We are now in one of the most truly prophetic moments in the history of Australia and around the world. The poor and very poor are sleeping with self-destruction. The working and middle classes are struggling against paralysing pessimism and the privileged are swinging between cynicism and hedonism. Yes, these are the circumstances that people of conscience must operate under during this moment of national and international truth or consequences.
There are huge racial inequality in a country promised to practice what it preaches─ Multiculturalism. For black people unless they are on TV, where chances are remote, sports personalities, which still has a lesser value than their Caucasian (sometimes called rather), counterparts, their chances of success and recognition are inconspicuous. That’s why even graduates are confined to driving taxis; work in all kinds of risky security guard jobs, doing mundane house cleaning routines, working day and night shifts in factories. Most country people don’t even see a black face from one week to the next. I see black faces cleaning the streets & trains, emptying bins and mopping up the spills in shopping centres.
I am saddened to see (not because of the jobs they are doing) the hopes and aspirations of these black people are hampered by discrimination. Racism, showing great weight, dominance and superiority, is becoming even greater now than the obvious (whites only service venues) of bygone eras.
A blunt research study of intelligences of racial differences conducted by (white race) researchers raised a question of its reliability and validity in the twenty first century.
These excerpts are taken from PDF p.39 (Education Review http://www.edrev.info) Theory of Racial Differences in Intelligence review book by Dr Girma Berhanu, Professor of Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden:
(Likewise, Helen Meekosha (2006) wrote how race is used in Australia to refer to non-Anglo peoples from non-Caucasian genetic stock. For instance, the Chinese were banned from immigration to Australia because, it was argued, they were detrimental to the political economy (undercutting wages and employment standards), but also because of their biosocial impairments (they were incapable of understanding ideas of equality and democracy). As the anti-Chinese campaign grew during the late 19th century, race and disability became intertwined, as in the following editorial from The Bulletin, a radical nationalist weekly in Sydney:
We claim to be a civilized people; we claim that one of the reasons we should exclude the Chinese is that they belong to an ‗‗inferior‘‘race; we claim to be the inheritors of centuries of intellectual and moral culture. . . . Centuries of culture have superimposed the artificial and civilized man upon the bedrock of naturalism, and the civilized man is a stickler for justice; for consideration for the weak and the undefended, the oppressed, the imbecile and incompetent. (Anon 1888, in Meekosha, 2006, p. 167)
The increase in racism must be placed in the context of the crisis of the capitalist way which benefits from racism, using it to divide and confuse the people about the reasons for the economic and social crisis of the system. Because the system is in crisis, there is an increase in the intensity and complexity of the ongoing ideological war on social unity and the principles and practice of equality.
A blunt research study of intelligences of racial differences conducted by (white race) researchers raised a question of its reliability and validity in the twenty first century.
These excerpts are taken from PDF p.39 (Education Review http://www.edrev.info) Theory of Racial Differences in Intelligence review book by Dr Girma Berhanu, Professor of Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden:
(Likewise, Helen Meekosha (2006) wrote how race is used in Australia to refer to non-Anglo peoples from non-Caucasian genetic stock. For instance, the Chinese were banned from immigration to Australia because, it was argued, they were detrimental to the political economy (undercutting wages and employment standards), but also because of their biosocial impairments (they were incapable of understanding ideas of equality and democracy). As the anti-Chinese campaign grew during the late 19th century, race and disability became intertwined, as in the following editorial from The Bulletin, a radical nationalist weekly in Sydney:
We claim to be a civilized people; we claim that one of the reasons we should exclude the Chinese is that they belong to an ‗‗inferior‘‘race; we claim to be the inheritors of centuries of intellectual and moral culture. . . . Centuries of culture have superimposed the artificial and civilized man upon the bedrock of naturalism, and the civilized man is a stickler for justice; for consideration for the weak and the undefended, the oppressed, the imbecile and incompetent. (Anon 1888, in Meekosha, 2006, p. 167)
The increase in racism must be placed in the context of the crisis of the capitalist way which benefits from racism, using it to divide and confuse the people about the reasons for the economic and social crisis of the system. Because the system is in crisis, there is an increase in the intensity and complexity of the ongoing ideological war on social unity and the principles and practice of equality.
The racist use of the crime issue, rising racist and police violence, deepening discrimination, criminalization, attacks on immigrants, increasing poverty, homelessness and unemployment, an increase in stereotypes in the mass media and environmental racism all indicate the depth of the crisis. It’s even harder when the government and people’s representatives repudiate that racism exist
“I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country”. John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia (1996-2007) in 2005. “I do not believe that racism is at work in Australia”. Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia (2007-2010) in 2010. More than 87% of Australians agree that there is racism in Australia and more than 86% said that racial prejudice is prevalent and something should be done to fight it.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-appeal-for-help-in-river-body-case-20110718-1hlcj.html and http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/lost-for-answers-20110723-1huc0.html and http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-face-fury-after-death-of-african-man-20110716-1hjjc.html What do you think?
Here is a different episode, equally heart wrenching, of 6 Australians volunteering to experiment their prejudiced ideas of refugees and asylum seekers by “living it up” (putting their feet in … shoes) like them for twenty five days.
If you want to distinguish and believe you need not look further than, besides from discrimination in employment, the filtration, renunciation & parochialism in presenting the news, entertainments, and acknowledgements of successful black people ( from Obama to various artists and celebrities) on public media such as (remarkably) TV and Newspapers except for ridiculing and abusing their achievements.
The following is (pictures of ) one of the few reports by the Melbourne, Herald sun, newspaper likening President Obama to Osama during the president’s victory in killing the Al-Qaida leader at his hideaway in May 2011.
Double click on image to enlarge for viewing
Black people’s treatment seems maybe marginal in Australia not because blacks here have a better position (huge academic and economic disparity), but the black population is very low comparing to America and Britain. When you reach the hotels of these countries, your blood pressure will go up (at least mine) when you see blacks greeting by opening the door, making the beds, cleaning the lavatories, washing dishes in restaurants and wiping the tables, cleaning cars at carwash and serving you at unisex barber shops.
Moreover, if you happen to be there for business meetings, you will see blacks as guards at the entrance, at receptions and restocking the vending machines. However, at business meetings you will, most probably, see almost all the delegates you sit with are whites (Caucasians) virtually everywhere and most of the time. No wonder blacks do all kinds of legally and ethically improper acts of misfits from changing their names and nationality to changing their course of personal history trying hard to fit in and accepted for any opportunities available in order to obtain skilled and professional employment probabilities. Please, read more what one, among the many, African refugee has to go through in order to acquire employment with his profession: www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/refugeeturns-to-tricks-after-100-failed-job-applications/story-fn6bfm6w-1226097109013
If there are professional jobs that are advertised, surprisingly, all the jobs are taken by whites and a rainbow of races can then chase after the left overs to no avail. Without very good contact references, even with better than average qualifications and achievements, working class and professional graduate black people know, instinctively, that they’re no better off either in town or countryside to secure jobs or rent a simple flat and house for their families.
There are no sustainable employment networks* and there are more whites in the country sides to fill the jobs because racism runs endemic right through our society.
Reducing and mass layoffs have wiped out many of the past gains against discrimination in the workplace. As the economic crisis deepens, new forms of economic racism are making themselves felt.
Massive unemployment, poverty and homelessness are its most direct and vivid result. Unemployment rates among Indigenous, African and Asian workers are twice those of whites, long-term unemployment is also particularly severe. Economic racism's repulsiveness is particularly seen in its impact on Indigenous and black children, close to half of whom live in poverty.
Australia’s past white only policy is embedded in and influences every aspect of social, economic and political life. This is what is meant by institutionalized racism.
Institutionalized racism is the combined economic, political, social, cultural, legal, ideological and other structures that exist to maintain the system of inequality.
As a set of institutions, racism is infused in the very foundations of our society and is inseparable from the economic foundations of Australian culture. The racist wage gap is the most fundamental feature; both in terms of the super profits produced by the super exploitation of racially oppressed workers, and the additional extra profits created by the fact that racism divides and weakens the working people and drags down wages for all workers.
Racism is affecting the live of the person that is different, but also all people. I don’t want to seem alarmist, but I am just reiterating what’s already out there and our society is in denial.
Institutionalized racism has economic, social, political, ideological and cultural forms, and denies equality, justice and dignity to all people of colour.
Poverty and racism has become a deadly couple. Thus, there can be no effective fight against racism without a struggle against poverty. And there can be no effective fight against poverty without taking on the struggle against economic racism and for equality.
We have witnessed the breakdown of the social systems that nurture our rootless children not just the two out of five black and brown children who live in poverty, but all children in Australia who live in lack of services. Young families terrified by the stress of separation destined to kill each other, families and their own children. We are talking about the state of young people culturally unprotected, with no safe berths; these children have no cultural armour to protect them while navigating the terrors and traumas of daily life. Young people need a community to sustain them, so that they can look death in the face and deal with disease, dismay, and despair.
Culture, in part, provides people with the tools and resources to toughen themselves against adversity and convinces them not to kill themselves or others. This is the reason why I am preoccupied with a sense of bittersweet. At the moment in which we must look defeat, disillusionment, and discouragement in the face and work through a sense of the bittersweet keeps alive some sense of possibility, hope, agency and resistance. We have not been too successful in persuading people not to commit suicides or kill others from street to corporate thugs, people of colour, women, youth, the working poor, the unemployed fellas, gays, lesbians and those who are being unfairly targeted.
Culture, in part, provides people with the tools and resources to toughen themselves against adversity and convinces them not to kill themselves or others. This is the reason why I am preoccupied with a sense of bittersweet. At the moment in which we must look defeat, disillusionment, and discouragement in the face and work through a sense of the bittersweet keeps alive some sense of possibility, hope, agency and resistance. We have not been too successful in persuading people not to commit suicides or kill others from street to corporate thugs, people of colour, women, youth, the working poor, the unemployed fellas, gays, lesbians and those who are being unfairly targeted.
This is what happens in moments of cultural decay. This is what happens in moments of cultural breakdown. Moreover, to talk about cultural resistance at this time means to ask: How do we analyse this present moment and discern some sources of vision and hope? I look at culture from the vantage point of freedom for all. None of us are going to be here that long. Culture moves us and helps create the structures of meaning, feeling and purpose that keep the deep traditional democratic human interaction alive.
As bad as things are, we have faced worse conditions. We have always had courageous people willing to stand up and tell the truth, expose lies and bear witness to love and justice. We still have people who say they are willing to build on this tradition. “There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie”, Cornel West.
As our society faces deeper and deeper crisis, progressives are beginning to be heard again & again vehemently. People are looking to a variety of different voices, and visions for leadership and direction, about how we can overcome these situations locally and globally.
For too long, Australia looked to the far away Monarch for change. We have looked to Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd and Julia. Apart from making history for her and Australian politics, Julia still has to overcome the hurdle in becoming the first woman PM in a country where change is still elusive to come by.
We are still living in the shadow of the vicious realignment of the Australian electorate, provoked by the media's negative appeals to race and gender. We have pulled ourselves deeper into a dark, bottomless ditch. Yet, if people are interested in looking for bigger picture (change), tolerant endless possibilities are evident. First and foremost, change your own attitude. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world."
Our Culture is characterized by being a post dearth society meaning that its advanced technologies provide practically limitless material wealth and comforts for everyone for free, having all but abolished the concept of possessions, by having overcome almost all physical constraints on life including disease and death by being an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others.
In a corporately controlled globalization, we faced an unprecedented economic redistribution of disparity from working people to the elite and the preying of the local to federal governments into public filth and private extravagance.
As all different colours of spectrum emerged from a prism, so are the human races (remember Dinknesh aka Lucy).
Imagine a world without war, poverty, misery or money. Imagine a world where all people work together in a spirit of cooperation and not competition. Imagine the safer saner world and you are closer to understanding what freedom & democracy is. A close look at our present social systems which are built upon fundamentals which produce war, poverty, murder, crime, violence, compromised healthcare, media monopoly, corporate corruption and indifference for the environment, greed, apathetic self-interest and desensitisation from others suffering, obsolete and archaic political systems based on subjective opinion (guesswork) and not on scientific and empirical certainty. Is this how we want our families (Lucy’s children) to live today?
It’s time for “liberty, fraternity and equality”. It’s time for political pluralism, tolerance of religious and cultural diversity. It’s time to end hate. It’s time to break free from the cycle of violence. It’s time to end rampant, semi-official, implicit racism and corruption. It’s time to believe even in the impossible for transparency and be part of the international mainstream.
It’s time for “liberty, fraternity and equality”. It’s time for political pluralism, tolerance of religious and cultural diversity. It’s time to end hate. It’s time to break free from the cycle of violence. It’s time to end rampant, semi-official, implicit racism and corruption. It’s time to believe even in the impossible for transparency and be part of the international mainstream.
In Australia, diversity generally means ensuring that organizations include men and women from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. But diversity issues have sometimes sparked controversy.
Some would call it human nature for us to dislike or mistrust the unknown - be it a person, a thing or an idea.
More than a few people are guilty of enjoying the fruits of another culture while demeaning the other.
For those who haven't got a clue, diversity just doesn't extend itself to race, class or gender, it is all around us. It's in our homes, in our schools and at workplaces. It is part of our everyday life.
Despite those obstacles, in order to make Australia a better place to live and grow for generations, apology should be followed by action; diversity must be evident in our government, institutions and our own households.
Now, here, we are in 21century. Australia still finds itself looking to its descents time again to provide vision to a nation with a source of hope with no guarantee. Real hope is in its own backyard grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naive projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work.
It’s abundantly clear that we need to adjust (change) our thinking & attitude because it will definitely be to our collective detriment if we do not. If we carry on so carelessly and wastefully into the future, our future generations will pay the price for our mistakes.
So, what I wish (I am talking about) is a real change & hope we all can cope.
* The people who work for employment Job Networks or Centrelinks are not all to blame. There are some people who couldn't care less and others who feel the pain of others and think outside the system and generally try to be really helpful often do not last long. Because, the system does not allow them to be as helpful as they'd like to be.
Prejudice & Indifference to diverse people are at a high level when dealing with Job Networks or Centrelinks. Some public servants have neglected their APS Values & Ethics Code of Conduct for the public servant and jump lines having an attitude to judge and generalize that all clients are bludgers. When you phone for information, mostly, advices are bound to differ with each person you speak to. A total white wash!
Back in the days of CES (Commonwealth Employment Services) and early introduction of Centrelinks, they used to have forms on hand, to update client details based on a face-to-face services and interviews which would take less time than the pain of waiting through phone calls and having to browse so many confusing forms online (now).
Back in the days of CES (Commonwealth Employment Services) and early introduction of Centrelinks, they used to have forms on hand, to update client details based on a face-to-face services and interviews which would take less time than the pain of waiting through phone calls and having to browse so many confusing forms online (now).
Job capacity assessments aren't designed to evaluate anyone's capacity to work, they are a bureaucratic systems designed to block access to the assistance thereby saving a few bucks a week.
No point blaming the Job Capacity Assessor, Job Networks, nor Centrelinks, it’s all about how the system is intended to save the money and doing nothing to monitor that Job Network Services are doing nothing but money making organisations obviously hiring more people off the system (Centrelink benefit).
With my years of experiences dealing with these service providers, calling themselves non-profit organisations is a great urban myth that the profit money goes into employment services. It’s generally used (to perk their outlook up) for building improvements or new offices, cars for (job) services, building a new board room, kitchen, employing more do nothing employees from the Centrelinks’ queue and a computer training room that the clients could hardly access but used for staff meetings.
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