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Justice, humility and honour

Race Discrimination

Speech to Deakin University graduation ceremony, Geelong, 23 April 2015

I am honoured and humbled to accept this Doctor of Letters from Deakin University. And I find a fitting symmetry in being with you today. For it was ten years ago, in 2005, that I presented my first academic paper – at a Deakin University conference. I had just completed my first year studying for a Master of Philosophy at Oxford.

Out of curiosity, earlier this week I went back to the text of that paper. Reading it, in some respects, felt like reading an old love letter. I found sentences which made me wince – just as you, graduands, will surely do when in ten years’ time you dig out your papers (or love letters).

Nonetheless, I was struck by how the basic ideas of my own thinking and morality have remained the same. There are two possible interpretations of this.

One is far from flattering. If my positions haven’t changed much, you may well conclude that I am a very slow learner.

Another interpretation is more optimistic. Maybe I should be encouraged that my moral convictions and commitments have remained consistent. Maybe I can draw the conclusion that there has been an integrity in my beliefs and worldview. And maybe – this is being very optimistic – my analysis as a master’s student wasn’t too far off the mark.

There could be some truth in both of these interpretations. Our interests, even our identities, can change with time. But our values are less susceptible to change.

And when things around us do change, we prefer certainty to uncertainty. It is easy to tell ourselves we have always abided by our principles. It is not so easy to admit we may have failed to live up to them.

This is true of both individuals and nations. As Australians, there is no doubt that we have changed as a society dramatically over time. It is a change embodied in Deakin University itself.

This is, after all, a university that takes its name after Alfred Deakin, one of our early prime ministers and a founder of Federation. Deakin was also an architect of the White Australia policy that defined our nationhood for the majority of the 20th century. As he put it, ‘unity of race is an absolute essential to the unity of Australia’.

To be fair, Deakin was representative of a time when Australians believed in racial exclusion and in racial purity. In his time, Australians celebrated egalitarianism and mateship, but withheld such ideals from those of certain races.

Yet, here we are today: in a hall named Costa; in a University named Deakin, but whose students are as likely to bear the name Lim or Kiryakos, as they are Lewis or Kerr.

Today, we are a proud multicultural society. We are, for the most part, relaxed and comfortable about our diversity. Australia has changed.

Yet our values have remained the same. We remain a country that believes in a fair go, egalitarianism and mateship. But whether we live up to the best of our traditions is another question.

This was a question that guided my work in political philosophy when I was an academic. And it guides my current work concerning racial discrimination. While we have come a long way in changing attitudes about race, there remains some way to go. The conditions of racial prejudice persist. It is a paradox of our multicultural success that we still have the blight of racism and bigotry.

At the level of attitudes, some people dismiss racism as just complaints about hurt feelings. Some believe that something isn’t racist unless it is accompanied by malice or a belief in racial superiority. Unfortunately, some remain blind to prejudice and discrimination, even when they occur before their very eyes.

The problem is frequently one of ignorance, rather than one of hatred. For example, I have had people approach me after I’ve spoken at a public event, expressing their support in combating racism, only to ask me how it is that I speak English so well, given my ethnic background. (If you are wondering, my answer tends to be, ‘Thank you. I guess it’s because I grew up here speaking English.’)

It may be an innocent question, but it should serve to remind us this. Racism is something that is as much about impact as it is about intention. And it needn’t be spewed with hatred in order for it to cause harm. There will be times when racism is expressed in the form of what Martin Luther King Jr called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’.

How are we then to change attitudes? How is it that social change occurs?

There should, of course, be a role for legislation. The law should exist to express our values as a society – to set a standard for our conduct in public.

This year, we mark the 40th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act. Australia’s first federal law on human rights, the Act gives voice to equality and civility. It has ensured that people can hold acts of discrimination to account. It has guaranteed that freedom is accompanied by responsibility.

Social change also depends on education. We can’t legislate away our social ills. We must devote time to cultivating the sentiments of our society.

Which is to say, we need good citizens. We need a society whose members are prepared to stand up for others. The task of fighting injustice can never be left to those who suffer it. Rather, it is a responsibility for the strong to protect the weak, for the privileged to care for the vulnerable.

For me, this is the meaning of justice. And it was something I first came across as a teenager when I encountered the work of the American political philosopher John Rawls. In his famous book A Theory of Justice, Rawls wrote that, ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’. (1)

Imagine, Rawls said, that we were to be in a position where we were to know nothing about our place in society. Imagine that we were to know nothing about our class, our status, our wealth, our race, our sex, our intelligence, our natural abilities, our physical strength.

How then would be want our society to be organised? What should our social contract look like? Would we wish for it to favour those with the most talents or power? Or would be wish for it to protect the equal dignity of its members? 

For the graduands today, consider Rawls in the following way. The lesson is as much about humility as it is about justice.

It is about being humble enough to know that our position may be the products of luck, history or genetics; that success isn’t always the product of people’s talents or efforts. It is about being humble enough to know that our fellow citizens who may be downtrodden or disadvantaged, in some circumstances, could have been us.

Humility is also connected to honour. There is an old proverb: before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honour. (2)

Today is, of course, a day of honour. To all those receiving degrees, it should be regarded as an honour to be recognised in this way.

Honour comes in many forms. We honour those of rank, we honour those of merit; honour can mean that we also hold someone morally worthy in esteem.

Honour can also motivate us – it helps us to do good by others, it sustains us in our pursuit of justice. In the form of individual dignity, it powers our demand for human rights. As merit and esteem, it allows communities to reward people who excel. In its national form, honour can motivate citizens to ensure their governments and countries stay true to their values. (3)

Graduands, very shortly you will leave here as graduates. To you, and to all your families, I give you my warmest congratulations and wish you the very best in your endeavours. I hope that you will have the courage to follow your convictions, to remain true to your commitments, and to seek honourable excellence in all that you do.

(1) J Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Revised Edition), 1999, Oxford University Press, p.3.

(2) Proverbs 18:12.

(3) KW Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, W.W Norton & Company, 2010, p 195.

Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination Commissioner