Joe Hildebrand: Australia is far from a racist country

If Laura Tingle thinks Australia is a racist country then why are so many people – of every imaginable race – so desperate to come here, asks Joe Hildebrand.

The problem with Laura Tingle’s declaration “We are a racist country” isn’t that it’s offensive or outrageous. It’s that it’s tired and lazy.

Indeed, the most telling thing about Tingle’s statement is not even that she said it but that none of the gathered lofty minds at the Sydney Writers Festival seemed to think there was anything remotely contentious about it.

The fact that Tingle is the most high profile and high powered political journalist at the ABC, whose charter and new chairman both demand impartiality, caused not a ripple. And the fact that Tingle’s sole justification for this at the time was an imaginary scenario she concocted in her head while listening to Peter Dutton’s Budget reply also went unchallenged.

It seems that among such a crowd saying Australia is racist is no more controversial than saying the sky is blue. And yet as soon as the comments reached a wider public there was a maelstrom of outrage and an avalanche of opposition, including from the government.

This alone tells you everything you need to know about how in touch with the mainstream are writers festival types. There’s no crime nor surprise in that but for someone who is supposed to be a beacon of truth-telling for the national broadcaster the stakes are somewhat higher.

Still, let’s not lynch Tingle. Let’s just look at what she said. What does “Australia is racist” actually mean?

Laura Tingle called Australia a racist county at the Sydney Writers Festival. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Is the physical country itself racist? Given that rocks and red earth are rarely capable of sentient thought we can probably rule that out.

Besides, it “always was and always will be” Aboriginal land, so that would be awkward.

Is our government racist? That would be news to Anthony Albanese, who nailed his prime ministership to Indigenous recognition via the Voice.

No, according to Tingle’s subsequent explanatory essay, she was not in fact saying the whole country was racist but that some racist things had happened in it.

Fair enough. But this reminds me of another racist country: All of them. Space does not permit me to catalogue every racist act in every country across all of human history but here’s a quick primer.

The Ancient Greeks, forefathers of democracy and Western civilisation, were so racist they considered anyone who wasn’t Greek to be a barbarian. Thus from them we got Pauline Hanson’s famous word-of-the-day “xenophobia” – a fear of strangers. This enabled their philosophers to ponder noble questions of free will and the human soul while owning vast numbers of slaves they considered to be distinctly subhuman.

The Romans on the other hand were far more enlightened. They didn’t think slaves were subhuman, they just thought they were unlucky. At least they weren’t racist.

The great European colonial powers later constructed a codified racism to justify their slave trade and assuage their Christian consciences but in truth they didn’t have to.

The English had slaves for centuries until the Norman conquest put a stop to it in 1066. Then the Normans invaded what was to become England’s very first colony, in part on the pretext that it was an uncivilised slave-owning country.

That country was Ireland, whose inhabitants were considered barbarian. Meanwhile, amid the seagoing expansion of the West, the land-based Muslim empires also happily practised the enslavement of non-Muslims – a handy conversion incentive. And don’t even ask what the Mongols did.

Speaking of which, the biggest country in the world, India, has an almost limitless history of racial and religious violence. This was famously lamented by Mahatma Gandhi, who himself was accused of racism for not standing up for black South Africans during his time there.

For all the #blacklivesmatter protests in the US, the last Western country to abolish slavery wasn’t America, it was Brazil, which took an estimated 40 per cent of African slaves. And even today China uses Uighur people as forced labour, which seems pretty racist to me.

But Lord, we have to accept the things we cannot change. Let’s focus on Australia, where we can.

Thus, post fact, Tingle cited The Australian’s coverage of the outbreaks of anti-Semitism to support her claim. So why didn’t she go in swinging for the Jews at the Sydney Writers Festival? One can only wonder. Perhaps given the animus between The Australian and the ABC she thought her statement was a neat little checkmate.

But the ultimate checkmate is being played out every day: If Australia is such an intolerably racist country why are so many people – of every imaginable race – so desperate to come here?

This is the blunt force of truth. The facts are in the footprints. The proof is in the people. We are the most multicultural nation, a phenomenal country which foreigners both inside and out are willing to do almost anything to be a part of. That is the Australia I love. And it is an Australia that snobs simply do not know.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Australia is far from a racist country