All countries exercise racial discrimination to a greater or lesser degree. As a child growing up in Australia, I was frequently abused as “ching chong china man.”As an intern, I looked after the child of a fellow student who had repeatedly hurled racial abuse and spat at me as I left for home from school on the bus. During the week of Typhoon Haiyan, a man mimicked paddling a kayak to a Filipino colleague whilst maliciously heckling him to “row back to where you came from.” A would-be parliamentarian categorically declared that asylum seekers were clogging up the traffic in western Sydney. A published letter in the Murdoch Press pronounced that Australia’s already curtailed foreign aid could be redirected from Indonesia if did not allow boats to be turned away from Australian shores. The public demand the vivid suffering of the outbound passage to Christmas Island to be repeated to satisfy the cruel mandate of “Operation Sovereign Borders.” The elephant in the room is racial prejudice, and one wonders whether Australia could be so cruelly stringent if a boatload of British, American or European people beached here. The maltreatment of boat borne asylum seekers better testifies to Australia’s entrenched suspicion of “the other.” One only has to look at the deplorable conditions Australia’s original inhabitants live in.
Joseph Ting
Dec 17, 2013 at 08:59 amAll countries exercise racial discrimination to a greater or lesser degree. As a child growing up in Australia, I was frequently abused as “ching chong china man.”As an intern, I looked after the child of a fellow student who had repeatedly hurled racial abuse and spat at me as I left for home from school on the bus. During the week of Typhoon Haiyan, a man mimicked paddling a kayak to a Filipino colleague whilst maliciously heckling him to “row back to where you came from.” A would-be parliamentarian categorically declared that asylum seekers were clogging up the traffic in western Sydney. A published letter in the Murdoch Press pronounced that Australia’s already curtailed foreign aid could be redirected from Indonesia if did not allow boats to be turned away from Australian shores. The public demand the vivid suffering of the outbound passage to Christmas Island to be repeated to satisfy the cruel mandate of “Operation Sovereign Borders.” The elephant in the room is racial prejudice, and one wonders whether Australia could be so cruelly stringent if a boatload of British, American or European people beached here. The maltreatment of boat borne asylum seekers better testifies to Australia’s entrenched suspicion of “the other.” One only has to look at the deplorable conditions Australia’s original inhabitants live in.