missing the sunshine

Hello guys

I would like some honest feedback on the issue of racial discrimination in Australia specifically QUEENSLAND. I am black British, My wife is white Australian and we have 4 children together.

We are moving to Australia but i am very aprehensive of what to expect when i get there.

I have done research on racial discremination in Aus but have not found anything significant. I know Queensland isnt London so i want to have an idea of what to expect along these lines.

Has anyone got any experience they would like to share.

Englishmum

I have a white Aussie friend who is a lesbian and from the Gold Coast, but currently resident in New Jersey. Her partner is black (Nigerian but got US citizenship a few years ago).

They have adopted two boys from when they were tiny babies (black and half-brothers) and my friend has taken the boys home to visit her family Down Under, with and without her partner.

She says they've never experienced any discrimination - everyone makes a fuss of the kids as the Aussies rarely get to see black children and they're very popular over there! Her partner has never had a problem with racism either, but TBH has only ever been to Australia for holidays.

As soon as my Aussie friend gets her US citizenship in a few months, the whole family is moving to Australia; she says that the quality of life is far better for black children there than in the US (although who knows, with a new President perhaps things will get better very quickly).

missing the sunshine

thanks for the response, it is always good to get some idea of where you plan to live as im sure you can understand. and good luck to your frinds in gaining their American citizenship. One of th emain reasons were moving to Oz is for a better quality of life. I was concerned that the Kids may face racist issues in school also. this would totally defeat th epurpose of th emove.

Brisben

I myself am of mixed race.

I find queensland to be much more tolerant(Not the right word) of mixed races and mixed race marriages.

I have only ever been abused about race once and that was because I was a pommie.

Queensland, well Brisbane is very multiculteral, but unlike some other countries, Australia seems to embrace this and reap the benefits of this.

I would go so far as to say I think a lot less about the colour of my skin here than I did in the UK. Which is a good thing. I used to go to certain places in the UK, not often but sometimes was made to feel unwelcome and it may be me but the only reason I could see was due to skin colour.

As for schools, my children have non white skin and half of the school are the same, they all mix well and there is not one ounce of racial tension. Kids will be better than fine, trust me.

Australia is great in that respect, well QLD is in my experience.

huuuugo

Hi, I lived in Australia for years and although real black people (not counting Aboriginal people) were a rare sight in Australia. (probably to their "white Australia" policy that was held firmly up untill not that many years ago).

Now there is in especially Brisbane lots of "real" black people, (Sudanese mainly I believe) and people are getting used to the look of them!!

In Melbourne there is quite a large group of Sudanese immigrants but the media has done quite a job of making them look bad by intensly publicating issues with crime when Sudanese youth are involved.

I haven't found this in Queensland. I lived for 5 years in a small town just south of the Qld border. The colored people in question here have mostly been sponsored by members of the Catholic church I believe.

Maybe I can be corrected on some of the quotes above as they are purely my recollection on how I believe it is at present.

good luck, You'll be fine!!

Pomster

Not sure about Queensland (which did have that awful racist Pauline Hansen as a political representative for about 5 mins) but most of Aus seems laid back.

There were race riots in Sydney a couple of years ago, but to my mind (not involved in the details) it was more young thuggy gangs wanting to fight other thuggy gangs- race was a good excuse.
Apparently a number of families feud in their homeland, move to Aus, live near the people they were feuding with, and so the bad feeling continues. This seemed to be a lot more common/in the news when we first arrived in 2000.

In Melbourne, 8 years ago, seeing a black or person from Asia was rare- most non-whites were from SE Asia- but this has changed hugely in last 4 years.
Mr P is mixed race from SE Asia, and the only comments he gets is that he has a Pommie accent when they expect him to sound probably more Australian. Well ....and ripped into when England are playing Aus in international sport.

ABCDiamond

We haven't noticed any real problem in this area.

With many Australians, if we try to fit in, race or colour becomes irrelevant, but of course, there are always a few morons about.

asprilla

hello there, I'm not sure how useful this post will be, as being white, I am very rarely on the end of this kind of discrimination. I reckon that the vast majority of posters on this forum are probably white too, so it makes it very hard to say "don't worry mate, you won't have any problems". But anyway, here's what I reckon...


Firstly, the ethnic mix around the Brisbane area is very different to London. Without looking at any stats, this is how I see it:
1) large majority are white australian/ european descent or immigrants
2) next largest ethnic group : probably asian immigrants, mainly from China & Hong Kong, but also from other south east asian countries.
3) next largest: folks with "islander" ethnic origins, be they TSI, pacific, mauri, PNG. To be fair, it isn't really appropriate to lump all these folks together in one group.
4) black aboriginals & people of mixed aboriginal/white descent.

Those are the four big groups I reckon (with the whites being by far the biggest). Then you have other small groups- people of Indian ethnic origin, black immigrants from Africa, British born blacks, etc.

In the 5 years I have been here, I believe that there are lots more indian families moving here, and a few black families too, but I reckon that the majority are african blacks.

A couple of blokes in my old football team are black british, and both of them are in well paid professional jobs in brisbane. Both have similar mixed family situations to yourself. I have no idea whether or not they have suffered discrimination (not the kind of thing you talk about when kicking a ball around!) but I reckon that if they have, it would only have been on very rare occasions.

I personally do not believe that you will get any significant problems...but then again, I have no experience to base that on....

For what its worth, I don't reckon that your kids will have any worries.

best of luck!

asprilla

ps - one other thing. If you are moving from London (like I did), prepare to ask yourself "where are all the black people?" when you walk around the shops in town. That's what I was wondering ! Moving from an area as diverse as London, to an area like Brisbane which has a very different kind of ethnic diversity, took a little while to sink in with me.

For what its worth, in the time I've been here, things have changed a bit and I probably wouldn't get as much as a culture shock, if I were arriving here tomorrow.

DadAgain

Never noticed any problem with any kind of racism here in Brisbane.

Further north and more rural theres a bit of anti-indigenous sentiment amongst some less enlightened members of society (really shocked me in Darwin) - but in Brisbane yo're unlikely to encounter any racialy motivated hostility at all.

Brisbane is much more homogenous than Sydney or Melbourne and although there may be more racial diversity in the southern capitals, they do suffer a little from ghetto'ism (Vietnamese AREA, Italian AREA, Lebanese AREA etc etc ). In Brisbane your racial origins are actually less likely to determine your social circle or choice of places to go and there are very few places that have any particular racial association (Sunnybank for Chinese community is probably the ONLY area I can think of thats really got any racial/cultural baggage associated - and even then you wouldnt look out of place wandering around as a group of white-folk*)

Come to Brisbane - enjoy it - dont worry about racism.


*insert racial group of choice here

weez75

Adelaide seems to have a huge ethnic mix, i love it!! have only experienced racist comments and 'jokes' from other Brits I'm afraid!!

asprilla

really? I always assumed that Adelaide was more white australian than other places...but I don't really know, I've never been!

jayr

I am white English so my opinions are not based on personal experience as such.

In Brisbane the vastly predominant skin type is white European followed in much smaller numbers by Asian (think Japanese, Chinese, Korean etc rather than Indian). There are very few black or mixed race people in Brisbane; I would guess well under 1%.

I suspect there is a lot of racial tolerance in Brisbane, mostly based on the fact that there has been little exposure to other races so not too much preconception about say black people being more likely to be criminals; indian people being more likely to own corner shops and that sort of nonsense.

Of course, what goes with that is also a low level of "political correctness". The fact that there is a brand of cheese here still called "Coon" for example and that there is a grandstand called the "E.S Nigger Brown Stand". Brisbane is essentially a large (white) country town but don't assume it is full of rednecks. You will likely experience, for want of a better expression, "innocent" racism rather than any violent or in your face racism.

asprilla

this is very true. Every once in a while (I've heard it 2 or 3 times) you will hear an "innocent" joke made by someone, who probably wouldn't have made that joke if they really appreciated the kind of offence it can cause.... those kind of jokes are unheard of in London.

Conversely, I have never once heard any proper nasty sentiment here in Brisbane, unlike in London.

jayr

Now as I said I am white English, though an immigrnat none the less. I find it odd and clearly racist (to others - not me) how some people may go on to me about "immigrants" while clealry excluding me from that "group" given I am white and English. My point being they do not see the irony and their "anti-immigrant" view is clearly more likely an anti-skin colour view instead.

I suspect the OP would come across something similar, the fact that he is English (and black) making him "more acceptable" than say someone of Sudanese background. I suspect he will also get a lot of "ooh, you're from London? Yes there are a lot of black people there aren't there?" which may smack more of ignorance than "overt" racism.