Report on Racism in Australia
Dec 16th 2004, 3:17 am
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Report on Racism in Australia
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=589233
seems like a couple of rednecks in Queensland have done their hardest to act like *ssholes.
The anger of the Aborigines
A teenager's claim that he was dragged naked through the dirt with a noose around his neck has inflamed racial tensions in Australia. Kathy Marks reports
03 December 2004
It is an episode that recalls America's Deep South in the 1960s but it happened, allegedly, in Australia this week. Two white farm workers stripped an Aboriginal teenager naked and dragged him through the dirt with a noose around his neck. They hauled him up and down a riverbank, he claims, beat him up and threatened him with a double-barrelled shotgun.
The alleged incident happened in Queensland, where racial tensions were already high following a riot last week on Palm Island. The rampage, in which the police station and the courthouse were petrol bombed, was sparked by the death in custody of an Aboriginal man who suffered internal bleeding after a scuffle with police guards. Palm Island was an ominous reminder of the simmering frustrations of Australia's marginalised black population, and allegations of a Ku Klux Klan-style attack on 16-year-old Alan Boland fuelled fears of more racial violence yesterday. "We call this sadistic torture," said Bert Button, a local Aboriginal leader. "This is KKK-type stuff. It's getting to the stage it is almost open go to maim and kill black fellas."
Tensions are now at boiling point in a nation that, for the most part, chooses to ignore its "Aboriginal problem". Indigenous issues did not figure in October's election, which saw the conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, re-elected with an increased majority. Most white Australians are untroubled by the grim statistics of Aboriginal life - that black people die 20 years younger than average, for instance, that they suffer Third World diseases, and are unemployed, imprisoned and murdered at hugely disproportionate rates.
The point may have arrived where politicians and their supporters in Middle Australia are forced to sit up and take notice. The country's original inhabitants are not, by nature, combative. There have been remarkably few disturbances in impoverished and alienated communities that have shared none of the economic rewards of living in one of the world's most prosperous nations.
Over the past year, things have started to change. In February, the Aboriginal ghetto of Redfern in central Sydney witnessed a night of rioting after a boy, Thomas Hickey, died after being flung off his bicycle and impaled on a metal railing. Locals claimed he was being chased by police at the time. An inquest cleared police of any responsibility.
Last week was the turn of Palm Island, a community blighted by years of deprivation and neglect. This time the catalyst was the death in a police cell of 36-year-old Cameron Doomadgee. An autopsy showed that he died from a ruptured liver and also had four broken ribs. Heavy-handed tactics by police quelling the riot exacerbated frictions.
The alleged incident on the farm at Goondiwindi, in southern Queensland, shocked even cynical observers. According to police, Alan Boland and three others broke into a hut on the farm on Tuesday evening. A worker and his son pursued them; the others escaped, but Alan was caught while swimming across a river. The men allegedly tied his hands and beat him with sticks. He was not seriously hurt, but is being treated in hospital for injuries to his head, chest and upper body, as well as rope burns to his neck.
According to some reports, one of his companions, also a teenager, was tied to a tree and forced to watch his friend being brutalised.
The state premier, Peter Beattie, urged people not to "over-react" and said charges would be laid in relation to the attempted robbery as well as the assault. "Anyone who looks at this objectively would see that as being the law being enforced equally with both black and white," he said. "That's about as fair and even-handed as you can get." The mayor of Goondiwindi, Tom Sullivan, also appealed for calm. "I say to the community, let's see what comes out of this thing, and don't pre-empt things," he said. "People have got to be sensible and calm about these things, and let it go through the normal course of the investigations by police." Two men, aged 44 and 23, were charged last night with assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company. They will appear before magistrates in January.
But in the Aboriginal reserve of Toomelah, where the boy lives, there is anger and disbelief. Locals say he was dragged around in the dirt for almost an hour. Mr Button told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "We see that this pattern has been going on for years. It's more or less an every-second- day event, not only in Queensland, but other places of Australia, against indigenous people. But these are ones that come to the fore. And then when some Aboriginal persons lose their cool, then they turn around and say that we're the savages, or it's 'blame the victim syndrome' once again."
Such is life for the black underclass in a country where two nations live side by side - a nation of affluent whites, enjoying all the fruits of a place blessed by sunshine and natural resources, and a nation of indigenous blacks, destined to a life of misery, hopelessness and squalor. The latter seek solace in alcohol, drugs and petrol sniffing, and turn their burning resentment upon one another. Violence against women and children is rife in Aboriginal communities.
Few Aboriginals manage to lift themselves out of the conditions in which they were born. Among the few to have succeeded is Michael Long, a former Australian Rules footballer who grew up in the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, where power poles are wrapped in barbed wire to prevent suicidal teenagers from climbing up to electrocute themselves. The Tiwis are also notable for having the world's highest rate of kidney disease: 60 times higher than the rest of Australia.
Long, who became a national hero thanks to his sporting prowess, has grown so frustrated about the plight of his fellow Aboriginals that he set out on a 410-mile walk from Melbourne to the national capital, Canberra, to demand a meeting with the Prime Minister.
He walked about half-way before Mr Howard sent a message saying he would meet him and two other Aboriginal leaders, Patrick Dodson and Paul Briggs, at Parliament House today. Long, whose feet are covered in blisters, has described Mr Howard as cold-hearted for refusing to apologise to the "stolen generations" - Aboriginal children taken from their parents under officially sanctioned assimilation policies. He plans to use today's meeting to urge the Prime Minister to put indigenous affairs back on the national agenda and to visit as many indigenous communities as possible. "I believe it would help Mr Howard to better understand the complex problems facing our people," he said.
But the talks are unlikely to yield concrete results. The Prime Minister has already made plain that he has no intention of changing direction on Aboriginal policy. Last year he abolished the popularly elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, replacing it with a government-appointed body, the National Indigenous Council. Long was offered a seat on the council, which will meet for the first time next week. He declined, saying it would not give Aboriginals a real voice.
Australians, meanwhile, are waiting with trepidation to see whether the attack on Alan Boland provokes more eruptions of violence. Mr Button said: "The community feels saddened in what arose, and we're all angry, particularly still with the fresh memory of the thing in our minds about Palm Island.
"We also still got fresh in our minds about the young kid that was impaled on a steel fence paling down at Redfern. And we're reminding the community in general, and also the police, it is not free season on black fellas." Palm Island remains a tinderbox, patrolled by heavily armed police. Mr Doomadgee's funeral, to be held next week, will be the focus of high emotion. Police have been warned to stay away. The results of a second autopsy have yet to be released, but locals are convinced that he died after being beaten up by his guards. One local indigenous leader has threatened "payback" against the police.
The island, usually out of sight and out of mind, has a troubled history. It earned itself the title of the world's most violent place outside a combat zone in the 1988 Guinness World Records. Deaths in custody are a particularly sore issue for Aboriginals; too many of their number have died in prison and police cells in the past. Last Friday night, 300 people vented their fury.
The police tactics only inflamed the situation. Officers armed with stun guns and semi-automatic weapons reportedly stormed houses after the riot, searching for suspects. Locals claim that children as young as nine were forced to lie face down in the dirt at gunpoint. Twenty-one people have been arrested, and are demanding to be allowed out for the funeral.
A local Aboriginal activist, Sam Watson, said: "We have absolutely no confidence in the Australian so-called justice system." Aboriginals are entirely without a voice at national level. The country's only Aboriginal politician, Aden Ridgeway, was voted out of office in the recent election. Mr Ridgeway said this week that the government's policy of treating all Australians equally did not take account of the vast gulf between black and white. "This government is hell-bent on a philosophical view that it's all about equal treatment, without recognising that in many communities they're behind the eight-ball, so equal treatment often means a perpetuation of the same," he said.
Fred Chaney, who co-chairs Reconciliation Australia, also entered the debate, saying he believed the anger felt by many Aboriginals was justified.
Mr Chaney, who was a government minister responsible for Aboriginal affairs in the 1970s, said progress on indigenous issues had gone "off the boil". He said: "We think it's time to set a new agenda in indigenous affairs and, of course, in reconciliation." Boni Robertson, an Aboriginal academic, expressed horror at the episode on the Queensland farm. "This, on top of Palm Island, is really too much," she told The Australian newspaper. "How much more do they think our people can cope with? We are in a crisis, racially, in this country." Aboriginal leaders have announced a national day of action a week tomorrow, in protest at indigenous deaths in custody. Black people make up 20 per cent of jail inmates, despite being only two per cent of the population.
The Indigenous Affairs Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said this week that deaths in custody had fallen by 50 per cent since the 1980s. But she added: "Recent incidents in Palm Island and Redfern remind us all how far we've got to go."
seems like a couple of rednecks in Queensland have done their hardest to act like *ssholes.
The anger of the Aborigines
A teenager's claim that he was dragged naked through the dirt with a noose around his neck has inflamed racial tensions in Australia. Kathy Marks reports
03 December 2004
It is an episode that recalls America's Deep South in the 1960s but it happened, allegedly, in Australia this week. Two white farm workers stripped an Aboriginal teenager naked and dragged him through the dirt with a noose around his neck. They hauled him up and down a riverbank, he claims, beat him up and threatened him with a double-barrelled shotgun.
The alleged incident happened in Queensland, where racial tensions were already high following a riot last week on Palm Island. The rampage, in which the police station and the courthouse were petrol bombed, was sparked by the death in custody of an Aboriginal man who suffered internal bleeding after a scuffle with police guards. Palm Island was an ominous reminder of the simmering frustrations of Australia's marginalised black population, and allegations of a Ku Klux Klan-style attack on 16-year-old Alan Boland fuelled fears of more racial violence yesterday. "We call this sadistic torture," said Bert Button, a local Aboriginal leader. "This is KKK-type stuff. It's getting to the stage it is almost open go to maim and kill black fellas."
Tensions are now at boiling point in a nation that, for the most part, chooses to ignore its "Aboriginal problem". Indigenous issues did not figure in October's election, which saw the conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, re-elected with an increased majority. Most white Australians are untroubled by the grim statistics of Aboriginal life - that black people die 20 years younger than average, for instance, that they suffer Third World diseases, and are unemployed, imprisoned and murdered at hugely disproportionate rates.
The point may have arrived where politicians and their supporters in Middle Australia are forced to sit up and take notice. The country's original inhabitants are not, by nature, combative. There have been remarkably few disturbances in impoverished and alienated communities that have shared none of the economic rewards of living in one of the world's most prosperous nations.
Over the past year, things have started to change. In February, the Aboriginal ghetto of Redfern in central Sydney witnessed a night of rioting after a boy, Thomas Hickey, died after being flung off his bicycle and impaled on a metal railing. Locals claimed he was being chased by police at the time. An inquest cleared police of any responsibility.
Last week was the turn of Palm Island, a community blighted by years of deprivation and neglect. This time the catalyst was the death in a police cell of 36-year-old Cameron Doomadgee. An autopsy showed that he died from a ruptured liver and also had four broken ribs. Heavy-handed tactics by police quelling the riot exacerbated frictions.
The alleged incident on the farm at Goondiwindi, in southern Queensland, shocked even cynical observers. According to police, Alan Boland and three others broke into a hut on the farm on Tuesday evening. A worker and his son pursued them; the others escaped, but Alan was caught while swimming across a river. The men allegedly tied his hands and beat him with sticks. He was not seriously hurt, but is being treated in hospital for injuries to his head, chest and upper body, as well as rope burns to his neck.
According to some reports, one of his companions, also a teenager, was tied to a tree and forced to watch his friend being brutalised.
The state premier, Peter Beattie, urged people not to "over-react" and said charges would be laid in relation to the attempted robbery as well as the assault. "Anyone who looks at this objectively would see that as being the law being enforced equally with both black and white," he said. "That's about as fair and even-handed as you can get." The mayor of Goondiwindi, Tom Sullivan, also appealed for calm. "I say to the community, let's see what comes out of this thing, and don't pre-empt things," he said. "People have got to be sensible and calm about these things, and let it go through the normal course of the investigations by police." Two men, aged 44 and 23, were charged last night with assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company. They will appear before magistrates in January.
But in the Aboriginal reserve of Toomelah, where the boy lives, there is anger and disbelief. Locals say he was dragged around in the dirt for almost an hour. Mr Button told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "We see that this pattern has been going on for years. It's more or less an every-second- day event, not only in Queensland, but other places of Australia, against indigenous people. But these are ones that come to the fore. And then when some Aboriginal persons lose their cool, then they turn around and say that we're the savages, or it's 'blame the victim syndrome' once again."
Such is life for the black underclass in a country where two nations live side by side - a nation of affluent whites, enjoying all the fruits of a place blessed by sunshine and natural resources, and a nation of indigenous blacks, destined to a life of misery, hopelessness and squalor. The latter seek solace in alcohol, drugs and petrol sniffing, and turn their burning resentment upon one another. Violence against women and children is rife in Aboriginal communities.
Few Aboriginals manage to lift themselves out of the conditions in which they were born. Among the few to have succeeded is Michael Long, a former Australian Rules footballer who grew up in the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, where power poles are wrapped in barbed wire to prevent suicidal teenagers from climbing up to electrocute themselves. The Tiwis are also notable for having the world's highest rate of kidney disease: 60 times higher than the rest of Australia.
Long, who became a national hero thanks to his sporting prowess, has grown so frustrated about the plight of his fellow Aboriginals that he set out on a 410-mile walk from Melbourne to the national capital, Canberra, to demand a meeting with the Prime Minister.
He walked about half-way before Mr Howard sent a message saying he would meet him and two other Aboriginal leaders, Patrick Dodson and Paul Briggs, at Parliament House today. Long, whose feet are covered in blisters, has described Mr Howard as cold-hearted for refusing to apologise to the "stolen generations" - Aboriginal children taken from their parents under officially sanctioned assimilation policies. He plans to use today's meeting to urge the Prime Minister to put indigenous affairs back on the national agenda and to visit as many indigenous communities as possible. "I believe it would help Mr Howard to better understand the complex problems facing our people," he said.
But the talks are unlikely to yield concrete results. The Prime Minister has already made plain that he has no intention of changing direction on Aboriginal policy. Last year he abolished the popularly elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, replacing it with a government-appointed body, the National Indigenous Council. Long was offered a seat on the council, which will meet for the first time next week. He declined, saying it would not give Aboriginals a real voice.
Australians, meanwhile, are waiting with trepidation to see whether the attack on Alan Boland provokes more eruptions of violence. Mr Button said: "The community feels saddened in what arose, and we're all angry, particularly still with the fresh memory of the thing in our minds about Palm Island.
"We also still got fresh in our minds about the young kid that was impaled on a steel fence paling down at Redfern. And we're reminding the community in general, and also the police, it is not free season on black fellas." Palm Island remains a tinderbox, patrolled by heavily armed police. Mr Doomadgee's funeral, to be held next week, will be the focus of high emotion. Police have been warned to stay away. The results of a second autopsy have yet to be released, but locals are convinced that he died after being beaten up by his guards. One local indigenous leader has threatened "payback" against the police.
The island, usually out of sight and out of mind, has a troubled history. It earned itself the title of the world's most violent place outside a combat zone in the 1988 Guinness World Records. Deaths in custody are a particularly sore issue for Aboriginals; too many of their number have died in prison and police cells in the past. Last Friday night, 300 people vented their fury.
The police tactics only inflamed the situation. Officers armed with stun guns and semi-automatic weapons reportedly stormed houses after the riot, searching for suspects. Locals claim that children as young as nine were forced to lie face down in the dirt at gunpoint. Twenty-one people have been arrested, and are demanding to be allowed out for the funeral.
A local Aboriginal activist, Sam Watson, said: "We have absolutely no confidence in the Australian so-called justice system." Aboriginals are entirely without a voice at national level. The country's only Aboriginal politician, Aden Ridgeway, was voted out of office in the recent election. Mr Ridgeway said this week that the government's policy of treating all Australians equally did not take account of the vast gulf between black and white. "This government is hell-bent on a philosophical view that it's all about equal treatment, without recognising that in many communities they're behind the eight-ball, so equal treatment often means a perpetuation of the same," he said.
Fred Chaney, who co-chairs Reconciliation Australia, also entered the debate, saying he believed the anger felt by many Aboriginals was justified.
Mr Chaney, who was a government minister responsible for Aboriginal affairs in the 1970s, said progress on indigenous issues had gone "off the boil". He said: "We think it's time to set a new agenda in indigenous affairs and, of course, in reconciliation." Boni Robertson, an Aboriginal academic, expressed horror at the episode on the Queensland farm. "This, on top of Palm Island, is really too much," she told The Australian newspaper. "How much more do they think our people can cope with? We are in a crisis, racially, in this country." Aboriginal leaders have announced a national day of action a week tomorrow, in protest at indigenous deaths in custody. Black people make up 20 per cent of jail inmates, despite being only two per cent of the population.
The Indigenous Affairs Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said this week that deaths in custody had fallen by 50 per cent since the 1980s. But she added: "Recent incidents in Palm Island and Redfern remind us all how far we've got to go."
Last edited by wombatboy; Dec 16th 2004 at 3:18 am. Reason: grammar
Dec 16th 2004, 4:38 am
#2
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Could you underline the racists bits please, having trouble finding them.
Dec 16th 2004, 7:02 am
#3
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Joined: Dec 2004
Location: Brisbane, Queensland.
Posts: 104
Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Did you see the report on the tv? Where the house had security screens that are better off on a prison?
I'd say that the area has a very serious law and order problem
Yep the guys were animals.
The "victim" in question will never ever rob another house I should imagine.
Queenslanders are so racist. We have a political party called BNP. Oops not in qld I am thinking of somewhere else.
THomas Hickey from Sydney was hardly a boy. He was running from the police because he was a wanted criminal. The police weren't chasing him they were after another violent thug. His name might conjur up that photo of a nice smiling boy or how about the security footage where he started a fire at a service station?
Palm Island - Great. The police were unarmed facing a large mob. One officer called his wife to say goodbye as he believed that he was about to be killed. I don't know about you but how do the police in the UK deal with violent drunks? I've never taken a swing at an officer so I am not sure how they react first hand but I can take a wild guess.
I'd say that the area has a very serious law and order problem
Yep the guys were animals.
The "victim" in question will never ever rob another house I should imagine.
Queenslanders are so racist. We have a political party called BNP. Oops not in qld I am thinking of somewhere else.
THomas Hickey from Sydney was hardly a boy. He was running from the police because he was a wanted criminal. The police weren't chasing him they were after another violent thug. His name might conjur up that photo of a nice smiling boy or how about the security footage where he started a fire at a service station?
Palm Island - Great. The police were unarmed facing a large mob. One officer called his wife to say goodbye as he believed that he was about to be killed. I don't know about you but how do the police in the UK deal with violent drunks? I've never taken a swing at an officer so I am not sure how they react first hand but I can take a wild guess.
Dec 17th 2004, 2:18 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Originally Posted by Quinkana
Could you underline the racists bits please, having trouble finding them.
Dec 17th 2004, 2:24 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Originally Posted by GCS15
THomas Hickey from Sydney was hardly a boy. He was running from the police because he was a wanted criminal. The police weren't chasing him they were after another violent thug. His name might conjur up that photo of a nice smiling boy or how about the security footage where he started a fire at a service station?
Last edited by wombatboy; Dec 17th 2004 at 2:25 am. Reason: cos i wanted to
Dec 17th 2004, 2:41 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Originally Posted by wombatboy
Yeah and q a few of that mob were said to be druggies from around the area of Redfern who justed wanted to create sh*t with the police. (and they were white). i love it when journo's spin things like this (not).
Yeah the media has a lot to answer for IMO.
Whenever a "coloured" person (hate that term) is attacked it is racially motivated. No-one assumes that they were attacked by thugs who bash people for no reason in particular.
Then there is the footage of an Apache gunship pasting some Iraqi farmers. Graphic stuff even if it is all in thermal image. BUT when you see the whole lot you stop seeing "farmers" as reported on TV but rather a bunch of fellows setting up an ambush with RPG's... oops there goes my sympathy and anger... right out the window.
Then there was the "riot" at some union picket line. Saw 3 reports on the same event using the same source for footage. 1 report showed the police to be heavy handed. the second showed the police getting the crap beaten out of them. the third showed the whole lot from woa to go.
But back on topic re racism. On the whole I believe that Aussies are no more racist than anyone else. We have rednecks, peaceniks, communists, capitalists.... and everything in between. My mate who is japanese has only experienced racism in Ireland. Go figure.
Whenever anyone goes on about the "stolen generation" where aboriginal children were taken from their mothers and given to "good" European families I get a bit cross. 1 - it wasn't that long ago 2 - it wasn't a govt policy... its what individual buerocrats did 3 - it happened to unwed white girls as well. number 3 being the main source of my anger as my older sister was taken forcably off my mother. But the way the media reports it it was only aboriginals who were subjected to this. grrrr
Dec 17th 2004, 2:50 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Originally Posted by GCS15
But back on topic re racism. On the whole I believe that Aussies are no more racist than anyone else. We have rednecks, peaceniks, communists, capitalists.... and everything in between. My mate who is japanese has only experienced racism in Ireland. Go figure.
Dec 17th 2004, 2:55 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Reads like a bleeding heart John Pilger article to me.
There are a few things to be clear on though:
1. Redfern has a massive problem not so much race based as drug based.
2. Australia is a racist place.
There are a few things to be clear on though:
1. Redfern has a massive problem not so much race based as drug based.
2. Australia is a racist place.
Dec 17th 2004, 3:15 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Re Australia being racist place
I put forward that everyone is a racist.
When I see a Maori I think to myself "here is a person not to cross. The only person they are scared of is their mother." Even the "small" maori is a person not to be crossed lightly.
When i see a Japanese national. I think "hard working, polite"
Let's not beat around the bush here and take it to "home" ground. The Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English all get along and it doesn't matter where a person is from, the colour of their skin we don't make judgements until we have had a chance to get to know them fully as a person.
or
you see a Scots man walk down the road with his Patriotic tats on his forearm and think "Jock".
If I remember rightly all I heard in Scotland was "the british did this and that to us".
What people put forward as racisim is where people discriminate based on race. I have seen it happen first hand and was shocked. So yes. Racism exists here in Australia, and New Zealand.
I put forward that everyone is a racist.
When I see a Maori I think to myself "here is a person not to cross. The only person they are scared of is their mother." Even the "small" maori is a person not to be crossed lightly.
When i see a Japanese national. I think "hard working, polite"
Let's not beat around the bush here and take it to "home" ground. The Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English all get along and it doesn't matter where a person is from, the colour of their skin we don't make judgements until we have had a chance to get to know them fully as a person.
or
you see a Scots man walk down the road with his Patriotic tats on his forearm and think "Jock".
If I remember rightly all I heard in Scotland was "the british did this and that to us".
What people put forward as racisim is where people discriminate based on race. I have seen it happen first hand and was shocked. So yes. Racism exists here in Australia, and New Zealand.
Jan 16th 2005, 10:21 am
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Re: Report on Racism in Australia
Yeah u HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!
Originally Posted by GCS15
Re Australia being racist place
I put forward that everyone is a racist.
When I see a Maori I think to myself "here is a person not to cross. The only person they are scared of is their mother." Even the "small" maori is a person not to be crossed lightly.
When i see a Japanese national. I think "hard working, polite"
Let's not beat around the bush here and take it to "home" ground. The Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English all get along and it doesn't matter where a person is from, the colour of their skin we don't make judgements until we have had a chance to get to know them fully as a person.
or
you see a Scots man walk down the road with his Patriotic tats on his forearm and think "Jock".
If I remember rightly all I heard in Scotland was "the british did this and that to us".
What people put forward as racisim is where people discriminate based on race. I have seen it happen first hand and was shocked. So yes. Racism exists here in Australia, and New Zealand.
I put forward that everyone is a racist.
When I see a Maori I think to myself "here is a person not to cross. The only person they are scared of is their mother." Even the "small" maori is a person not to be crossed lightly.
When i see a Japanese national. I think "hard working, polite"
Let's not beat around the bush here and take it to "home" ground. The Welsh, Irish, Scots, and English all get along and it doesn't matter where a person is from, the colour of their skin we don't make judgements until we have had a chance to get to know them fully as a person.
or
you see a Scots man walk down the road with his Patriotic tats on his forearm and think "Jock".
If I remember rightly all I heard in Scotland was "the british did this and that to us".
What people put forward as racisim is where people discriminate based on race. I have seen it happen first hand and was shocked. So yes. Racism exists here in Australia, and New Zealand.
