Dreamer Easy

'Angry white men' much more intolerant of cultural differences than women (SMH, 24 August 2016) | Australia broadly tolerant but pockets of intense prejudice remain, report shows (GA, 24 August 2016) | Migrants from Africa bear brunt of discrimination but remain positive, Australians Today survey finds (ABC, 24 August 2016). Naively, I'd thought that perhaps because of our different history, Australians might not be as racist towards Africans as, say, Americans or Britons. More fool me.

Half of all Australians want to ban Muslim immigration: poll (SMH, 21 September 2016)

This is not the Australia I know: first Muslim woman MP hits back at immigration poll (SMH, 22 September 2016)

New national snapshot finds 60 per cent of Australians would be concerned if a relative married a Muslim (SMH, 27 September 2016). Survey respondents showed plenty of other forms of Islamophobia - and anti-Semitism.

Turnbull and Shorten denounce 'racial intolerance in any form' in immigration policy (GA, 10 October 2016) "Leaders move parliamentary motion in response to One Nation rhetoric as prime minister says 'inclusive nation' the most effective weapon against terrorism." | Scott Morrison warns resentment to free trade and immigration threatens economy (GA, 30 September 2016). These guys have to walk a fine line between exploiting xenophobia and not actually screwing up the economy.

So what do Australians really think about selecting migrants based on religion? (GA, 13 October 2016) "Surveys do not simply identify a rock-solid public opinion; they explore, with the potential to distort through questions asked."

First Dog on the Moon's reverse-racist history of Australian racial intolerance (GA, 23 September 2016)

Australia's Secret History As A White Utopia, Complete With Slavery (Gizmodo, 17 November 2015). Because I didn't study history, it took me a long time to understand that Australia, too, has indulged in slavery - the Indigenous people's unpaid and sometimes forced labour, the kidnapping of Islanders to work our plantations.

ETA: Muslims face racial discrimination, but don't have protection under act, report finds (SMH, 5 November 2015) "... the Racial Discrimination Act has only a 'limited' ability to protect Muslim Australians, because 'religious identity' is not covered under the act... This is different from Jewish Australians, as the Federal Court has found they have a common 'ethnic origin' and are therefore owed protection under the act." Time for Muslim Australians to have the same protection.

... which reminds me. I was trying to work out whether I should close seeingred and instead post the anti-racist stuff here. That would mean a bigger audience, but might lose the people who are only interested in seeingred, and makes indexing a bitch - one of the advantages of those side journals is you can get way specific with the tags.

Anywho, I think the solution is to keep seeingred, but start to post pointers here to content all of my various "workbooks" which might be of more general interest. (I want to concentrate more on original content and less on just reposting links, too.)

In the meantime, here are a few postings from seeingred which may be of interest (beware of SPOILERS large and small):

The future (and it works) - racial integration as a marker for the future / the present day in Doctor Who and Torchwood.

Lisa and Beth in Torchwood.

Who lives and who dies? - a whole bunch of postings trying to work out if new Who falls into the movie cliche of the disposable Black male character, including a list of the entire supporting cast. (An unexpected finding was that there are far more Black than Desi characters, although in Britain's population, it's the other way around.)

Employment discrimination against Black Americans - the hard evidence.

Edumacation! A couple of postings inspired by Black feminist Patricia Hill Collins. Plus! bell hooks! Whom you must read! Plus from a UK perspective, Black Looks and Racism and the Mass Media and Representing Black Britain.

Martha and other Black Britons in The Shakespeare Code

How diverse is your neighbourhood?

How Captain America taught me about anti-semitism.


(And no, this isn't an audition for my ghetto pass; I don't want one. I did go through an embarrassing phase of crawling to Mammy for a cookie, but that was eight months ago and I'm over it.)

Last night: read Orwell's 1945 essay Antisemitism in Britain. He pointed out that rather than ending irrational and mean-spirited feelings towards Jews, Hitler had just driven those feelings underground: everyone had convinced themselves that they're not an anti-semite, since that would be an irrational thing to be. Orwell suggests we start with the assumption that we do have such feelings, and then try to analyse why. He's right: unless we acknowledge that we're human beings and therefore prone to irrational prejudices, however embarrassing or troubling that might be, we can't get at those prejudices and uproot them.

So here's my turn: reading in nostalgia_lj's journal about the Nazi Google bomb, I found myself balking at the sensible counter-attack of linking to Wikipedia's definition of a Jew, with the aim of bringing it to the top of Google's search results in place of a hate site. Various rationalisations floated to the surface: it's as artificial as the original bomb, I can't get involved in every cause, etc etc. Prompted by Orwell, I dug deeper, and realised that I didn't want people to think I was supporting Israel's bad behaviour.

Thinking back, it's not the first time. When the now famous Hussam Abdo gave himself up rather than blowing himself up, my rage at the pigs who sit on their arses sending children to die in their place exploded - but I didn't comment on it here, because I didn't want people to think I was supporting Israel's bad behaviour.

Admittedly, this is not entirely my fault. Abdo has become a weapon for the other side. Letters to the editor rightly condemn the vicious bastards murdering Israeli citizens and making martyrs of their own children, but are tight-lipped about Israel's human rights abuses and the killing of Palestinian children. This is not a situation in which it's morally possible to choose a side. That's not to make the simplistic argument that "they're just as bad as each other", which is just throwing up one's hands rather than dealing with a difficult issue.

(Obviously this is further complicated for me by the fact I've married into a Jewish family from the US. It would be all too easy to use this as an excuse not to examine any anti-Semitic feelings I might have - "Some of my best family members are Jews" - but that's not good enough. Falling in love with Jon has meant a bit of a crash course; the first time I ever heard of Judaism was in a Captain America comic.)

Crucially, of course, Jews != Israel's bad behaviour. Heck, even Israel != Israel's bad behaviour; these are the decisions of a particular government, lead by a man accused of war crimes and corruption. He no more speaks for all Israelis or all Jews than John Howard speaks for me.

That means I'm free to condemn the bad behaviour of both sides - or, at least, I should be; some people take any criticism of Israel as anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and/or an apology for terrorism. I'll just have to risk that; frankly, the nationality or religion of child-killers are several thousand times less important than the fact that they are child-killers. Like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, I choose to be on the children's side.

And it means I'm free to link to Wikipedia's definition of a Jew. So, as my little brother once memorably wrote in an account of the 1936 Olympics, get off Nazis.