The Racial Hatred Act: Case study 2

Introduction:

• perpetuating myths and stereotypes in the media

Media report:

• 'The Colour of Money', Damien Murphy, The Bulletin, October 95

Comment:

• Executive Officer of the Aboriginal Justice Advisory Group, Gail Wallace, on the media's role
  in bridging the cultural gap
• Executive Director, Strategy & Review Branch, NSW Police, Neil Bridge, on the reality of policing
  in Redfern
• ABC TV Indigenous Programs Unit producer/presenter, Michelle
  Tuahine, on the media's stereotyping of Indigenous Australians
• 'Black is not a Colour',
  Letter to the Editor from HREOC's Zita Antonios and Mick Dodson, The Bulletin,
  31 Oct 95

Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the
subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.

The Colour of Money

Damien Murphy, Oct 1995

Melting pot or meltdown? For all of his wealth, influence and sheer cult of personality, the
question of race in the O.J. Simpson verdict has become almost academic.
Could it happen here? On statistical probabilities alone, probably not.
We can take wealth and influence out of the equation, for a start.

The nightmare begins this way: you are driving along a freeway through
an American city when the engine falters and you pull off the nearest exit.
Suddenly you find yourself in an alien world of burnt-out tenements, boarded-up
shops an garbage-strewn streets. A sullen group of black youths blocks
your way.

Tom Wolfe, for all the melodramatic excesses in his novel Bonfire
of the Vanities, got that part right. What he didn't mention
was that same frightening scenario doesn't only haunt white people. Many
Afro-Americans also live in fear of the hate plague that infects many of
their race, reducing intellect to violent reflex, making payback the rule.

Our Newsweek section (from page 54) explores the aftermath of
the extraordinary O.J. Simpson verdict and its scary implications for race
relations in the United States. It would be comforting to think of the
American colour-binding experience as unique and holding no lessons for
Australia. The big difference between the two countries is the fact that
drug usage is pivotal to US race relations - there is the widespread perception
that crack was designed to keep blacks enslaved in the ghettoes - whereas
Australia's hard drugs trade is now largely driven by the Asian community,
a matter of economics, not race.

 

Numbers

In the end, the race relations may come down to simple numbers: 30 million
Afro-Americans comprise 14.5% of the US population, while Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people make up only 1.6% of Australia's population
- concentrated in the north, the outback and northern NSW, far from most
urban centres, with little electoral, social or financial clout. Race relations
in Australia swing between notions of dispossession and possession. Yet
in the US, the claims of Native Americans play second fiddle to an equal
rights battle between two relatively newly arrived group, one claiming
to be an oppressed minority. But Afro-American consciousness has shaped
Aboriginal aspirations to the point where race relations in Australia parallel
the US experience.

Proportionately, blacks are the poorest Australians, the sickest, the
most jailed, the least educated and, just as Wolfe's confronting boys in
the 'hood represent an American dream gone bad, there are "no-go"
areas in our own country. Eveleigh Street, Redfern, the broken heart of
Sydney's Aboriginal community, looms large in white Australia's psyche.
It is Australia's Black South Central, "star" of so many television
documentaries that the image of blacks hanging out between rows of trashed,
graffiti-daubed terraces has become media shorthand for race conflict.

Redfern is "locals only", a mix of long-time residents and
transplanted troublemakers from the bush. Any errant visitor risks abuse
- purses might be snatched, cars vandalised. The only outsiders tolerated
are taxi drivers and the dealers slide in from outer-suburban Cabramatta
in their flash cars to ply drugs.

 

Wrestling

Once, all Australian capitals had their Redferns - Fitzroy and Northcote
in Melbourne, West End and Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, etcetera - but
gentrification has driven most Aboriginal communities out of the urban
centres. In the bush, where nothing to do is a way of life, the streets
have been taken over by youngsters who toss stones and bottles and rob
the homes of black and white alike. Towns along the Darling River - Bourke,
Wilcannia, Brewarrina - have been hit hardest, but coastal cities like
Townsville in Queensland, Taree in NSW, Ceduna in South Australia and Geraldton
in Western Australia are also wrestling the problem. Tennant Creek in the
Northern Territory, among other centres, has limited liquor sales to restore
some semblance of order.

It's not all about black tension, however. Ethnic rivalries have created
other "no-go" situations: Vietnamese gangs have turned Cabramatta
into a war zone, while on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, Broadmeadows
and the rundown 1956 Olympic Games village of Heidelberg West are similarly
off-limits.

Australia may never have an O.J. Simpson. He moved effortlessly from
football hero to celebrity, symbolising the hopes and dreams of many. But
few black Australian heroes - Cathy Freeman, Evonne Cawley, Lionel Rose,
inventor David Unaipon, Captain Reg Saunders (our first Aboriginal commissioned
officer), former SA governor Sir Doug Nicholls - fall from grace.

Those who stumble afford Australians a deep look into themselves. Ten
years before a referendum recognised Aborigines as citizens, the painter
Albert Namitjira was so lauded down south in the big cities that he was
granted full citizenship in 1957. The following year, trapped between two
cultures, he was jailed for supplying grog to relatives who as "non-people"
were not allowed to drink. Namitjira died in 1959. Earlier that year, Rupert
Max Stuart was convicted of the rape and murder of a mime-year-old whit
girl on a beach near Ceduna, SA. It became the year's biggest story. T.G.H.
Strehlow, a priest and academic, queried Stuarts's confession - claiming
that, as an illiterate, he could not have spoken with such articulacy.
His execution date was changed seven times before a royal commission forced
the government to retreat and commute his sentence. Stuart served 14 years
and was released to a community in Central Australia, where he resides
today.

The Stuart case hinted that the Australian legal system could advantage
one group of people over another. Yet four decades later, as in the O.J.
Simpson case, the question remains: did Stuart do it or was he fitted up
because he was black?

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