Tag: Racism
After Jacob Blake was shot several times in the back by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer Rusten Shesky, and was lying paralyzed from the waist down and handcuffed to a hospital bed, right-wing media, conservatives, and the usual crowd of other assorted racists were searching for a justification for what seemed to the rest of the world as an unprovoked assault. Some said that Blake was reaching for a knife. Others insisted he was resisting arrest.
There Are No Black Victims in Donald Trump’s America – Mother Jones
“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said.
William Barr Says Police Being Racist Toward Black People Isn’t Racism | HuffPost Australia
In refusing to call out the cartoon you are refusing, once again, to call out so very much more.
It is the faux purity of ignoring one cartoon so that you can continue to ignore the far more threatening task of addressing the foundational racism of News Corp that is most sickening.
via Why we must confront the racism of ‘The Australian’ cartoon
If Australia wants to welcome Chinese students and the world back, it needs to reflect on the climate into which it is bringing them
The plight of Indigenous Australians is demonstrated by the light sentencing of the two accused murderers of Lynette Daley, writes Rosemary Joiner.
via The Lynette Daley story: A failure in the justice system for Indigenous Australians
News Corp has certainly been fuelling Sinophobia as it did Islamophobia and anti African sentiments yet we have Racial vilification laws and the goverenment simply stands by and watches. (ODT)
Here are some recent examples of racism outbreaks:
people who appear to be Asian in origin being abused at supermarkets;
a Malaysian student being denied rental accommodation;
the Chinese being blamed for the virus;
Chinese restaurants seeing a marked drop off in patronage;
students at some schools being mocked as “Coronas” in the playground (my son has witnessed this personally);
my niece – of Indian ancestry – and another young girl being abused on a train in Melbourne — the abuse was about them “being the problem” that led the abuser to have to take his children out of school;
snide remarks being made to people of general “Asian” appearance; and
talkback hosts allowing these comments to go to air without regard for community outcomes.
While there is a strong element of truth in individual cases like this, let’s not turn it into something to generalise from either. Australian History is a documented record of Racism against Chinese for colour alone. Patterns of behaviour were culturally accepted and became systemic institutionalised for political reasons back then too, and those adversarial tactics have remained supported throughout generations today. In just the same way our Colonial attitudes did to Indigenous Australia.
Power and white culture reflected what the pecking order was among whites too but for other reasons such as religion or worse atheists primarily because they tended to deny the socially constructed order of things as natural or god-given. Socialists and Communists were a focus of danger, even more so and globally.
However, to say colour wasn’t predominant is to deny the history that landed on our shores and that still predominates and is pulled out so quickly and misused by Politicians for tactical reasons and in the case Scott Morrison PM is being used in a non-applicable but racial way in defense of Gladys Liu. Reverse Racism Black and Sino Racism aren’t Racism It’s the tactical cry of alt-right whites claiming victimhood where none exists. It’s calling Adam Goodes a Racist when he’s not. It’s a strategy of smoke screening systemic and institutional patterns of behaviour so ingrained in our cultural psyche to be regarded as usual and ill-mannered but little more. However, there is no equivalency between black and white racism because black yellow racism isn’t an institutionalised pattern of behaviour in Australia. (ODT)
It’s not racist, it’s politics: the treatment of Chinese students and MP Gladys Liu
Trump trumpets the low unemployment rate among blacks as proof that his body contains no racist “bones.”
But what Trump doesn’t say (and what the media doesn’t report adequately) is that the current unemployment rate for blacks remains about twice that of whites. The June 2019 national unemployment rate for whites was 3.3 percent compared to 6 percent for blacks. The June 2000 rate was 3.6 percent for whites and 7.8 percent for blacks. Since Trump has neither eased nor erased that long-standing unemployment rate disparity – one rooted in racial discrimination – he does not deserve credit.
via Presidential Racism: Shining Example Of America’s Somber Status Quo | The Smirking Chimp
GOP FINALLY Denying Trump’s Racist Rants. It’s Socialism (ODT)
The Republican party has come out swinging against socialism – a strategy sure to be a mainstay of its 2020 campaigns. “Our opposition to our socialist colleagues,” the Wyoming senator Liz Cheney claimed, referring to the congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, “has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race. It has to do with the content of their policies. They are wrong when they attempt to impose the fraud of socialism on the American people. They are wrong when they pursue policies that would steal power from the American people and give that power to the government.”
via America’s red scare is back. And it’s racially tinged | Kate Aronoff | Opinion | The Guardian
Less than two hours after Donald Trump claimed that he was “not happy” with supporters who chanted “Send her back” during his scripted rant against Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday night, the president praised the same baying mob.
“These are people that love our country,” Trump said, echoing his defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville who chanted “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.”
Israel was established and continues to exist in a mentality of constant war. Our racism is only a symptom.
via The origins of Israeli racism lie in our hyper-militarized society | +972 Magazine
Key points:
A US State Department official said the China is America’s first great competitor that is “not Caucasian”
Senior Australian government officials have been scathing of the comments
Analysts have warned this plays into China’s “race” narrative
It is not the Muslims’ fault that 51 of their number were killed. It is not the Greens’ fault that it happened. It is the fault of the individual, the movement that took him in and radicalised him, the ideology that informed him and the institutions that supported that ideology — such as the Australian media. In 2017, I stepped into the light of national mainstream media attention simply by putting on a ridiculous pantomime of real patriot groups. I succeeded in it with ease, because our mainstream media apply no critical thinking when broadcasting organised white supremacists. It was a fun failure to point out through MFP in 2017.
The silence of our communal leaders signals that remaining silent in the face of prejudice is legitimate, as long as it isn’t happening to Jews.
via Why won’t Jewish leaders condemn Netanyahu’s racism? | +972 Magazine
Sgt. Gregg Lewis was fired last year for his comments, first released publicly this week. He is fighting the firing and may be able to retire with pension.
via Police Sergeant To Precinct: If A Homeless Person Is Black, Just Shoot Them | HuffPost Australia
The St Kilda rally isn’t an aberration. It is the natural conclusion of the moral and intellectual collapse of Australian conservatism.
Scott Morrison deserves some praise. It’s not often a half-hearted condemnation of neo-Nazis deserves plaudits, but achievement is relative – among Australian conservatives, unequivocal criticism of the far right now puts you well ahead of the pack. That’s about the lowest bar that you can set, but rather than stepping over it, much of the commentariat takes it as an invitation to a limbo contest. The same people always claiming that “everything is racist now” seem to have decided that nothing is, not even Roman salutes.
This is why Scott Morrison can attack the gestures on display on the weekend, but he can’t attack the sentiments: because they’re shared by people on his front bench. “I have repeatedly asked of the crime-plagued Sudanese in particular: who let them in?” asked Andrew Bolt, and that’s the loudest voice on the Australian right.
It’s true that not every local conservative is like this. But the exceptions are marginal, or powerless, or paralysed, or can’t seem to wrest the megaphone away from the bigoted.
The left-wing caricature of the right-wing is that their ideas are just a series of shoddy disguises for sexism, racism and homophobia, that conservatism is the natural home of “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers”, to quote the federal minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer.
Who can say, here, that this wrong, when so many are determined to prove it? Where else, in the English-speaking world, is still having controversies over Sambo drawings in the 21st century? If recent years are anything to go by, the difference between the right and the far-right in Australia isn’t some ideological gulf. Too often, it’s what people are willing to say after they’ve had two beers.
So excuse my cynicism when Scott Morrison took to Twitter to tell us “I thank Vic police for their efforts dealing with the ugly racial protests we saw in St Kilda yesterday. Intolerance does not make Australia stronger. Australia is the most successful migrant country in the world. This has been achieved by showing respect for each other, our laws and values and maintaining sensible immigration policies. Let’s keep it that way, it makes Australia stronger.”
Far from being strong on national security, you are jeopardising it by alienating and marginalising groups in our society.
You unleashed the hounds, Scott and you did it for cynical political advantage. And now we are reaping what you sowed.
If you care about a safe Australia, we must send this mob of shit-stirrers packing. Get back under your rock and let decent people work together for all Australians.
Israeli police estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of illegal guns among Palestinian citizens of Israel, a community suffering from under-policing and high levels of violence. Are the guns the problem? And what can be done about it?
via ‘Israeli authorities treat gun violence in our community as an Arab problem’ | +972 Magazine
Media generated racism and collective punishment isn’t this a case of vilification against the media and the local council? (ODT)
