Comments on: Can someone who abuses ‘Lebs’ not be a racist?

By: Yobbo

Yobbo — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:38:02 +0000

Well, you’re half-right Parkos, in that the most criminal ethnic group in the world is an Australian one.

By: Parkos

Parkos — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:51:47 +0000

Where does that leave penal colonies like Australia Mr Yobbo?

Irish made up 10% of the population of Manchester at the time of transportation and only 5% of the convicts transported from Manchester.
So the arse end of the anglosphere as opposed to the anglo-irishsphere is probably the most criminal ethnic group in the world.
So listen to Quiggin , Begorah!

By: Yobbo

Yobbo — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:58:23 +0000

Amir: Define statistically invalid. The statistics on crime among different ethnicities in Australia are quite easy to get hold of.

If one ethnic group has 5% of its members in prison and another has 20%, is it “statistically invalid” to say that a member of the second ethnic group is more likely to be a criminal?

By: Amir

Amir — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:30:20 +0000

I don’t know why it is even important to work out whether Kapitza is racist or not. The fact that his crime — or the crimes of others — may have been motivated by a hatred of a race or religion doesn’t, in my mind anyway, make his crimes more or less heinous that if they were motivated by a dislike of black hair, brown eyes or the assumed voting patterns of the victim.

However, it would seem to me, that the question isn’t one of whether there is a real justification for one’s antagonism towards a particular group of people but what extrapolations one makes from that real justification. For example, let us say a Lebanese man steals my car. As a result, I say I don’t like Lebanese car thieves. That isn’t racist however if I then, based on that statistically insignificant sample, decide that I don’t like all Lebanese men because they are all car thieves then I’ve graduated to a form of racism.

In any case, Islam isn’t a race, it’s a religion so I am not sure charges of racism can apply. However, a person is no less stupid to make broad generalisations about a particular religious group than he is for making similarly statistically invalid generalisations about a particular racial group. For example, a Muslim steals his car so he concludes that all Muslims are car thieves or they have a proclivity to steal cars.

By: Steve Edwards

Steve Edwards — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:39:42 +0000

I know I’ve said this quite a few times already, but I’ll keep driving the point home: are there any intellectually honest non-Muslims out there who have any objections to that guy’s T-shirt? On precisely what grounds? (I’ll make this easier for you - if you don’t accept that Mohammad was a prophet, what do you believe inspired him to claim as much?)

By: Yobbo

Yobbo — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:02:09 +0000

The guy’s shirt specifically mentions Mohammed. It is obvious that the Cronulla rioters were not organising against Lebanese in general but specifically Lebanese muslims.

One of the interesting things about this case is that all the media tut-tutting was interested in was the racism of Anglo-Saxon Australians, and this guy certainly doesn’t fit that bill.

By: Jason Soon

Jason Soon — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 07:39:00 +0000

The point about the Lebanese kids at Cronulla was not whether they could speak English or not but that there were a few pricks among them that made everyone else of their ethnicity look bad. As Andrew Leigh alluded to, this is about irrational statistical discrimination, not supremacism.

By: Antonios

Antonios — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 04:39:16 +0000

My brother and I had vastly different experiences in dealing with our ethnicity growing up, even though we grew up in the same outer-suburban hell hole, went to the same crappy high school only 11 years apart, both spoke English and behaved in much the same way at the same age!

What had happened in the intervening 11 years however was things like Acropolis Now, where the customs of the Greek-Australians were popularised and not deemed to be a threat, and the influx of Asian immigrants became the new whipping boys.

And let’s not forget that the Lebanese kids in Cronulla could all speak English too, and their parents are usually more educated than the Greeks that came from their tiny villages.

By: Rajat Sood

Rajat Sood — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 04:26:35 +0000

The fact that ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ are pejorative terms suggests to me that they must involve something more than ethnic stereotyping. As an Australian of Indian origin with an Aussie partner, a Greek brother-in-law, a Chinese Malaysian friend who defines himself as a ‘Chinaman’ and Italian and Greek friends who frequently refer to themselves and their parents as ‘wogs’ and their behaviours as ‘woggish’, I would go insane if I couldn’t make ethnicity-based comments amongst family and friends. That is real life. But I’m not sure racism as currently understood requires something as extreme as an intellectual belief in racial inferiority. To put it in a wishy-washy way, in a practical sense, I see racism as a derogatory and unsympathethic form of ethnic stereotyping. This would allow people to make jokes at their own ethnic group’s expense without being a ‘racist’, but would catch people like Kapitza.

By: Parkos

Parkos — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 02:45:01 +0000

In Fortuyn’s case, possibly ripping off or abusing Morrocan rent boys (he was investigated for allegedly having sex with Morrocan minors) may have provoked the attack on the gay bar.

There really is no comparison between coastal Holland (Rotterdam in particular) and Australia. Holland is liberal in the classic sense of the word (unlike Australia), wealthy, densely populated, with one of the biggest ports in the world feeding the largest drug market in the world (the EU).

The Orange Order is still a potent force for freedom against the Catholic Empire which once controlled Holland. This is probably the unwritten reason Fortuyn was murdered. His bigotted faith. His replacement was an Afropean christian running on an anti immigration ticket in Rotterdam. The difference between migrant and local is judged in terms of months and years rather than centuries or millenia in core areas of Europe particulalry its largest port. Holland, the country where environmental lawyers carry semi automatics not the loggers.

1. Is it prejudice to hate racists if they are also professors of public sector wage negotiation?

2. Has catallaxy become the most irrelevant and contradictory political group blog in Australia after http://www.gov.au ?
Should it be downsized even further?
(A MacNair Anderson poll)