This video is rather hard to watch, but give it a try. Not far from where I live in Brisbane, a teenager showers the train guard, a black man, with the most horrendous words and phrases in the English language. He uses n-word, c-word, f-word, calls him a “black dog,” virtually everything considered taboo in this corner of the world, because the black man commits the unforgivable crime of asking the white kid to take his feet off a seat. I don’t hate this kid as a person. He’s seventeen, and drunk to his eyeballs. He has obviously been exposed to this language for a long time. I particularly despise the gross generalization of online trolls, throwing out lazy comments about Aussies being racist wall to wall and so on. If you endure th five minutes rant you see that the whole train stands by the guard. I’m irritated though, by Tony Abbott’s response. This is how he explains why this footage disturbed him: “I think it’s un-Australian to abuse people in a public place just because you don’t like the way they look.” The guy who found Muslim women’s outfit “fairly confronting” and wished “it wasn’t worn,” who felt “threatened” by gay people, who has mercilessly demonized and vilified refugees on no grounds whatsoever, finds this slew of hatred and insult simply “un-Australian.” I wish he’d come out with an inventory of attributes that render one “Australian,” so that people could examine themselves more accurately. Racial attacks are growing in number here, and the rhetoric of Abbott administration plays a significant part in it. The soft condemnation of utter racism, delivered with a wink to “Australians”, whatever he means by that, sounds more like an implicit incentive for racists than a genuine effort to stop them. And this shouldn’t be taken lightly. Ask the Middle Eastern people. They know too well how reckless language begets violence.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 11:22:59 +0000
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