Racism, Religion and Internalism
There has been a lot of debate recently over the Australian Government’s decision to look at amending section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. The amendments proposed include removing the provisions making it unlawful to “offend, insult or humiliate” based on a person’s race. This would be replaced with a new clause that bans racial vilification. In brief, a large number of Australian’s feel that the proposed changes will, in effect, allow people to be more racist to others. Since the debate about section 18C has started there has been a couple of incidents, most particularly in multi-cultural Ryde, where a poster was displayed with the words “No more Asians. It’s not the face of Australia. We speak English. Save our Aussie culture”. Under the proposed amendments a number of migrant groups fear that they will incur more racist incidences like this one. Before I move on, I would point out that every country has elements of racism. This can be along the lines