It’s not a topic that deliberately infiltrates the educational sphere, but the current racist climate of Australian politics in regards to the national stance on asylum seekers essentially sets the standards on the way our culture tolerates racism. The Sydney Morning Herald’s comments in the above article are a confusing array of paradoxes. Referencing several widely publicized racial controversies, it then goes on to list the statistic that 84% of Australians regard multiculturalism as a good thing. Surely, this is all contradictory? How can Australia have a problem with racism when multiculturalism is the venerable key-word of the week?
Simple: As Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley point out, what constitutes as
racism has changed in the neoliberal age. While less than 16% of Australians are
outrightly against multiculturalism the article continues, stating “Fewer than one in five of us
think asylum seekers who arrive by boat should be eligible for permanent
settlement. (Those most likely to think this are those with higher education.)”
Isn’t this a contradiction in terms? Naturally the issue isn’t a black
and white (excuse the horrid pun) matter of race. The political fear mongering
of both parties, which uses sensationalised language such as ‘illegals’ rather
than ‘asylum seekers’ is partly to blame. And yet Lentin and Titley’s
suggestion on the matter holds weight:
“Because immigrants are said to threaten national unity by being unable
or unwilling to assimilate into the British way of life, the whole meaning of
racial prejudice is inverted. Racism now becomes the very refusal of immigrants
to adopt the national lifestyle of their host country. According to this
unfolding theory, it becomes natural for the ordinary person to want to defend herself
by protesting against the rise in immigration. This reformulation of racist
discourse strips it of its very racism by purposefully refusing a proposition
of racial hierarchy that would characterise immigrants as the members of
inferior races.”
The new
reiteration of racism without racism is confusing the issue at handing and
allowing a broad portion of the population to skirt around the problem without
facing it.
As significant as all of this is, it isn’t the part of the article that caught my eye- I want to question why it is that the 1 in 5 who believe asylum seekers deserve permanent settlement are more likely to possess higher education? Perhaps it’s a generalisation on the part of the reporter, to simply assume all uni students are neo-liberal greenies operating on the behalf of the far left. But perhaps there is some weight to the notion that engagement with extensive education is more likely to produce individuals critical not only of the language throughout politics and media, but of their own personally held ideals. If that is the case, if by virtue of reading theorists such as Lentin and Titley, university students are likely to form idea’s separate from the broad majority of the public, the question then becomes- who’s right? Are we cloistered in our own separate bubble- estranged from the ‘real world’ or as students studying to be teachers, is it our responsibility to bring our theories ideals and perspectives to all our students, so that in the next ten years the viewpoint on racism and the asylum seekers can be challenged without the necessity of a university degree.
Then again, perhaps that’s the crazy, leftist greenie in me.
__________
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Baird, J. (2013, October 26). Racial tolerance begins in
Parliament. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved October 28, 2013, from
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/racial-tolerance-begins-in-parliament-20131025-2w6p2.html
Lentin, A., & Titley, G. (2011). The crises of
multiculturalism: racism in a neoliberal age. London: Zed Books.
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