Still, on a global scale, there is still a hierarchy of race. The lighter the skin, the better the treatment.
I was going to mention this in one of my responses but discovered i have a deadline so this will be short.
When I was a child, I didn't think much about 'colour'. I was Chinese Australian - both Chinese and Australian. I was teased at school because of my race, yes, but my father taught me to tease the other kids back because of their appearance, not because of their race.
eg. a tall, skinny boy with a shock of short hair called me "ching-chong". I called him "toilet brush" because he was skinny with short bushy hair. It wasn't about "race" per se it was about appearance. I looked different in one way, I got teased; he looked different in another way, he got teased.
I never had any major experience with discrimination - that I noticed. A few sneering comments when my friends and I caught the train home in high school: "Spot the Aussie!" To which my friends and I respond (in perfect Australian English), "Yeah, that would be us. Idiot."
But, yes, I remember learning about the 'hierarchy of race' via news about South Africa, and the whites being superior to the "coloureds" (people who weren't white but who weren't black either) and the "coloureds" being superior to the "blacks".
In Australia, there was once an outcry about the Greeks and Italians coming into the country - in the fifties and sixties. I don't think it really extended as far as legislation and organisation against them (other than the White Australia policy). In the seventies and eighties, that translated to "the Asian Invasion" - (although there've been Chinese Australians here since the days of the 1820s gold rush). In the nineties and noughties, it's been more about the middle eastern cultures - Lebanese, Arabs, and also the Western asian countries - India and Pakistan.
That's only fifty years, so Australian attitudes are changeable over that time.
More difficult to adjust - and probably consonant with the treatment of persons of African descent in the US - is the white settlers' treatment of the Australian Aborigines for the last two hundred years. While in land terms the Aborigines were treated by the white settlers as the Native Americans were treated by the US settlers, in legal terms their situation is more like the African Americans. They were once seen as "sub-human" and "unworthy to carry on their culture and lineage" - to the point where Aboriginal children were taken from their parents to be "brought up 'white'".
This is what I meant by a "get out of racism free" card. In Australian terms, the oppression that ensues from the system to a person of Chinese descent is fairly minimal - the worst outright oppression I'm going to find is some dumbfuck yobbo telling me to "go back home!"
For someone of Aboriginal descent, however, that card isn't an option. There's not just the history of oppression of their peopel by the Australian government, there's the perceptions of their culture, traditional stereotypes of "blacks" (Aborigines) being drunkards and wastrels, and the general inability to "whiten" themselves socially (ie. to successfully enter into "white culture" - academics, business, lifestyle).
This is just my (Australian) perspective on race relations - which, as thelana noted, is probably a very different teaching to the US perspective on race relations, or the UK/European perspective. Partly because of history, partly because of geography, partly because of culture.
no subject
I was going to mention this in one of my responses but discovered i have a deadline so this will be short.
When I was a child, I didn't think much about 'colour'. I was Chinese Australian - both Chinese and Australian. I was teased at school because of my race, yes, but my father taught me to tease the other kids back because of their appearance, not because of their race.
eg. a tall, skinny boy with a shock of short hair called me "ching-chong". I called him "toilet brush" because he was skinny with short bushy hair. It wasn't about "race" per se it was about appearance. I looked different in one way, I got teased; he looked different in another way, he got teased.
I never had any major experience with discrimination - that I noticed. A few sneering comments when my friends and I caught the train home in high school: "Spot the Aussie!" To which my friends and I respond (in perfect Australian English), "Yeah, that would be us. Idiot."
But, yes, I remember learning about the 'hierarchy of race' via news about South Africa, and the whites being superior to the "coloureds" (people who weren't white but who weren't black either) and the "coloureds" being superior to the "blacks".
In Australia, there was once an outcry about the Greeks and Italians coming into the country - in the fifties and sixties. I don't think it really extended as far as legislation and organisation against them (other than the White Australia policy). In the seventies and eighties, that translated to "the Asian Invasion" - (although there've been Chinese Australians here since the days of the 1820s gold rush). In the nineties and noughties, it's been more about the middle eastern cultures - Lebanese, Arabs, and also the Western asian countries - India and Pakistan.
That's only fifty years, so Australian attitudes are changeable over that time.
More difficult to adjust - and probably consonant with the treatment of persons of African descent in the US - is the white settlers' treatment of the Australian Aborigines for the last two hundred years. While in land terms the Aborigines were treated by the white settlers as the Native Americans were treated by the US settlers, in legal terms their situation is more like the African Americans. They were once seen as "sub-human" and "unworthy to carry on their culture and lineage" - to the point where Aboriginal children were taken from their parents to be "brought up 'white'".
This is what I meant by a "get out of racism free" card. In Australian terms, the oppression that ensues from the system to a person of Chinese descent is fairly minimal - the worst outright oppression I'm going to find is some dumbfuck yobbo telling me to "go back home!"
For someone of Aboriginal descent, however, that card isn't an option. There's not just the history of oppression of their peopel by the Australian government, there's the perceptions of their culture, traditional stereotypes of "blacks" (Aborigines) being drunkards and wastrels, and the general inability to "whiten" themselves socially (ie. to successfully enter into "white culture" - academics, business, lifestyle).
This is just my (Australian) perspective on race relations - which, as
Did I say this was going to be short? Bugger.