Now the Australians are protesting

Now apply your interrogation to when a black poster talks about their experience of racism.

It's a lingering aspect of our British heritage, but fortunately we've overcome most of it.

Have you?

Name the restaurant.

Name the suburb where only Indians can live.

Name the suburb where only Chinese can live or where strata organisations only speak in non-English.

This seems like a convenient set of circumstances to justify a racist protest.

Yes. It's not a word that has ever even existed. 'curry muncher' is the racist slur used for those from Pakistan and India.

It's a horribly racist country, and the whole thing is deeply ironic. Sally Morgan, a First Nation writer and artist, wrote a biography of her quest to find her aboriginal identity - precisely because she'd been raised until 15 years of age to believe she was Indian.

First Nation people had to pretend they were Indian on fear of being removed from their own families and raised in orphanages. Morgan had a white father. In the event of a divorce, first nation mothers were not allowed to keep children fathered by white men.

That history is shamefully recent so this news surprises me not one iota.

And it was very poorly attended. There were other protests happening the same day but there weren’t many specifically there for the nazi protest.

Everyone I know is disgusted by the racism and disgusting behaviour of some horrible people

while @HoppingPavlova is from Sydney and I am in multicultural Melbourne I am truly perplexed by her post and that does not reflect my experience.

Yes Aboriginal Australians are treated appallingly but a lot of people see how wrong this is and truly want things to be better. Unfortunately inter generational trauma, health inequalities and a huge gap in education and employment opportunities does take time to fix. Every Australian I know considers this a priority. Short term programs are ineffective but I believe that is more related to political election cycles than racism. Yes racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders exists but we aren’t all like that. It is correct to say that the current system is not good enough.

I am disgusted at the way asylum seekers treated and turned away and I am definitely not the only Australian who feels that way. However I have read many MN posts where British posters aspire for the same.

So because you didn’t witness it, it didn’t happen. Didn’t come across as anything but a factual account of the posters’ experience to me, but l can see how it won’t sit well with those who think only white people can be racist.

Not sure where in Australia that would have been? I’ve lived in 4 states and never heard anyone use the term in real life.

Fancy the most persecuted ethnoreligion being suspicious of those around them.

That's true, but it's in reaction to Brits looking down on white people for invading Australia, but forget it was their own that invaded. It's like Brits want to conveniently forget their part. It's very smug and irritating and very unfair when some of you come on here and mock us for being a penal colony and for how we treated our Indigenous. When it was your own folk that did it. Current racism, yes, I agree that's our problem now.

That’s how the Australian education system works. Anything bad was “The Brits”. My friend’s young son is learning about The Stolen Generation and on learning I was British wanted to interrogate me about why the “British stole aboriginal children.”

It’s a very weird way in which modern Australia tries to whitewash his history.

But you also have these sort of areas within the Jewish community. This isn’t only a “Muslim” issue. I was born and raised in an area that was predominantly orthodox Jewish, and over the years it went from it simply being an area with more Orthodox Jews than other areas to it being an area for Orthodox Jews. It is literally the Jewish version of what you say about Muslims, I used to work for a well known Jewish property company that had many residential properties in the area I grew up and one of the main complaints the letting agent team had was the other tenants complaining as soon as a non Jewish person moved in.

Personally I don’t care if an area is just Muslim or Jewish or whatever, I’m not religious in any way and I actually have fond memories of playing with Rivka and Miriam, and my neighbors Mr and Mrs Goldman were like the grandparents I never and at this point I would like to highlight I am black and this was the 80s but we had more unity back then than we do now!

However what I am trying to point out is that other religions also have these areas where it is centred and catered just for them but it always seems to be just the Muslims getting it in the neck. If people are going to call out these types of communities then call all of them out.

Regarding the Australians getting angry because of the Indians refusing to sell to them, or not serving them in restaurants, etc. I find it hilarious that the same thing they did to the indigenous community (that the British/Irish stole their lands from) made them less than second class citizens, did 10x worse things/atrocities to the indigenous population, are now getting a small taste of what they did to others, and it’s not nice is it? but seemingly it wasn’t an issue when they were the ones doing it.

Oh please. Now you really are grasping.

@raininginlanzarote who do you think the Anglo-saxons were, that you had to include 'a bit of germanic blood'?
We gave immigration/asylum seeking for different reasons. The government has spent decades demonising having children, introducing benefit caps and the bedroom tax, turning larger council housing into HMOs etc. We can question why our government isn't giving aid/sanctuary, along with contraception. If we haven't got enough money to live on in the UK, or a partner, we are told to think carefully before getting pregnant. In a war zone? Not a problem. In absolute poverty? Not a problem. In a region that can't sustain human life? Not a problem. How dare we try to depopulate our continents. We can't fit the rest of the world in. People are coming to yhe UK and wanting the same family size as their grandparents. British people have been told we can't do this, why aren't others being told the same? As for 'cultural', I grew up surrounded by families with 4-12 children. It was once our culture.

You can’t keep blaming it on the British. The people protesting NOW are Australians and oppression of indigenuous Australians continued long after independence.

Saying “it was not us it was the Brits” is disingenuous. Many Australians now are the descendants of those “Brits”.

You’ve got to stop attributing any racism you have now with us. It’s nothing to do with here. It’s your own actions now that count. It’s no longer to do with the British.

I disagree with that. Yes, it can be highly racist at times. But we are, as we often say ourselves, one of the most successful multicultural countries there are. Also, things like trans rights (I won't linger on that as I have my own views) are more 'progressive' than the UK. In Australia, you're legally a woman if you say you are. No GRC needed. Also, I note that I often read on threads on here that wheelchair people can't access this stately building or this or that castle. In Australia, that would be illegal. Even ancient buildings all have ramps installed. We are far more ahead and progressive than the UK in disability access and have a thing called the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) that offers free help, care and respite.

You will find it's only Brits, with saviour complex, that are trashing Australia. The faux horror at sexism and racism is ironic, given that those same people will happily visit the Middle East.

It’s absolute racism. And as somebody who is a naturalised Australian this does not surprise me as I heard on more than one occasion I was the “right” kind of immigrant being British/English*) and that I did it the “right” way. I would point out I entered Australia the exact same way as migrants from China and India and would face pushback on that. Seeing some of the racism spouted by protestors (one claimed ALL crime in Australia was committed by immigrants and then when challenged said it was a “lie” and she said most - which is still incorrect).

Also seeing some migrants in the march - one Filipino woman openly stating her dislike of Chinese people and Indians.

But yes Australia has the immigration system anti-immigrant Britons laud. And a lot of people who claim they have no issue with immigrants who enter the right way and contribute are clearly lying. It’s about skin colour. If you replaced every Indian and Chinese immigrant in Oz with a white Brit the protestors would have no problem.

On a side note Yaxley-Lennon referred to the protestors as “Natives” which tickled me no end.

So black and brown people cannot be natives of Britain but white people (and some Asians) can be native to Australia.

Ok.

*which is bemusing as British racists would insist I am not and I doubt the Australian saying that would say that behind my back - modern racists tend to be very cowardly.

No, we well remember that Australia was invaded by the British - something you'd rather forget - but we also understand that we've managed to shake off the worst of our British heritage, including the worst British racism.

A very large proportion of the modern Australian population has come from diverse non-British origins, and that will continue. Most Australians are comfortable in a multi-ethnic, multicultural society.

Um - no. It’s not. It comes in all kinds of flavours.

UK.gov test balloon............

This is a specific question for PP to see if they know anything whatsoever about the history of the country they are trashing. I find on these threads, hosted on a British forum where a good majority of the commenters are British, posters are happy to lay into the systemic racism of Australia and the historically poor treatment of our First Nations people. However, they themselves are deeply ignorant of Britain’s own role in these things. Yes, we can take responsibility for what happens now. It would be helpful, though, for others to recognise their own Empire’s hands in in this darkness, and stop blaming us alone.

Yes I was going to say… Australians aren’t keen on anyone that isn’t born here. Even us British doctors and nurses get grief.

It probably depends where you are, there’s a mix of attitudes in Aus. ‘Little’ here in size but not really in other ways.