The Least Worst Racism

Again, white person talking about racism here. Just a warning ahead of time.

“I hate them not because they hate us but because they are incapable of good, honest, human hatred.”

– Inquisitor Agmar, Warhammer 40k

Hope we can all appreciate the irony of quoting Warhammer 40k when talking about racism.

My country is shockingly racist, just like, the worst. Throughout the majority of its life there was a deliberate racially-motivated urge to purge the country of its nonwhite people under the auspices of explicitly worded white supremacy as a colonised arm of the United Kingdom. This policy was formed under the simple banner of the White Australia policy, a policy that was often invokved in whispering shibboleths, as if there was no such policy, and it was merely a coincidence that Chinese business owners who left the country were denied visas upon their return. Australia is, at its core, a racist country, with racism bound into our earliest and first laws that, while I was alive, once considered the Aboriginal Australian population as flora and fauna. We are a racist place full of racist people. I see it pretty much every single time I watch my university student friends reacting to Auspol. I deal with a little of it pretty much every time I deal with my family.

Turns out the SBS have been running an ad with a sneering racist woman on it in a reality TV program proclaiming to muslims to ‘go home.’ And let me tell you: I kinda wish we had more of her.Her racism is a symptom of comfort, it’s true; she wouldn’t spit those opinions without feeling comfortable to have them, and yell them, with the weight of a country behind her while she sneered in the faces of the people with the temerity to descend from different people to her. I hate her, I hate what she represents.But jesus christ at least she’s out there with it.The real face of Australian racism is not the Queensland Yobbo who stands in the street shouting across at the bus stop at the big Tongan guy who he knows isn’t going to come over and kick his head in. It’s not the woman spitting ‘why don’t you go home’ at a schoolkid with a headscarf whose hands are shaking with fear at something else. Those people have the weight of our society’s power behind them, they’re symptoms of our symbols. They’re the people our smug, permissive, I don’t want to sound racist, Well it’s just cultural, I wouldn’t want to be the one to say it, Wouldn’t they be happier elsewhere, gurning shit-heel slop-yaws quietly foster and hope will be the ones to yell, so they can agree with their message, even if they disagree with how they’re saying it.

The real face of Australian racism is a London-born Prime Minister smarmily talking about how important it is to protect the border, to keep Australians safe from foreigners who will harm us.