The Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt, has an explanation for this. He blames racism against Somalis and Sudanese. In other words, the victims are not those who have suffered crimes but those committing them.
How does Bandt reach this conclusion? He notes that employment rates are significantly lower for Somalis and Sudanese (47% are unemployed) and thinks this is due to racism:
Racism and discrimination are driving these figures," the Greens' employment spokesman said. (Herald Sun 22/08/2012)
Is it really racism that is preventing Sudanese and Somalis from gaining employment? I think it's unlikely. It's true that they appear unfamiliar to many Australians, but so too did the Chinese and they have bounded ahead.
So why would Bandt rush in to blame racism?
I can think of several possible reasons. One is that liberals want to make race not matter. They want to do this because they think that human freedom is the ultimate good and that freedom can be defined as an autonomous, self-determining life. Race is not something that is self-determined, therefore it is to be thought of as a merely arbitrary quality that shouldn't matter.
But if you want to believe that race can be made not to matter then you are committed to the view that the races must be equal (the same) in all respects. Otherwise race would, in fact, be an influence in your life.
So if Somalis and Sudanese aren't doing as well as the Chinese, then it can't be due to a group difference, it has to be because of something artificial holding them back - which liberals most usually assume to be "race discrimination".
What other reasons might there be for Bandt's haste in blaming racism? There's the issue I've been looking at recently, namely the leftist understanding of solidarity. Some on the left assume that solidarity is based not on relatedness and loyalty but on compassion for the marginalised other. But if you have this concept of solidarity then you'll want to think of the most "other" group as being victimised in some way, and hence a worthy object of compassion.
Remember, group solidarity is a significant human instinct, so it would be a considerable deprivation if you are one of those people who connect solidarity and compassion if the most "other" group weren't thought to be suffering from oppression.
Finally, it seems to me that the left sometimes reverses the truth of what is happening in order to disarm opposition. For instance, at the very time that various white populations were being dispossessed many on the left were arguing that whites were the dominant oppressor group meting it out to others.
And in this case the following is notable:
Mr Bandt is moving for an inquiry into public service employment targets for migrant Australians.
So Bandt's agenda is to impose discrimination in employment against native born Australians and in favour of Somalis and Sudanese. That's the direction that discrimination is to flow. But there is no "sorry about that" to those who are going to miss out - instead, those who are going to miss out are presented as the discriminators and those who are to benefit are presented as the victims. It's a role reversal which puts those negatively affected on the back foot.
0 comments:
Post a Comment