Are you a racist?

Yep, probably.

(Thanks to Andrew Bolt.

Racism against aborigines

Here's a story of terrible racism from today's SMH, about some aboriginal women being forced to leave a backpacker resort because they were 'scaring' the other hostel residents. The women were in Alice Springs to take part in a life-saving training course.

The racism of the backpacker hostel in requiring the women to leave is rightly being condemned. What I've yet to see in any report so far is any mention of the equally racist attitude of the Asian women who made the initial complaint about being 'scared'.

In the Australian media it is generally only the racism of white people that comes in for criticism. Asians and other ethnic groups seem to get a free pass in these matters, as if racism is a whites-only problem, which it certainly isn't.

Uncle David

We interviewed my cousin, Alison Doughty (we share an uncle) in church last night. It was a great testimony to God's provision of contentment for her, working in a polluted city with a difficult bunch of students in Thailand.

Talking to her afterwards she told me how Uncle David (Cheng) and his wife, Aunt Jennifer, used to be shunned and avoided in Bondi in the 1950s, because it was a mixed marriage—he an Australian born Chinese, she a fully Anglo Australian.

I've never heard a whisper of bitterness from either of them on this subject, or for that matter from my parents. Although mum had endless complaints about Australians; their habits, their lack of frugality, their casualness, their misuse and abuse of the English language. So if anything I grew up as a Swede thinking racist thoughts about Anglo Australians.