Prejudice And Institutional Racism In Australia

The taking of half-caste Indigenous children was implemented into Australian law in the late 19th century, and continued as late in to the mid 1960's. Many politicians and everyday Australians agreed that it was helpful for the indigenous so that they were not 'disadvantaged'; “The greatest thing we have achieved” (Former PM William Hughes

Australia is a a multicultural country. That is because it has had an increased numbers of different come to live here for many different reasons.. They have all called themselves Australians and had accepted Australia as their new home. Although the perspective of accepting a different race/culture has changed, racism still exists in Australia. Australia’s indigenous people were the first victims of racism in this country. For about 50,000 years before the settlement of the British, Australia was occupied exclusively by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. After the settlement of the British, the European legal concept of Terra Nullius was used which let white settlers gain economic and political control over the land up until

The Australian legal system and constitution has evolved throughout time. The Australian government has introduced referendum into the legal system which has assisted in halting the dispossession against indigenous Australians. This referendum allowed Indigenous Australians to be including in the citizens of Australia’s census figures. In addition, this was the same year, that a new policy was introduced, which disallowed Indigenous child abduction, which hereby allowed indigenous families to stay in unity. The main discussion points regarding whether dispossession related acts against Indigenous Australians occur include; the 1967 Constitutional amendment/referendum and the structure of the Australian legal system and how it was created, a

When the Australian Government passed these laws of discrimination against the Aborigines, they never thought of them as human beings but rather an inferior race that had to be taken

The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) was a law that changed Indigenous Australian lives forever. The act enabled the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines to essentially control the lives of Aboriginal people. It was the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) that had major provisions that resulted in the containment and suffering that Aboriginal people endured. This suffering included the practice of forcible removing Indigenous children from their families. These major provisions help us understand what the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) involved and the impact it has had on the daily lives and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples today.

The efficacy and implementation of the Northern Territory Intervention has received wide spread criticism due to the lack of prior consultation with the Indigenous Community leaders as well as the questionable reforms subsequently implemented. Amongst these reforms were the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) (Korff, J, 2016) and forceful leasing of Indigenous land to the commonwealth as documented in The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act, 2007 (Cth). The Northern Territory Intervention consequently has had numerous negative impacts on the community, “The intervention has had consequences that will have repercussions for generations” (Dodson, 2016)

Indigenous Australians have had a rough journey in the past, being subjected to discrimination and being neglected by the rest of the country. They’ve had both their land and rights stolen away from them and were treated like scums. Although Australia had apologised and reconciled with the first Australians, there are still some major issues that continue all throughout the country. To this day, they still receive racist attitudes, there are still periodic incidents of violence towards them, they generally live in poor living conditions meaning that aboriginal people have a far higher infant mortality and suicide rate and a lower life expectancy then the rest of the population and they make up an excessive portion of prisons. Even though, the Australian government has recognised some of these factors, its evident a change is still needed, and fast.

Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.

Australia is considered one of the most multicultural countries in the World. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when it is known throughout the world that Australia has many multicultural aspects but deep down within the Australian community, there is debates about whether if there is racism in it. When people talks about racism now a days is not only about skin colour but now it includes others forms of discrimination such as; hair colour, skin deformities, religion beliefs, sexuality, etc. Australia was racist to the indigenous people in many ways such as not being giving the right of the land, not getting the recension as human’s which was to not have a human right, their children’s taking away by the white people to convert them to their

Each example given has also shown how self-determination was and continues to be a major struggle for Aboriginal people. Beginning with the Whitlam government, the Land Rights Act was going to be the national recognition that Aboriginal people had been waiting for, however the swift dismissal of the government and subsequent changes to the bill meant that an uninformed government would dictate claims of Aboriginal land rights. This was continued in the Heritage Protection Act for Western Australia in which no monitoring of abuses of power within the authoritative ministry was assessed; hence damage to heritage sites for the development of industries occurred. Finally the Racial Discrimination Act although making racial discrimination illegal has clearly been violated by the government in the Northern Territory interventions and hence is not valued by Australia despite the international commitments made to recognising Indigenous rights. Although legislation has been introduced to recognise Indigenous rights, there seems to always be a catch. A final reoccurring theme in the legislation discussed is the uninformed views of the non-Indigenous government as decisions are made on behalf of Aboriginal people; hence two major statements were discussed that precisely define Aboriginal self-determination by Aboriginal

Institutional racism on the other hand is far broader in context and more complex. It refers to the ways in which racism has infiltrated into social institutions which govern, discriminate and oppress various groups within that society based on their race (McConnochie et al, 1988). These institutions within our societies, such as schools and healthcare services, use racism in a systematic manner which favours one group over all the others. Although racism as a notion is the same for both individual and institutional purposes, the consequences of the two are vastly different. Sociologists have argued that in the recent years racism has shifted from excluding groups on a biological basis, to more of a cultural basis of difference (Giddens, 2001; Van Krieken et al, 2010).

In the early 1970s Aboriginal people were commonly confronted with intolerance, prejudice and racism at every level of the nation’s criminal justice system. Aboriginal adults were eleven times more likely to be imprisoned than other Australians, and youth twenty times more likely to be detained. In 1972 the Whitlam government eradicated the white Australia policy and introduced a policy of self-determination, and in 1975, the racial discrimination Act was put in effect and it was designed to acknowledge the prior ownership of Australia by the Indigenous people.

Racism is still happening nowadays in Australia context, because the process of racism progress is cycling in our society. In Dunn, et al.’s (2009) research found 63% of Aboriginal Australians experienced racism. There are several factors cause the recurrence of racism. Firstly, racism is learned behaviour, and

During the early stages of settlement in Australia there was competition for land causing conflict between the Indigenous Australians and the new European settlers, this is what stared the discrimination against the Aboriginals. Throughout the years Europeans have distanced themselves from the Indigenous which meant discrimination within laws and policies. Over the course of Australia’s settlement three different policies arose, the Policy of Protection, the Policy of Assimilation and the current Policy of Integration. Majority of these policies prevented Indigenous Australians from having human rights, all because of the colour of their skin.

It is a commonly known issue in Australia that as a minority group, the people of Indigenous Australian ethnicity have always been treated, or at least perceived, differently to those of non-Indigenous disposition. This can be applied to different contexts such as social, economic, education, or in relation to this essay – legal contexts. Generally, Indigenous Australians face issues such as less opportunity for formal education, less access to sufficient income, more health issues, and higher rates of imprisonment (Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service