nadiatims wrote:
Uisukii wrote:
" Race" might be the same issue where you come from, but in Australia, there is a very grass roots undercurrent of racism, and the continual need for arbitrary "colour" distinction only helps this insidious meme propagate. It is a very real issue; one people often are unable to see because they are so used to this general racist attitude. For example, I'm three different workplaces I've worked at, labouring/general entry type roles, I have been singled out as "different" because of my lack thereof or disagreeing attitude towards calling people "blacks" or "wogs" or "nips", in relation to nonsense lunchroom discussions.
I don't think Australia is any more full of racists than any other country. But I do think Australians care slightly less about political correctness than people in a lot of other countries (including "english speaking" ones). This is something I only ever realized since moving to Japan. I thought wog is generally considered non-offensive these days.
"wog" is only offensive when the person means it in a negative way. Which is most of the time, unless they are a family which has more recently immigrated from whichever European nation is being used to refer to (which can be pretty much anything out of the limited scope I commented upon about, aside from the other selection of insults).
You may or may not have heard the phrase, but ask the majority of adult Australians what "Spot the Aussie" means, and they will be able to tell you, and it isn't anything remotely something which could be considered "nice". Things like this are not really considered offensive, or at least not something to be outspoken in relation to, in a normal social context (in comparison to, say, America, and calling people "niggers").
It's not that we care less about PC, it is that a very large number of the lowest common denominators (that is: part of the majority of Australians) generally hold these racial ideals. It is something which unless you've grown up in the country, you probably won't understand. Racism is a very real issue in Australia. The media tries to hide it just as most nations try to hide the common opinions of their citizenry.
To go back to the "wog" comment, I'll provide something a little more relevant, or insinuate it at least. "Wog" may not be considered offensive, but if you're out and about at night, in an urban area, and someone refers to you as a "wog", unless they know you, and it is a bit of banter between mates, it is usually the pre-emptive for either a group of males, under the influence of drugs or not, to mean you physical harm.
The whole image of country farming Australia shares very little similarity to reality, often where a lot of racist ideals are raised within children, often children who have never really been around people of different recent genetic descent as those living in their area.
It's not something like the KKK, or anything like that. We haven't really had the resistance to racism in Australia like that of America, to be able to draw out really extreme hate groups. Most of it just remains as an accepted view in places. I'd like to cite the infamous Cronulla riots. Not for the extreme nature of it, but the fact that I was living a few hours away from Sydney at the time, in the south coast of NSW, and even our suburbs were flooded with the organised "call to arms" text messages. I remember many kids at my highschool talking about them. There was a boy in my year who had a Macedonian father. He was bashed on his way home from school one day, because of this fact, in response to the text messages.
Keep in mind this is a normal coastal suburb, hours out of the city. A normal highschool, a similar culture shared for generations throughout the entire region.
The reason why I brought the example up was to illustrate that these views are a part of many local cultures, those often with less genetically diverse gene pools within the population. It is hard to get much of an idea from within the cities of Australia, due to all the advertisement and marketing of our national "mutliculturalism", but the fact is that while a large number of people live in these cities, where the generations of the more realistic average local culture stems from is the thousands of towns and larger suburban areas outside of the larger city limits.
dizmox wrote:
Well in most places in the world white and black are accepted terminology and even the most PC of media uses them.
"The media" isn't an accurate representation of the views and cultures within a society. It is a marketed view for the purpose of business and government, not the freedom of the voices and opinion of the average citizenry. Haven't you noticed every time someone says something honest and "real" on the air, they either get shut down, heavily criticized, or their career takes a hit?
The candid opinion of a large percentage of Australians in relation to ethnic groups, etc., isn't something our governments like the rest of the world seeing. Ever wonder how the One Nation party managed to get enough support to become a political party? Pauline Hanson had a lot of support from people, irrespective of how much our media tried to brand her as a nutter, racist, etc., you need support to make it into politics, and they did.
