Why racism is in the news

Racism seems to be constantly in the headlines. Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has declared the tax-payer funded national broadcaster is fundamentally racist, accusing it of wanting to keep indigenous people in poverty.

And progressive critics are branding Immigration Minister Peter Dutton as racist for daring to ask how effectively some sections of the Lebanese Muslim community have integrated in Australia.

So is Australia a racist country or not? Actually, that is the wrong question. Racism is the belief that a race has specific characteristics and abilities which distinguish it from other racial groups.

Segregation and the conferring of limited rights on the basis of race is racist; as in apartheid South Africa. But the application of well-intentioned — but misconceived — indigenous policies is surely not.

Problems of social or economic integration facing any sector of the Australian community are almost certainly going to be due to cultural factors and not to any inherently racial characteristics.

So why are we talking about race and racism again? An important clue is to be found in the newly-released 2016 Scanlon Foundation survey on social cohesion mapping shifts in public opinion.

On the whole, the 2016 survey finds more evidence of social cohesion than disintegration in Australian society. For example, support for multiculturalism remains high at 83 per cent.

But there are signs of strain. A larger proportion of people say they have experienced some form of discrimination in the last year: up from 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

And negative attitudes to Muslim Australians have remained consistently relatively high at 25 per cent — although Scanlon found no evidence this result was boosted by terrorism fears.

But these strains are not truly about race. They are about what it means to be a nation, a state, and a society.

And they suggest the silent majority is rejecting the progressives’ naïve desire to create a world without ‘discriminatory’ borders.

Look at the fuss progressives make whenever the topic turns to immigration, or border security. In their universe of value-free relativism, ‘national sovereignty’ is a cipher for hatred and bigotry.

Take away borders, however, and you take away the state. And when you take away the state, you also take away citizenship and rights. Rights exist only in states governed by the rule of law.

Progressives are talking up racism because race — not rights — is the lens through which they view society.

And they are good at it: vilifying opponents as racists and threatening use of s18C to shut down debate are effective ways of ‘enforcing’ tolerance.

But in reality it is the bullying bluster of moral outrage that poses the real threat to the stability of our society. Division — stoked by claims of racism — is being talked up for political gain.

It is time for ordinary Australians to stand up to the progressive bullies. And to stand up with pride for our great Aussie values.

Peter Kurti is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies