Racism remains a pervasive blight on modern life despite our embrace of science over religious superstition. Too many times we hear of racist trolls attacking people of colour via the internet and come across instances of racism in our own lives. Social media is a public arena where racists can get the attention they so obviously crave. Whilst we can dispassionately observe the likely desperate need for these sorry individuals to big note themselves through their disgusting diatribes and comments it may be time for our society to do more to end this ugliness. Isn’t it time to recognise that online behaviour is exactly the same as real life? If we do not take action against those who racially vilify their fellow human beings, we are condoning their actions. I would like to see these cowards who hide behind their virtual identities investigated and revealed to the broader community. Racism: Time to take real action and call these individuals out into the cold bright light of the day.
Mandatory Re-Education Programmes to Combat Racism
In addition, I would suggest mandatory re-education programmes to help these misguided people find a deeper more universal truth. In many instances, racism is inherited from parents and grandparents, a poison chalice handed down through the generations. Human beings are highly susceptible to input from family environments in their formative years. Growing up listening to adults blaming black people for all the problems in their lives installs deep seated beliefs about these things. Human beings like to blame others for their own misfortunes and racial divides have always been excellent fodder for this inclination. Basically, some of these racist individuals require some help in overcoming these negative attitudes and beliefs. Re-education and therapeutic approaches to ingrained racism can be effective in shifting the goal posts for these folks. Racism: Time to take real action and get off our apathetic Australian arses.
Sporting Organisations Doing More than Governments to Stop Racism
Sporting organisations, like the AFL and NRL in Australia, are making the running for re-education about racism among the ordinary people in this country. Governments, especially conservative governments, have not been leaders in this space, as they pander to the racist vote of older white Australians. Australia is a product of colonialisation, where a dominant white population has been brought up on a diet of assimilation for immigrants and the original indigenous population. Pauline Hanson is a poster pollie for these folks who would like to see the clock turned back toward an Australia where migrants and blacks knew their place at the back of the queue. Footy fans have enjoyed the fine skills of indigenous players for decades, but these players have had to put up with racial vilification delivered over the fence for years. The AFL and NRL have sanctioned these offences by fellow players and by fans to a lesser extent. Adam Goodes famously called out this behaviour and was eventually booed out of the game. Australians, who had been told for years that they were model exponents of multiculturism, were surprised to learn that racism was very much alive and well among their ranks. Right wing media personalities bemoaned this divisive behaviour by blacks, who should really know their place. Well-paid sporting stars should not bite the hand that feeds them, according to Andrew Bolt and other shock jocks. The underlying message is that it is white Australians who make up the majority of the audience and make possible the high-paid incomes of these players. Thus, dark skinned sporting stars should suck up the bile as a biproduct of the whole situation and not expect to be treated with kid gloves if they earn the big money. Black Lives Matter in the time of the coronavirus is rejecting this paradigm in 2020.
Right now, disaffected individuals who wish to poison the social media airwaves with hurtful racist behaviour know that nothing is going to happen to them. Therefore, they freely throw their immature bullshit about and target high profile people of colour to attract attention to their cause. We witness high achieving women copping bucket loads of crap from trolls safely hiding behind their keyboards in anonymity. Weak people from the dominant culture, white males, seem to seek out perceived minorities, by race, gender and other social groupings, to make themselves feel superior by disparaging them. Those white males at the bottom of the food chain want to slag off those they think lie below them to boost their own shaky self-esteem. Let us help these people by identifying them and their problem via re-education. We send people, who break the law and seriously transgress, to prison, perhaps, it is time to recognise the digital space as equally valid and put an end to racist behaviour within our community.
I play golf and enjoy the physicality of the game amid nature. By which I mean swinging the club, walking the fairways and striking the golf ball in search of a good shot. In club competition we are paired in groups of four and spend on average four hours on-course playing eighteen holes. Club golf, in my experience over decades, attracts a fairly conservative group with plenty of older white males. Thus, at various clubs where I have been a member, I have been privy to numerous serves of racist opinion and humour from my playing partners. It has, in many ways, provided me with a view of sections of mainstream Australia. I would further qualify my years involved with around a dozen golf clubs in three different Australian states by saying that they were average working-class golf clubs rather than high-end clubs. Most of the individuals I have played in competition with have been working people, both blue and white collar. Why I am raising this in relation to this article is to share some direct experience of racist views expressed by Australians in my presence. I find this racism disturbing and it angers me that these people still find it appropriate to express it within this format. My response to these comments is to point out their failings and to actively discourage them. I do not want to spend four hours with a racist and I then I think about those who have to spend a lifetime dealing with them. Until you have been on the receiving end of racism it is almost impossible to understand the pain it engenders. Re-education must take these transgressing individuals out of their comfort zones and into the vulnerable territory of those victimised by racism.
In my view, Australia makes too few demands upon its citizens in terms of community awareness. We have been founded upon a rough and ready meritocracy, where making a living for your family is enough and the rest is left up to the individual. If white Australians live in their suburban enclaves surrounded by mirror versions of themselves and have little to no contact with people of colour and other minorities, then, how will they learn to embrace diversity? Working class or lower middle-class Aussies who leave school early to pursue a trade miss out on the more sophisticated schooling about things like diversity and human rights. In general, education has become more technically focused in this country over the last few decades. This means that important humanities subjects, which deal with things like racism, are not adequately studied by the majority of students. This is one of the reasons why racism can survive in a modern western nation like Australia. If we do not educate our young properly about ensuring a fair and just society for all Australians, no matter the colour of their skin, how is the future going to be any different from the unfair past? Education should not be something only for the young, it should be something that never ends. Do we really think that every ordinary adult Australian is up to speed with an ever-changing world? Re-education should not be a dirty word but an opportunity to adjust and get things right. The coronavirus pandemic is bringing us together and showing us that it is not just about making money. We have an opportunity to take care of those who have been left behind in terms of fairness and justice for all. Racism: Time to take real action and weed out the disaffected and re-educate them going forward.
©RobertHamilton