Are Aussies really rednecks?

American actor and comedian Robin Williams describes Australia as an exotic place like any tourist who visits a foreign country does. While he was talking about his recent trip to down under on a television talk show in the US, he said Australia was a very unusual place where Australians - mostly rough people surrounded by the wilderness and wild life - religiously went to pub, and played a strange game called Australian rules football …

He bluntly said “Australians are basically English rednecks” while imitating how they spoke and causing laughter. In response to this, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd retorted jocularly that before making such jokes Williams should spend some time in the deep south of the United States, implying that there are more rednecks there.

But redneck is a stereotype like every other stereotype. It originally referred to the poor, rural, white Americans in the south with their sunburnt red necks and skin, who were considered bigoted, prejudiced and racist. When Williams described Australians as rednecks, he probably was likening some white Anglo Aussies to the American rednecks he is familiar with in terms of their appearance and behaviour - without knowing if these Australians are really bigoted or not.

But the comedian’s job is not to search for truth or create understanding, instead to make people laugh by using social and cultural stereotypes as his material. And Williams, who makes similar jokes about every nation, can easily be excused for his expression since he neither means to stigmatise Australians nor score a political point.

However, anyone from a non-Anglo background with a wounded dignity, who believes that they are treated badly in Australia, at times utters - or is tempted to - that all Australians are rednecks. Those on the radical left, mostly from Anglo backgrounds, sometimes exclaim that all Australians are rednecks as an expression of moral outrage for racism against certain groups.

And well-educated, classy Australians call provincial and prejudiced Anglos rednecks and blame racism totally on those “bogans”. Moreover, saying all Australians are rednecks is in fact no different from saying all Germans are Nazis: this expression of symbolic warfare which aims to agitate and stigmatise all society embodies the horrendous, racist colonial history of this nation.

But it is never productive to start a debate about racism with a question like “are Australians racist?” Or “are Australians rednecks?” This quickly turns into a question of “them versus us”, “Anglos versus non-Anglos”: racist, evil Anglos who are constantly oppressing their non-Anglo victims. This inflames everyone involved in the debate, who becomes either offensive or defensive, and prevents a critical understanding of racism in this country. So “is there racism in Australia?” is a much better question.

Yes, there is racism in Australia. And if we use cancer as a metaphor to explain racism, racism in Australia mainly originates from racism against Aboriginal Australians, and such racism legitimises other types of racism against other groups, causing racism spread like cancer and poison through society.

Today, the majority of Australians from all walks of life have a negative opinion of Indigenous people. Indigenous Australians are associated mostly with alcohol abuse, dysfunctional family life, crime and welfare dependency. Even foreign visitors quickly form similar negative opinions through word of mouth once they set foot in Australia and avoid certain places in big cities because “Aborigines live there”. So how can other minorities expect any respect if everyone - including themselves - treats the first Australians, who have lived in this land for more than 40,000 years, with contempt?

In fact Indigenous Australians are from diverse socio-economic and tribal backgrounds. Although there are some social and economic problems in some Indigenous communities, this does not mean that they are all miserable; many live productive lives and some are engaged in advocacy for Indigenous rights.

But unfortunately these facts are never enough to change the widespread ossified prejudices, which hamper Indigenous rights and also disguise the national anxiety about Australian history.

Fear of seeing Australian history through an Aboriginal perspective underpins racism against Indigenous people. Although Aboriginal Australians - who only got citizenship rights in the late 1960s but were previously segregated from the white society - have no wish to establish a separate state, their version of history - which reveals that almost two centuries ago the British did not peacefully settle, but on the contrary invaded the Aboriginal land and stole it from them - still deeply disturbs the national psyche.

And it already caused anger and resentment when in the early 1990s the High Court of Australia opened the way for Indigenous claims for land rights with its decision, which stated that Australia was not terra nullius, not up for grabs, at the time of British arrival. Moreover, tensions mounted with the debate on the cultural dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the report on the Stolen Generations - indigenous children who were illegally removed from their families for assimilation.

Some white Australians find the Indigenous version of history, dubbed “black armband history” by its opponents, very negative: the claims of invasion and genocide obviously hurt their national pride. But in the past, exploration and discovery of new lands was considered great progress; back then there were no human rights, let alone Indigenous rights. At the same time one also needs to admit that today Australia, like other Anglo colonies, is among the most prosperous and well-organised of societies.

Although none of these can justify the great injustices done in the past, now it is impossible to undo them. But acknowledging the past injustices, which is the most ethical thing to do by all Australians, is the most important step to help Aboriginal people heal and move forward, and to facilitate the reconciliation process between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Although Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations in 2008 was a progressive step in this direction, the ongoing implementation of the Northern Territory intervention policy, initiated by the Howard government without any community consultation and involving imposing tough laws on some Indigenous communities including quarantining welfare payments, means that Indigenous Australians are still not considered equal citizens.

If one of the most significant characteristics of racism in Australia is fear of the past, the other one is fear of the future. This second characteristic signifies that white Australians are afraid of being outnumbered by other racial and ethnic groups, especially by Asians, and they fear becoming a minority in Australia. The refugees who come to Australia on boats always inflame this fear and enrage Australians.

This fear of “invasion by migration” has been visible from the very beginning. The most important government policy that exemplifies this fear is the White Australia Policy. This policy, which was established at the turn of the 20th century, aimed to protect the white-British characteristic of Australian society by restricting non-white immigration to Australia. It was officially abolished in the early 1970s when the government was forced to accept migrants from non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds due to lack of immigration from Britain.

Later on the government introduced multiculturalism, an official policy that allows different migrant groups to maintain their ethnic and cultural identities by providing them with financial support and specific services. And as a result of liberal migration policies and multiculturalism, Asians became a large, visible migrant group in some suburbs of Australian cities - dubbed “ghettos” by some commentators. This coincided with the introduction of neo-liberal policies that caused general economic insecurity and unemployment. Consequently, the conservative, right-wing groups ascended with a rhetoric that attacked immigration and multiculturalism. And the previous Howard government opposed certain Aboriginal rights, cultural pluralism and multiculturalism throughout 1990s.

Even now some of the opposition to immigration is underpinned by “the fear of invasion by migration” although some people purport to be opposing immigration on the grounds of economic and environmental reasons. But today one fifth of the population in Australia was born overseas, and almost 20 per cent of the population has one or both parents who were born overseas. This fear will probably disappear over time with the emergence of a new hybrid Australian identity that is culturally and ethnically more mixed.

Meanwhile, Islamophobia, the recent “racism” against Muslims, has emerged as a result of the general opposition to multiculturalism and migration and the conflicts involving Muslim societies such as the Gulf war in the early 1990s, the 9-11 terror attacks and the Bali bombings. Besides this, Muslim societies have generally been considered aggressive, brutal and misogynistic societies. This is partly because of the European discourse called “Orientalism”, which viewed these societies from such a perspective in the 19th century and which was later on taken for granted by Americans in the 20th century. It is also partly due to Muslim societies’ inability to more efficiently explain and introduce themselves to others in the world. Especially after the 9-11 terror attacks in the US by Muslim terrorists, Muslims have often been associated with terrorism.

Since Muslims are from diverse ethnic, racial and linguistic backgrounds, racism against them is a cultural racism, a more recent type of racism that is based on the idea that certain migrant groups cannot fit into Western societies because of their irreconcilable differences. Especially in the aftermath of the 9-11, Muslims have faced racism as a result of the manipulation of public opinion by the conservative politicians and the media for their own political and commercial gain. There has been some opposition to the establishment of Islamic schools and mosques, and negative scrutiny about the female Islamic veil. The Cronulla riots in 2005 exemplified such tensions.

But multiculturalism is still the best social and political system for societies based on migration since it provides institutional support to challenge racism. Although minorities in multicultural Australia enjoy much better rights compared to most other societies in the world, ethical political leadership and ethical media coverage, especially during times of international conflicts, should be encouraged to prevent racism.

Removing the stigma and negative stereotyping of certain groups; encouraging many voices from different backgrounds to be heard; and allowing different stories to circulate in the media would help minorities to more equally participate in the society and more fairly benefit from the available socio-economic opportunities.

In a liberal society like Australia, the general public also needs to respect the right of some people from a minority background to freely express their unique cultural and religious identity within certain limits: for instance respecting some Muslim women’s choice to wear the Islamic veil as an expression of their religious identity.

It is important to acknowledge that Australia is one of the most prosperous, accepting and tolerant societies for migrants. But it is also important to acknowledge the contribution of migrants to this society; the great significance of Aboriginal people and their culture and the responsibilities of Australians towards refugees as an affluent nation.

Moreover, the most important thing of all is a reminder that Australians need to come to terms with their history and learn to look to the future with more confidence and hope in order to become a more cosmopolitan, ethical, prosperous and pluralistic society. Otherwise fear eats the soul.