Voices Shaping the
Racism, prejudice and discrimination
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Racism, prejudice and discriminationAndrew Markus (2001) has charted the continuing role of racism in Australia. While Islam is a religion, and Muslims form a religious community, the concept of racism is often used to encompass the structuring of prejudice towards Muslims. However, for some in the Muslim communities it is doubtful that racial vilification laws and protections are likely to provide adequate protection from discrimination and vilification on the basis of religious belief, affiliation or practice. Some young people experience ‘prejudice’ as ‘racism’, and sometimes it may be difficult to differentiate what is racism, and what is religious prejudice. Racism as such has been used as a surrogate category for prejudice based on ‘religious’ identification and practice, even though it does not account for all the different forms of discrimination and vilification experienced. Young Muslim Australians can detail the sense of exclusion, the harassment and the vilification they have experienced. We know from the quantitative survey that discrimination and prejudice was experienced by a large number of young Muslims Australians within the school setting and by Muslim youth of all ages in public areas such as streets, shopping centres and similar places. Indeed two thirds of young people surveyed reported experiencing discrimination within the public sphere at least one or more occasions. They know about discrimination in the labour market, where Muslim names close off avenues to employers. A stakeholder reports: .... The amount of times we’ve made phone calls for apprentice applications or job applications: ‘Oh, what’s the young person’s name?’ ‘Mohammad, Hassan whatever’. ‘Oh no sorry, we’re full’. Five minutes later, my colleague would ring with a very accentuated Australian like, ‘Oh yeah, ringin’ up, oh yeah’. You know, when it’s Michael, ‘Oh yes, sure, we’ll send you the application in the mail’. You know, that stuff happens. Interjection: That’s a very typical story every day. One man talked about how prejudice had affected him as he was growing up and the effects he sees now on his Australian born children. He thinks that Muslim young people need to develop an attitude where they are able to speak for themselves and defend themselves against such attacks. Of course this raises the very important issue of intergenerational experiences of discrimination. ... I accept other people’s religion and culture. It’s the same. And I do believe that I project my views and my beliefs onto that. So it is give and take. And I’ve been through lots of ‐ you know ‐ racism or lots of people have criticized me ‐ and lots of stuff ‐ where I come from. Still my kids who don’t even have the Lebanese nationality and they look at them – ‘you’re an *** Lebo’. And then they have to deal with that. But the thing is my reaction. How my reaction is going to be. Am I going to retaliate so bad? What I’m getting at is ‐ we have to look maybe for ways to get into these people’s ‐ young people’s mind ‐ that you have a right to stand up for yourself and say ‘No, I’m not accepting this’. But there’s ways to deal with it.... Young Muslim Australians noticed a shift in the public perception of Muslims since 9/11, the Gang Rapes and political debate over the wearing of the hijab and the burqa (Poynting et al 2004; Poynting 2006). In addition to the hijab, other areas identified in the survey that were seen as contributing to misunderstandings between Muslims and non‐Muslims included: the issue of ‘terrorism’, the Cronulla riots; and the media (traditional media, TV, radio, newspapers) and Internet information (Internet news sites, Internet forums etc) about Muslims and Islam. Almost a quarter of young Muslim Australian women surveyed regarded the scarf or hijab to be misunderstood within society. Some young women reported having been verbally or physically assaulted because of their wearing of the hijab. For some this discrimination was regularly endured and in public places. The response of some young women to such instances of ‘everyday racism’ is to refrain from defending themselves because they would come out of any conflict as ‘the terrorist’ or the ‘typical Muslim’. Some respond with a smile and walk away determined to keep going, for others such experiences can be humiliating and deeply hurtful. One young woman speaks about how fortunate she is living in Australia in spite of experiencing racism. She explains: … For example, I’m playing Oztag with friends as a sport, with a bunch of girls in a team. But I read a couple of days ago in the media that FIFA had banned the Iranian women’s soccer team because a girl had been strangled by her scarf. But then we had a sports boss in Australia coming out and saying that this wouldn’t happen in Australia because that’s discrimination. Look, you know this could happen to anyone and it’s not the fault of the religion. So I feel pretty lucky living in Australia and the fact that people here are so open minded and they accept different religions. There is racism here, and I have experienced it, but no, I don’t think that it’s stopped me from doing anything. For some, the level of racism appeared to be tolerable, to be managed by careful use of public space, and staying close to friends. When asked to explain what sort of racism a young woman had experienced, she recalls an incident where: We were just walking in the street and someone looked at us as if they were going to poison us with their faces. One time someone came up to us and told us to go back to our country. I was like ‐ hold on –‘ I was born here, I’ve been here all my life’, then they react with, ‘my God, they can speak English’ ‐ do you know what I mean? They don’t have that expectation of you. So I gave them a funny look and they walked away…. Yes, they were racists. The quantitative research revealed that public schools are sites for higher levels of discrimination than are Muslim schools. In consultations what was perceived as institutional prejudice was regarded as contributing to the sense of systemic discrimination. One factor mentioned was the local government denial of planning approval for Muslim schools and mosques. We are here to stay and that’s the reality that some people don’t want to face. When we want to build new schools in NSW, the people out there all get angry and react to Islam. But they don’t do the same to Christian schools. This shows that the people are discriminating against our religion, not because they know anything about it, but because they are prejudiced against things that they don’t like. Relations with police and the justice system produced the sharpest comments on perceived racism. Community workers expressed a need for more work with police liaison officers and cross‐cultural training. In the Sydney consultations, a local young woman told of her experience of feeling targeted during a police outreach session in school. As a person of ‘Middle Eastern background’, police profiling had left her feeling devastated stating: ‘I was an innocent Year 12 girl, and there I was being told that I was a criminal already. Now that is always in the back of my head’. Some of the refugee young people consulted felt distrustful of the police, due to bad experiences with law enforcement authority in their home countries and their experiences in Australia. One young stakeholder mentioned the resentment of some young African refugee men living in public housing estates in Melbourne, towards the police. These young men felt harassed because of their colour, put under continuing surveillance, and picked on in public places. A stakeholder explains that their visibility in public places is attributable to a lack of social amenity for these refugee men who have nowhere to go in the evening. Some of this dynamic has been broadcast in a 2008 SBS TV documentary “Community Cop”, directed by Helen Gaynor, which follows a group of young African Muslim men interacting with the police. In a related case Ahmed Dini, a Somali man from that estate who was assaulted by police, received $70,000 compensation in 2010; he was one of 13 African Muslim complainants against Victorian Police in 2006 for police brutality and harassment. These experiences soon enter the cultural consciousness of communities that experience them, and continue to effect longer‐term attitudes and perceptions of racism. Being picked up for ‘loitering’ outside your home, sitting on the footpath curb, playing basketball at night and being strip searched for a minor issue, were reported. The young stakeholder reports: …Yeah, and it’s ridiculous. How can you loiter in front of your flat? Like, it’s my flat, I don’t have a backyard (laughs). I can loiter in front of it if I want to – but no, it’s government property and you’re loitering. You’re at the basketball court at twelve o’clock at night. It’s the basketball court – ‘why are you there?’ You know, ‘what are you kids getting up to? Are you dealing drugs?’ …. They don’t have a right to search your bag without a reason and that’s the end. They don’t have a right to come and do that to you. Even though you reacted in a way to make sure the situation did not blow out of proportion, but, we live in Australia and we have rights in this country and therefore we should be able to access [them]. One issue that has arisen in cities like Darwin where there are both Indigenous people and newly arrived African refugees is the irregular incidence of violence between local Indigenous youth and migrants of African background. Darwin Somali community leaders and young people, and local community workers, have expressed concern about such events. Some stakeholders have described the situation as local youth feeling threatened by the appearance of a new ‘Black’ (rather than Muslim) group in their locality, and some street clashes have occurred. Even so a local Muslim youth notes: Darwin is one of the most multicultural places in Australia. And you grow up in preschool, going up to high school and it’s not just one race. There’s five, six, seven, eight in one class. And that’s what makes it so easy because everyone else has that awkwardness at the start when they’re a different colour or a different race or ethnicity or religion, and you feel kind of awkward in a way, but everyone else is in a way. But then you adapt and that’s what makes Australia what it is. Being able to adapt and making it easier ‐ and Australia being so accommodating. Letting in people who have come from war and hardship, and just saying how they’ve adapted and made it easy to blend into Australia. Directory: sites -> default -> files -> documents -> 01 2014 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> The south australian government gazette documents -> All public acts appearing in this gazette are to be considered official, and obeyed as such documents -> Union interparlementaire inter-parliamentary union 01 2014 -> Muslim Voices – Hopes and aspirations of Muslim Australians Centre for Muslim Minorities & Islam Policy Studies 01 2014 -> Prepared by: Kais Al‐Momani Nour Dados Marion Maddox Amanda Wise C 01 2014 -> Editors: Kerry Download 1.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
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