria. each contributing over 3,500 immigrants.


I can't see a percentage of population, except it's increasing.



US

I can't get a percentage, but I think it's big.

You guys have Hispanics overtaking Anglos in a lot of big cities.

Seems to me you're doing pretty bloody well, given that.

Woud u be willing to rent us space
in the Botany Bay Colony so we coud banish
our violently recidivistic felons there ?





David

That's the problem, Deb. It is impossible to get up to date statistics. I've tried.

I think the number of resident citizens born outside of Australia is considerably higher now than 2006.

A side issue, I know. But I'd just like to clarify that most of the students at "M" College were actually born in Australia. They were not part of a recent influx of new migrants/refugees. That's partly what made the situation at that school so disconcerting for me. Their parents had (mostly) arrived from from Lebanon the 1970s. But there was absolutely no desire to "embrace" the challenges of their new country. And they remained stubbornly hostile & "misunderstood" by choice, it seemed to me. Some migrants choose to segregate themselves from from the community they live in. This is the one group I perceived in that way. The Vietnamese "boat people", by comparison, were incredible adapters, embracing the opportunities they found & just going for it for all it was worth!

canada pop 33 mill, do your own sums.
I found this relating to the 2006 canadian census


forgot the reference link
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2008001/article/10556-eng.htm

Miss Wabbit, i'd say that DP's comments about ignorance, and fear-hatred of the other still apply. For example, you cite statistics about the "diversity" in Canada. If i walk down certain sections of Spadina Avenue in Toronto, i'll stand out immediately, as the only "white" man in a sea of Asians.

But if i stop off in Woodstock, Ontario for lunch while driving down to Detroit, i'll disappear into the scenery, because the only faces you'll see will be white. Diversity hasn't necessarily percolated into every nook and cranny of Canada, and i wonder what statistics one would employ to determine just how racist the rural populations of Canada are. With huge "Chinatowns" in Vancouver and Toronto, and to a lesser extent in other large Canadian cities, how is one to determine just how racist those populations are? Does it only count if white boys are playing the fool, or does it matter if the denizens of "Chinatown" despise their West Indian neighbors?

Oh, I am not at ALL arguing about the pervasiveness of xenophobia, and that xenophobia is behind most racism. (I think guilt is behind some of it re blacks in the US and Indigenous folk here.)

I do think there are differences between countries in what is defined as the object of xenophobia...what triggers people to see something as strange enough to be threatening.

In Msolga's M college example, for instance, anyone not Muslim, and the right kind of Muslim at that, triggered a xenophobic response in the students.

And I agree that we tend to focus enormously on white racism.

However, white racism in our countries (and I count you as US AND Canada!) has had the power to do much more harm, generally speaking, than other forms of racism. That may be changing, but i think within our respective borders that still remains true.

Also, I think that countries like ours, which are saying that we want people from enormously diverse backgrounds, have an obligation to confront our racism more than countries which say "bugger off"....because we brought people here.

I agree with you, by the way, about enormous differences in racism between different areas in one country...and, I would add, between different areas within one city.

I have noted that many people in Canada (which qualifies as a nation who has "invited" diverse populations to immigrate) have a real blind spot for racism. They ignore that it occurs, or deny that it occurs, and also tend to focus on white racism, as opposed to the racism of other populations.

In the United States, i would say that most anti-immigrant hooraw is a product of racism. Apart from the fact that the "white" illegal immigrant can blend right in, many Americans who whine about illegal immigrants are not offended by the arrival of white folks, legal or illegal. This has always frustrated me, because our history with the Irish, the Pole and the Italians (all Catholics, in addition to whatever else was culturally offensive about them), the eastern Europeans (mostly Jews) and other European populations who were originally discriminated against, or the subject of demeaning stereotypes has been that the diversity has been a net gain for the United States. The people who have come here have largely come here to work and to own land in response to opportunities they did not have at home. But owning land, as so many left-wing revolutionaries have quickly realized (and in the case of Stalin, murderously reacted to) leads to conservatism. Land owners want the revolution to end, so that they can hang on to what they've gotten.

It's obviously much more complex than that, but whether it was the Irish, or newly emancipated alves, or Jews from the Ukraine, the targets of discrimination have initially been seen as a threat to jobs, and a negative factor. In fact, the American experience shows that they have enriched our nation through their hard work, and the talents they have deployed in our society and economy. One of the many tragedies of racism is that it fails to recognize the potential of new immigrants as it fails to look past superficial descriptions.

For that matter, it is extremely hard to gauge an accurate national response to anything, if it's not some established homogeneous group. If were talking about say, reactions to racism in Australia by Australians, what exactly do we mean by "Australian"? It could mean an established Anglo-Australian from way back, it could mean a post-war immigrant like me, it could mean any number of recent arrivals, right down to new Indian-Australians in 2009. So many of us Australians are at different stages of "integration" with the country we live in. It could be argued that more recent arrivals are expressing the views of their country of origin.

Hey now, I take offense to that. South Park has not indulged in racism. They make fun of racism and demonstrate the folly of racism through comedy.