:: Opinion

A vicious problem exists in Australia

Farrukh Dhondy

"I cried because I had no shoes

Then I saw a girl with high-heeled Jimmy Choos

The sort of clogs I’d get if I was able

— er… I think something’s gone very wrong with this fable…"

From Proverbs of Perdition by Bachchoo

Sept.19 : Former u.s. President Jimmy Carter, reacting to the anti-Obama demonstration in Washington this weekend at which a million people gathered to protest against his reform of the American healthcare system, said America was still "racist". He went on to explain. Even after the civil war and civil rights, there were people who did not believe that a black American could or should govern the country.

Reacting to Mr Carter’s comments the White House put out a statement not refuting Mr Carter but stating Us President Barack Obama’s conviction that the people protesting against his healthcare proposals were not reacting to the colour of his skin or to his mixed race origins, but were genuinely opposed to the policies on grounds of their own ideology or self-interest. He was being magnanimous.

Besides, it would be a very bad political move for a President to call any section of the population opposed to him "racist". Sure, Bobby Kennedy or John F. Kennedy could with impunity refer to governor George Wallace of Alabama, who personally stood barring the doors of "his" university to prevent black students from enrolling, a racist. They were castigating Mr Wallace’s stance and throwing the weight of the American state behind the condemnation. They could with impunity label the segregation of buses or facilities "racist" because it was the practice of bigots who were defying the Constitution and breaking the law. Mr Obama faced the million protesters who called him a liar, a socialist, a Hitler, the Joker (the evil man from the Batman series played memorably by Jack Nicholson in the only film I’ve seen in the series) and other unsavoury things. They were exercising their democratic rights through the protest. He couldn’t very well impute motives of racism to them.

Very many commentators in America, both Democrat and Republican followed the lead of the White House in contradicting Mr Carter. One commentator, a black Democrat and TV columnist, said Mr Carter was senile. A white woman Republican, a press secretary to the White House during former Us President George Bush’s first term, attributed his remarks to being those of a generation from the South which was now out of touch with today’s realities. They were each anxious to prove that America had in the main transcended the view of race that Mr Carter believed was still dominant in the hearts and minds of a significant number of white Americans.

Mr Carter may be right, but now that there is a black President in the White House would only be in the interests of the racists to admit that he is. A black President, having been elected to the most powerful office in the world by the American people can hardly resort to calling his opponents racist.

Let’s now travel a few thousand miles west and south of the US across the Pacific Ocean to that great ex-colony of Britain, Australia. There, in the city of Melbourne Victoria, three Indians were attacked in a suburban car park by a group of thugs early this week. The victims say that 70 people had gathered in the car park cheering on the group of six or seven who, without provocation, attacked them shouting about going back to their own country. The police have estimated the cheering, jeering assembly as a mere 12 or 13 people. It makes no difference. The three Indian gentlemen were going about their business, in this case playing pool in a pub and then attempting to drive home. No one, least of all the police, or subsequently the politicians of the city, state and country have claimed that the Indians acted in any provocative way or engaged in any sort of dispute with their assailants.

The Indians were hospitalised as a result of the attack. It isn’t the first time that there has been a random racist attack on Indians in Melbourne. It is now becoming a regular and intolerable occurrence.

The Prime Minister of Victoria at first resisted the description of the incidents as "racist". He called them the actions of "bigots".

In a sense this signalled the reluctance of the Australian state to acknowledge that it has a problem, that scattered acts of racism can grow into organised movements of viciousness like the Ku-Klux Klan and the British National Party of the United Kingdom.

When I first heard about and then read of these attacks this week, I was reminded of the protracted battle that was fought by Asian immigrants in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s in several parts of Britain to establish their right to live free from attack. In the East End of London the phenomenon known as "Paki-bashing" was confronted head-on by the organisation of the immigrants of that area, with which I was associated at the time. There isn’t space to recount the strategies and tactics which went into this self-defensive movement but there is enough evidence to prove that it wasn’t the actions of the police or the legislation of Westminster that forced the racists off the street and put an end to "Paki-bashing".

Last Wednesday, after the Australian attack, I was invited onto an Indian TV programme via a link from London to comment on this British immigrant experience. I did my few minutes before the camera and went off to meet friends at the local pub. I had no idea that the rather general comments I made would be relayed to Australia and that the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd would himself respond to them.

I was awoken in London the early hours of the next morning by Indian reporters asking me for my response to Mr Rudd’s reaction. I asked the very polite callers who weren’t consulting the world-clock facility on their mobiles (I switched my mobile off after two calls) to call later and give me some details of what Mr Rudd had said.

I got them and gave the interviews. I know very little about Australia and have some respect for Mr Rudd whose election I witnessed as I happened to be in Australia at the time.

What I think I do know is a little about living through an era of the adjustment of Britain to its new immigrant population in the latter 20th century. It’s a good story and I must say it’s better than Australia now.