According to statistics, every month in Australia, an Aboriginal person dies in police custody. The circumstances surrounding these deaths included Aboriginal people alone in a room with no visitors other than Australian police. Australian police questioned Australian police and the response was to completely separate prison authorities or conditions from death.
75% of Aboriginal people in Australia experience racism on a daily basis. It’s one of the first stats in Down and Under, an investigative documentary that explores the history of racism in Australia; a history that began when the British first came to Australia in 1788 and continues to this day as it moves beyond hate It exists in the form of speech and even personal attacks against Aboriginal people. The unfortunate viral footage captured by vigilant citizens paints a picture of satirical xenophobia which is not mutually exclusive when it comes to targeting Indigenous people in Australia.
If the footage in the documentary is any indication, refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and China, as well as white people who speak English as a second language, can and do fall victim to racially motivated hatred at any moment. It’s not just the hustlers on city buses who agree that blatant racism and exclusion of others is an appropriate way to deal with large numbers of non-European immigrants.
The historical issues of racism in Australia, today mirroring the issues of racism at many different times in history around the world, from internment camps to segregation in the South, give us a lot to think about. After reading it, you’ll want to delve deeper into the policies mentioned in Down and Under, and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the dangers behind ideals that make assimilation necessary, especially when assimilation becomes important enough that a nation would take their generation of children away from their parents, not only to establish a new ideal culture of Australia, but to strip Indigenous Australians of their culture, identity and even their surname.
