Again, completely anecdotal, but about 90% of Indonesians that I have met over the past 13 years have a story of being (at least) verbally abused in public – usually completely out of the blue. None of those that I have asked have ever reported their experience to a government agency. They just put it down to standard Australian racism and move on.

Firstly I’d like to thank Tim for sharing his story. Much like you Tim, i was infuriated by the words and actions of that man. I used to catch the Camberwell line and had I witnessed the encounter I would have liked to have asked that thug:
1) have you ever/would you ever like to visit another country?
2) If so, how would you react if a local abused you for speaking English?

With attitudes such as his, I highly doubt he even has a passport.
Whether I would have mustered the courage to challenge him would be another matter.

I was watching the news the other day and I heard the story about an Indian man that was set upon by 4 people and set on fire. I was disgusted. The news story then cut to footage of Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland stating that, “Indians are safer in this country than they are in their own country. If you have a look at the data, they are safer here than they are in India.” I have no inclination as to whether this is true, but I think he completely misses the point. If that statement was intended to allay the fears of the Indian community and prevent Indians from leaving/coming to Australia I can only say one thing. EPIC FAILURE.

Even if the likelihood of assault in India is higher in India than in Australia, there is a perception that the Indian community is being explicitly attacked over and above other parts of Australian society. If this is even remotely true, Indians have a right to be angry and afraid. If this perception is not addressed (especially through Police action) it may very well materialise in episodes such as Tim’s story where ‘closet’ racists are galvanised through a racists zeitgeist.

I completely agree with Tim in that Police need to act strongly on this matter, at least through the message that they send and the words that they chose at press conferences. Let’s take our heads out of the sand and change the zeitgeist.

It’s no wonder he was so angry with himself. Standing Idly by while a grown man threatens a group of teenagers on a public train is disgusting.

However I have more sympathy for the police position than Tim does. While it may have backfired, not playing up any race angle was presumably intended to avoid creating more fear than is warranted. It was also practical – there is nothing you can do about your ethnic background, but plenty you can do to reduce personal risks in crime prone areas.

While I think the usual anti-racism statements by political leaders are worth making to comfort groups who feel afraid, it is very unlikely that they affect the substantive problem in a positive way. Even without the racist element, people who carry out violent attacks are already showing complete contempt for laws passed by politicians and for near universally held norms against violence, and disregard for the severe penalties they face if caught.

Indeed, for this group there is a chance that emphasising the racial element will fuel the attacks by giving them more media coverage, which could be part of what they enjoy – making themselves feared and notorious.

I can’t find the earlier report I was referring too easily.
However, I have found a newer one (released this year), which shows that Australia has gone down more since 2001 than many other countries (it isn’t the worst in almost all categories any more! woohoo!). Poor old New Zealand has not had such luck, and new comers to the survey, Ireland, look like they are the new winners. They also now have the feeling unsafe category, which is also interesting, because the correlation with actual safety is poor.

Try looking here

Similarly, I have no doubt that European and Asian countries are more racist than Australia (anyone who disagrees with that is either ignorant of the OS experience or into pointless self-flagellation). That being said, ethically I would like to hold us to a higher standard than the rest of the world and practically, I think we’re more exposed suffering economic consequences of being perceived as racist than Euro or Asian countries (to wit see projections of declining Asian student numbers).

Melbourne is especially violent by OECD standards (Australia being the most violent country in the OECD, or at least the country where violent actions are reported the most), but it’s not violent compared to other major Australian cities. The last big OECD survey came out in 2001, and whilst violence has dropped a lot since then, it has in most other countries too (presumably excluding the last year or so where figures arn’t available). There’s no data I know of about racist violence, but I would find it surprising if general violence was not reasonably correlated with more specific types given a lot is driven by the same factors (e.g., alcohol).

“b) There is a greater proportion of Indian students and thus targets.”

I believe this is true (although I’m not sure whether it’s overall numbers that matter or proportion).

“d) There is a greater propertion of Indians in Melbourne working in dangerous occupations/living in dangerous places.”

I would be surprised if that wasn’t true (excluding a comparison with Sydney), I think the problem they have is that they’re not especially rich, and since rents are so high, they are basically forced to live in the more dangerous suburbs. I imagine this isn’t such a problem for them in the cheaper cities.

As for Sydney vs. Melbourne, I think they are pretty similar also. However, after having lived in both cities for quite a few years, I think Sydney is worse for some groups. The media is almost hysterical about any crime done by the Lebanese there, yet their rate of crime is only marginally above the Australian norm (as are Kiwis, but you don’t here about them). Alternatively, if I compare Sydney and Melbourne to other places I’ve lived a fair bit, then I think that it’s far worse in Marseille, where racism is taken to a whole new level versus Australia, and probably far better in Hong Kong.

Bringing the conversation back to data is always a valuable exercise. The core of my proposition above is that media coverage of violence in which racial minorities are the victim has increased substantially without an adequate response from the State (by which I mean the Police). My further proposition, which I freely concede is extremely hard to test quantitatively, is that as a result of the current state of the public debate (ie frequent reports of violent incidents with minority victims without a clear public response that racially motivated violence is especially invidious and will not be tolerated by the State) an environment has emerged in which people feel that expressing racial prejudice at a lower level will also be tolerated by the general community.

I appreciate that there’s a lot of unpacking that could be done here! But boiling it down, my biggest issue is that there’s a community belief that racist violence is occurring without an unequivocal response from the State.

The Victorian police frequently reject a racial cause for violence involving minority victims without providing any meaningful data to explain away the correlation. They simply assert that these people were in the wrong place at the wrong time and attribute the cause to robbery etc. In fact, it’s the Victorian Police who are arguing from anecdote in this debate.

It seems to me that there are two ways you could respond to this:

I’d be happy if the Victorian Police were able to make the case publicly that racially motivated violence isn’t a problem. It would be great if someone could publicly show that that the correlation between indian and being a victim of violent assaults is not the result of a causal relationship. Show me some data that shows that taxi drivers, night shift store clerks or people in other at risk occupations are equally likely to be victims of assault as indians (in fact, before you do that you’d better show me that Indians actually are over-represented in potentially dangerous professions). But no one bothers to do this. The debate is had at the level of anecdote. The police assert that the cause of violence isn’t racial despite the overwhelming correlation and yet do not cite any data of their own. Given the strong incentives the police have to sweep an issue that is potentially highly incendiary under the carpet – yes, I am suspicious of this.

However, I suspect that expecting this level of rebuttal of correlation is too much to ask. Therefore, the alternative response to this situation, and the response that I’ve advocated most strongly is that the Police should respond to the correlation and send a clear message that racial violence is unacceptable, that they’re targeting it because of it’s specially invidious nature, and showing the community how they’re going to stamp it out.

Finally, I’m interested in why you say assaults have not gone up much and why this is not an issue. Sure, the long term macro violent crime rate is falling and that’s important to keep in mind, but surely it’s not an argument not to respond to real and identifiable increases in particular areas. Surely a 7.4% increase in assaults off a base of 30,000 can’t be explained away as a statistical anomaly? As you say, this increase alone doesn’t go to causation but given the media profile I’m not satisfied to just dismiss race as a cause.

I should also note that I have no background in this area so am fully open to being set straight.

Cheers,
Tim

If we were to accept that this is a Melbourne problem, and not just one where Melbourne has been the focus of attention, we’d need to accept one or several of the following hypotheses.

a) Melbournians are especially racist or especially violently racist.

b) There is a greater proportion of Indian students and thus targets.

c) Melbourne is particularly violent or poorly policed.

d) There is a greater propertion of Indians in Melbourne working in dangerous occupations/living in dangerous places.

None of these seem to ring true. Despite our inane tendency to promote the concept, there is very little cultural differences between the culture of one capital city and another. That and I don’t think the thugs at Cronulla or in my own observations would be too specific with their racism. The dynamics that lead to housing and occupation choices would be the same in most cities.

Extending the map over other cities would allow us to get a better idea if these hypotheses are true (and allow a narrow targeted approach) or false (which intuition leads me towards) which would force a more general approach.

Afterall, one of the most frustrating things about combating prejudice is the the tendency with have to attribute it to other group as to absolve our own group and allow it to become an element of prejudice in itself. American racism was a Southern disease to Northerners. Anti-indigenous sentiment is a country/NT disease to urbanites. Any number of prejudices become a bogan disease.

I think it would be catastrophic if we mistakenly made this problem a Melbourne disease.

I remember coming home one day with a train full of white collar workers that represented every corner of the world. Pretty much everyone was wearing a suit and like me had more than likely left home at 7am to get to work and were hoping that the train ran on time so we could be home by 7pm. About half way home someone comes on and as in the posted story asks people for some money, sits down and promptly begins abusing and these 2 Indian guys, everyone sits silently. The train pulls up and the guy gets off now screaming abuse. On this station waiting around is a group of about 5, 14-15 year old, my mother would describe them as trouble makers. However this group after hearing the “go back to where you came from” rant for all of about 2 seconds were having none of it and promptly hit back with their own tirade of abuse which put our deathly silence to shame. After the doors shut the first words spoken by someone in the carriage were along the lines of “well that was embarrassing”.

And it was, but that’s the kind of power that racial abuse has over people. The majority suddenly become invisible because everyone fears that they may be targeted next and everyone hope that it will go away.

Love the idea of having carriage numbers on the inside of trains. The map is a great idea as well. What would be great if there was a phone app for reporting incidences, perhaps that makers of the current timetable apps could include a section for reporting issues

I think organised racism of this kind it is particularly disgusting and horrible (and of course my own mind goes back to my own ancestors in Vienna and the holocaust).

I guess my own comment comes from a slightly different place, which is that it actually galls me that we need some ideological pretext for acting in a lot of areas where I think it’s imperative we act. There is no real official organised intolerance to lots of things unless it comes with an ideological tag. Thus if you harass someone at work (say you call them ugly or stupid or whatever and you do it repeatedly and it’s unwanted). That to me is essentially as bad, perhaps worse than sexual harassment (racial harassment is different and generally speaking even worse than both).

Yet although no doubt there are the odd statements made about it, it tends to fall outside of both the area of vigilance and often even the legal codes that are enforced – so the area of sexual harassment is vastly more developed as a matter of legal code and vigilance than other forms of harassment. I can’t see why.

And it upsets me because I see protecting the weak and protecting people against being dehumanized – which harassment usually is a form of – is one of the most important things a society must do.

Nick,

Thanks for posting my rant/bleg.

I have to say that three days ago I was completely in the same boat as you – violence is violence is violence. I was against hate crime legislation because I thought that was already adequately covered by existing criminal laws and anything beyond that was getting close to criminalising thought.

However,upon reflection in light of this incident, I think I’ve changed my mind. I think violence with a racial element IS in fact different to other violence because it has a differential impact. Violence with a racial element has an additional, targeted intimidation impact on minority communities that general violence doesn’t have. I hadn’t really thought about this before, but sitting on that train the news reports of racially violent incidents came immediately to mind in a way that I think general reports of violence wouldn’t have in that situation. In this way, the broader intimidation impact of violence is greater when it’s targeted towards an identifiable sub-group.

As I say though, this is a new perspective for me though so I may not have thought it through clearly yet.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Tim

You’re completely right of course – this is a purely anecdotal account. I don’t know how you’d even go about quantifying whether there had been an increase in low level racial incidents since the issue of attacks on Indians began getting increased attention. If you need to see numbers to be convinced, I don’t have them for you. However, I don’t think it’s a complete logical leap to think that a series of high profile violent incidents with a racial element and without a strong public response might create an environment in which certain elements may think low level racial incidents may be more acceptable.

That being this debate isn’t completely without data:

“In the 12 months to June 2006, 1082 attacks on Indians in Victoria were reported to police – an assault rate of 1700 in every 100,000. In other words, Indians living in Victoria are 2

One thing is that while there is a mobile phone number advertised (sometimes) in carriages to report such behaviour, using that phone may well make you a target, as well as costing money – implying that the authorities really don’t want to know or respond to the trouble in real time, merely use the cameras to help track down vandals – apparently the priority is property not people.

An SMS number, and properly identified carriage IDs on the INSIDE of a carriage, and not just the outside, would be the minimal change I’d need to believe that agencies actually wanted something done to prevent harm (rather than “oh dear, the spin budget needs another top-up”), and had even the least competence to take any steps at all in addressing the problem.

(I’ve actually phoned in to report a chromer on the train… but I couldn’t tell agencies where the offender was until I got off and could read a carriage number… and I wasn’t running low on phone credit, or I’d have run out listening to muzak and “your call is important to us” type rubbish).

It’s not like the cost of a few labels on trains and an SMS line is prohibitive… probably much less than the rebranding of all the trains/trams as connex got turfed out, or the other useless self-promoting advertorials governments bombard us with.

It seems to me that there should be some well known hotline you can SMS for police action in public spaces. And Geocoding in smart phones makes it easier still. One ought to be able to really put the heat on people intimidating others in public spaces in this way.

Thanks for posting my rant/bleg.

I have to say that three days ago I was completely in the same boat as you – violence is violence is violence. I was against hate crime legislation because I thought that was already adequately covered by existing criminal laws and anything beyond that was getting close to criminalising thought.

However,upon reflection in light of this incident, I think I’ve changed my mind. I think violence with a racial element IS in fact different to other violence because it has a differential impact. Violence with a racial element has an additional, targeted intimidation impact on minority communities that general violence doesn’t have. I hadn’t really thought about this before, but sitting on that train the news reports of racially violent incidents came immediately to mind in a way that I think general reports of violence wouldn’t have in that situation. In this way, the broader intimidation impact of violence is greater when it’s targeted towards an identifiable sub-group.

As I say though, this is a new perspective for me though so I may not have thought it through clearly yet.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Tim