So you’re sitting there, either on public transport or waiting for public transport, and next to you is a woman wearing a headscarf. Suddenly a couple of girls start mocking the woman, telling her to get back on the boat, or calling her a terrorist, or saying that if she were any blacker, she’d be purple. What do you do?
“Well, of course I would stand up for the woman,” you say, chest puffed out.
Or would you?
SBS as part of its new documentary – Is Australia Racist? – kitted out a black woman and a Muslim woman with hidden cameras and instructed two actors to racially abuse them at bus stops and train stations.
The results – as they say – will surprise you.
There was the odd good Samaritan who intervened but there were also people who just sat there as the abuse got worse and worse, and did nothing.
They looked crazy uncomfortable – but still … it makes you wonder: is Australia racist?
Host Ray Martin tries to unpack where Australia is at right now when it comes to racism. Yes, Indigenous people experience less racism at a street level (although structural racism still exists) than they did in, say, 1967 but things are worse now for Muslim migrants in Australia then they were in the 1990s.
It’s a moveable feast.
SBS in conjunction with the University of Western Sydney undertook what they describe as the biggest survey of race in Australia – although they did not tell viewers how many people were surveyed or the methods they used for the survey.
After watching, I found out that 6,001 Australians took part in the survey.
The survey provides an interesting guide to current attitudes – including which groups are copping the worst racial abuse. According to the SBS survey, 43% of respondents had anti-African sentiment.
African Australians encounter prejudice at double the rate of other groups and they have trouble finding houses and getting jobs.
If the show had been filmed 10 years ago, it would have been Middle Eastern migrants who were on the bottom of the pile. And before that Asian Australians.
When Pauline Hanson made her maiden speech to parliament in 1996, she claimed Australia was being “swamped by Asians”. In 2016 Hanson says Australia is in danger of being swamped by Muslims.
September 11 changed everything, says one Muslim man interviewed by Ray Martin. Not surprisingly he’s facing resistance to having a new mosque built in his city.
It is hearing from those who have been racially abused that is the most powerful element of this documentary.
Take Ugandan man Jeffrey. He’s experienced terrible racism since he came to Australia, so he’s been taking a sign reading Stop Racism Now and standing on the intersection at Flinders and Swanston streets as the crowds flow around him.
He gets a range of responses: “If you don’t like it, go back to Africa.” And hugs: “I love what you do.”
When SBS sent him to the MCG with his sign, he was very nervous. Would a crowd at a sporting match jeer and abuse him?
No, they didn’t. What happened was pretty great – and had me in tears.
So – we have a choice. We can be welcoming or we can be rude. Is Australia Racist? is confronting viewing. It neither gives us a pat on the back for being multicultural, nor condemns us for being racist. What it says is that every day we have a choice about how we treat people – and all these choices add up to whether we are a racist country or not. This is an uncomfortable documentary to watch, which indicates that it’s probably important that as many Australians as possible see it.
• Is Australia Racist? aired Sunday 26 February at 8.30pm on SBS. It is available to watch online at SBS On Demand
