From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli

RACISM­ — the inability or refusal to recognise the rights, needs, dignity, or value of people of particular races or geographical origins, is, by any civilised thinking, abhorrent.

Australia’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, asserted Islamophobic incidents have increased by more than 600-percent — while many are going unreported. It could be reasoned, with consensus, the argument is fallacious; an emotive and sweeping generalisation lacking specificity and context. While there is no doubting the premise, and not confined to Muslims, the prosecution of the argument is disquieting. It is potentially divisive.

To posit racism, explicitly Islamophobia, is normalised in Australia is too simplistic, and misleading — even provocative. We are a Nation of 27-million people. It would be a nonsense to argue the majority is racist. Conversely, that is not to deny the existence thereof, coupled with hateful homophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, white supremacism, neo-Nazism, and the litany of allied bigotries.

Paradoxically, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission, race and racism have been central to the organisation of Australian society since European colonisation began in 1788. We are a young Nation. Deplorably, the process, and its tenets, continue to shape Australian society.

Historically, from the First Fleet to the 1960s, Irish Catholics were a discriminated against; openly barred from employment in areas of the private sector; and pilloried and accused of disloyalty for putting Australia before the British Empire. Until the 1950s, government employment advertisements carried the official credo: Catholics and Jews need not apply. Often, a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer was employed as a means of establishing religion. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory et al is the Anglican version.

Europeans labelled the Chinese sub-human. In 1855, the Victorian colony passed anti-Chinese legislation which imposed a ten-pound poll tax on every Chinese arrival, and restricted the number of Chinese immigrants to one person for every ten-tonnes of goods on board.

Many Anglo-Australians were hostile to the Italians and Greeks who taught them how to eat good food. They established committees to examine the effects of Italian immigration on wages. Laws restricted non-British migrants’ employment and land ownership. During the Second World War unnaturalised, ‘enemy alien’ Italians were interned.

Until 1999, homosexuality was illegal in Australia. On the basis of their sexuality, research indicates 61% of young people have experienced verbal abuse, while 18% have experienced physical abuse. Violence and the related danger is proving pernicious. Paradoxically, in some fundamentalist Islamic countries, homosexuality ­ — an accident of birth, is illegal and punishable by death.

Axiomatically, the extrapolated contention does not dismiss, nor diminish, the seriousness of Islamophobia. Rather, while it is to be denounced, it implies it should not be viewed in isolation. All minority groups suffer discrimination. It is a collective challenge; a cancer which disgraces the Nation. Across the land there needs be a rigorous willing to eradicate the racial hatred, bigotries, xenophobia, and the corrosive, associated fears they engender. We must embrace a broader tolerance; dispel racial fears; savour the richness of another culture; and teach our children to be less judgemental. Colour and creed should not be feared.

As Shylock the Jew ruminates: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?/If you tickle us, do we not laugh?/If you poison us, do we not die?/and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Roland can be heard with Brett Macdonald — radio 3BA Monday at 10.45 a.m. Contact: [email protected]