Resentment and Reluctance: Working with Everyday Diversity and Everyday Racism in Southern Sydney

Abstract

Pilot research on community conflict resolution, conducted in a local government area in southern Sydney in late 2006, revealed paradoxical findings: The simultaneous presence of both high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of the area's culturally diverse population; and the prevalence of prejudice against Arab and Muslim residents and visitors to the area. Many respondents who supported cultural diversity, saw Arab and Muslim Australians as an exception and even a threat to harmonious community relations. Particularly striking was the anxiety and anger caused by their apparent large numbers, seen to be taking over certain public recreational spaces. This article explores the contradictions in these findings in light of other contemporary Australian research and identifies complex and difficult issues to be addressed by research and by local government. In particular, the paper discusses the need to address the interconnections between both everyday multiculturalisms and everyday racisms, to distinguish between 'victim' claims amongst diverse communities, and to ground research and policies on 'place-sharing' in Indigenous sovereignties.

Re-enchanting Nationalisms

“…As Wise argues this involved different use of the beach by each group, including young men of Middle Eastern background playing soccer (football) on the dry sand, a sport that in Australia has been traditionally coded as an ethnic activity (Hughson 2000). However, simple notions of the riot being a clash between an ethnic minority (Lattas 2007) and a white majority also fail to appreciate the diversity of beach culture in Australia and how similar clashes have been reported in public parks (Bloch and Dreher 2009). Rather than representing beach goers at large, the violence at Cronulla occurred between two specific groups to which masculine violence has increasingly become normalised.…”

No Time Like The Present: Determinants Of Intentions To Engage In Bystander Anti-Racism On Behalf Of Indigenous Australians

“…Discrimination also significantly impairs the physical and psychological wellbeing of Indigenous Australians (Larson et al, 2007;Paradies Hyers, Cohen, Fitzgerald, & Bylsma, 2003), which occurs at a social or interpersonal level outside the reach of policy . Everyday racism can be understood as disparaging innuendos, acts, beliefs, or attitudes about a given racial group that are encountered on such a regular basis that their offensive and damaging nature is often denied, downplayed, or not recognised by those who are not targets (Bloch & Dreher, 2009;Swim et al, 2003).…”

Pathological integration, or, how East Europeans use racism to become British

“…This flattening of difference surely reflects a kind of integration, but one that also carries its own assumptions about the desirability, if not inevitability, of integration (see Neal et al : 315–17 on this point). Racism does not feature prominently in these accounts (but see Husband, Alam, Huettermann and Fomina ; Bloch and Dreher ), although it is sometimes acknowledge (Wessendorf ; Wise and Velayutham ). Where it does appear, it's often depicted as separate from, or antithetical to, integration, as something that needs to be overcome.…”