Cairns Community Consultation Report
Racism and civil society: A community consultation held at the Cairns City Council Civic Reception Rooms, Cairns Queensland, on 16 July 2001
Speaker:
Dr William Jonas,
Race Discrimination Commissioner and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Social Justice Commissioner, HREOC
Theme 2: Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Theme 4: Provision of effective remedies, recourse, redress,
[compensatory] and other measures at the national, regional and international
levels.
Theme 5: Strategies to achieve full and effective equality,
including international cooperation and enhancement of the United Nations
and other international mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance, and follow-up.
Recommendations
Theme 1: Sources, causes, forms and contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
It was agreed that racism in Australia is endemic. It is part of the 'Australian psyche', although many people don't even understand what racism is or what the true extent of it is.
Participants pointed to instances of institutionalised racism in Cairns, including paternalistic attitudes towards the city's Aboriginal people and moves by the City Council to keep Aboriginal people away from the town centre.
They gave a number of instances of racism in Cairns:
- A recent racist incident in which white youths with baseball bats attacked a defenceless Aboriginal person in a Cairns park. It was denied by the sentencing judge that it was a racially-motivated crime, despite clear evidence in witness statements that it was. This denial was accepted by newspaper reports of the case.
- A participant spoke of people not wanting to sit next to him on a bus because of his skin colour, and of shop assistants not touching his hand when they give change.
- One participant witnessed police searching bags of Aboriginal people sitting in a Cairns public park, without giving the people searched any reasons for the search and without finding anything illegal. It was agreed that this sort of exercise of power by police is routinely and disproportionately used against Aboriginal people.
- People in a regional pub near Cairns watching coverage of the Olympics had barracked for Cathy Freeman to lose her race, because she was Aboriginal.
- One non-Indigenous participant said that after his family moved to Cairns his children came home from school saying: "Gosh this is a racist place." Their first impression of Cairns is that it was appreciably more racist than others places where they had lived in Australia.
Some participants had experienced attacks on their identity on the basis that they "don't look Aboriginal". They deal with people who attempt to deny them their Aboriginal identity and heritage because their skin colour is thought to be "not black enough".
It was also noted that people of mixed background can be subjected to particular forms of discrimination, not being fully accepted by either side of their heritage or by the wider community.
The workshop identified a number of factors that can cause racism, from a lack of knowledge of and understanding about different cultures to a 'fear of the unknown'. Expressions of racism can be linked to a person or a group's poor self-image, specifically to finding safety in a group larger than oneself.
Participants felt many people don't understand that their behaviour or attitudes are in fact racist, having little understanding of what racism is and what it means. This lack of awareness is central to the problem of combating racism.
Some participants identified that a component of racism against Indigenous people is the unacknowledged sense of guilt that the land was stolen in the process of colonisation. Where people feel insecure about the justice of their own position in the country, or feel they have a tenuous connection to the land, they may respond with racism against the traditional owners of the country or they may seek to justify the racism of others.
For some participants, racism is also linked to other social attitudes such as dominance and competition in sport, or to capitalism as a political ideology.
Racism can also be based on deliberate misinformation. At present the government is promoting a certain kind of debate in relation to asylum seekers that is encouraging racism.
There was some discussion during the day of whether describing a person as "black" could be considered derogatory, or when the use of what are thought to be derogatory words could be construed as racist. It was agreed that these words shift in their meanings across different contexts, and words that may be intended - and interpreted - as racist in one context may be a form of solidarity between members of a group or a joke between two given individuals.
Participants pointed to a history of racist actions in far north Queensland and Cairns that sustain racism in the area. In the early 1960s two Aboriginal communities were removed from Cape York (Marpoon and Port Stuart) by the Queensland government. The government subsequently introduced Torres Strait Islander police, thereby promoting racism between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
In the Cairns City Council there are examples of institutionalised racism, including the forced removal of Aboriginal 'park people' who congregate and sleep in public parks. Participants pointed to the Council's forced return of these people to the regional communities from which they had come. The Council has rejected strategies for recruiting staff to reflect the make-up of the local community. There is also the lack of effective attention paid to issues such as Indigenous employment, housing and health, or the relegation of issues relating to Indigenous people to the Council's Indigenous Reference Group, which has no decision-making power.
We need to be very careful about how we identify the problem when we speak about racial equality.
Participants pointed to a double standard regarding the achievements and the lessons of our past. The workshop noted that the argument is made, including by leading politicians, that in relation to issues of race and racism 'we need to stop looking at the past'. At the same time the positive legacy of Australia's past, as represented by the ANZAC Day marches, is enthusiastically embraced.
Above all we need to learn that racism in Australia enabled, and is built on, the taking of Aboriginal land. We also need to learn that in Australian society and across the country there is a serious lack of accessible Aboriginal symbols marking sites of cultural significance and resistance to white colonisation.
It was noted that multiculturalism represents a significant achievement we can build on, but there needs to be a recognition that multiculturalism does not encompass issues relating to Indigenous concerns.
Participants argued that in addressing the effects of past dispossession we need to recognise that history and the ways in which we still live with its consequences. However we need to avoid a 'blame mentality' concerned with who was 'at fault'.
In addressing the incidence of racism in the community, we need to ensure that discussions also hear those who would express racist views.
Theme 2: Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Participants agreed that the main victims of racism are Australia's Indigenous people. This began with their initial dispossession and continues in part as a result of white people's guilt concerning that dispossession. In Cairns South Sea Islanders and people from Papua New Guinea are also significant victims of racism.
One of the serious impacts of racism is to divide Indigenous groups against each other. For example the recent attacks on Indigenous leadership by the mainstream press have exacerbated divisions between different Aboriginal groups.
Racism has also had a marked effect on white Australia, which is dealing with an unacknowledged and unaddressed sense of guilt over how the land was taken. Participants said that one consequence of this guilt is a white Australia that is comfortable accepting many other cultures but is unable to accept Aboriginal culture. Australia is therefore missing out on a lot of untapped talent from among its Indigenous population.
The workshop acknowledged that people who suffer from multiple forms of disadvantage can become 'caught' between the different aspects of their identity when they work to address discrimination. For example, Indigenous women have argued for violence against them to be raised and addressed as family violence. Some white women, conversely, have argued for violence against all women to be seen as a gender issue and resisted it being seen as anything other than domestic violence. As a result of these disagreements, among other factors, Indigenous women have had difficulty securing support for measures that will address violence in an appropriate manner.
Theme 3: Measures of prevention, education and protection aimed at the eradication of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance at the national, regional and international levels.
Participants expressed some doubts as to whether education campaigns can effectively change the attitudes of members of the community who have had racist attitudes entrenched over a longer period of time. It was agreed though that there is a strong chance of forming positive associations with difference if programs address children from a young age. While children do pick up racist attitudes and ideas from their parents, participants agreed that children do not have an innate fear of difference or even necessarily notice skin colour.
Some participants doubted that education can teach values, but it was agreed that we need to teach a more accurate social history in schools, including Aboriginal history. Teachers themselves need to be educated as well about the nature of Australia's past. One participant gave the example of teachers on Thursday Island who met recently to discuss racism. They held their meeting at the Jardine Motel, named after a man who had killed many black people. It appears the teachers were unaware of the historical associations of the motel's name or that Aboriginal people won't go there. This underlined the need to teach a more accurate and comprehensive history.
Participants stressed the importance of people taking action to challenge racism. Non-Indigenous people must do their part to interrupt racism around them, communicating to individuals around them that racism is not acceptable. White people also need to find out how best to support Aboriginal leadership towards genuine self-determination.
In practical terms, Aboriginal people need much more than the CDEP; they also require long-term programs to develop skills that will enable them to be employable in the mainstream labour market.
The workshop agreed that multicultural festivals have been positive but their purposes need to be expanded beyond "singing and dancing" to include the scope for greater sharing and receiving of information about different cultures. A two-day cultural festival in Townsville was cited as a positive example of this.
It was agreed that the Internet holds great potential for both negative and positive use in relation to race and racism. It is simply another tool that can be used by racists or those seeking to combat racism.
In education teachers can use the Internet to run collaborative projects or to expose students to a range of cultures. More important though, the education system needs to equip students with the critical tools to assess the information they receive from the Internet, particularly given the number of websites that host inaccurate or racist material.
Acknowledgement and celebration
The workshop agreed that there has been very poor acknowledgement of other groups and Indigenous people in Australia. In particular, due to the way history has been taught, there is no real acknowledgement of black history including Aboriginal people as the first owners of the land or the history of skirmishes between white settlers and Aboriginal people.
Theme 4: Provision of effective remedies, recourse, redress, [compensatory] and other measures at the national, regional and international levels.
One participant believed that there is very little redress available for victims of racism in the media, with limited means available under a civil suit or press complaint. He suggested the need for a panel of review with the power to act on a complaint of media racism and the power to investigate and make a determination on such a complaint.
Theme 5: Strategies to achieve full and effective equality, including international cooperation and enhancement of the United Nations and other international mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and follow-up.
Some participants argued for the need for clear definitions when discussing the impact of globalisation. They saw a need to distinguish between laissez-faire capitalism and the forms of cultural globalisation that have been going on for centuries.
Recommendations
1. Recommend targets for Indigenous employment be set for all spheres of Australian government, eg the targets should reflect the demographics of the local community.
2. That there be allocated seats for Aboriginal people in Parliament.
3. That there be education schemes at more universities to train Indigenous doctors.
4. Compulsory human rights education in schools, including the introduction of 'diversity studies' from kindergarten.
5. Punishments for violations of human rights in schools, in the same way that students are currently punished for other infringements of social values, such as lying and stealing.
6. That the Constitution be amended to include guarantees against racial and other forms of discrimination.
7. That HREOC develop an education campaign promoting the purposes and provisions of all human rights and anti-discrimination legislation.
8. That mandatory sentencing laws be repealed.
9. That interpreter services be provided in Indigenous languages.
10. That the Indigenous traditional owners of the land be consistently acknowledged in all school gatherings.
11. That media codes of ethics be strengthened with respect to racism and racial discrimination.
12. That 'ethnic diversity' quotas be introduced to commercial media.
13. That Indigenous history be taught in all schools.
14. That international human rights treaties be enforced in Australia.
