issue 1 09 - APS Member Groups - Australian Psychological Society

Muslim, Racism and Media15coverage following the riots and is evident inthe quotation from the then Prime Minister,John Howard.Extract 1I do not accept that there isunderlying racism in this country. Ihave always taken a moreoptimistic view of the character ofthe Australian people. This nationof ours has been able to absorbmillions of people from differentparts of the world over a period ofnow some more than 40 years andwe have done so with remarkablesuccess and in a way that hasbrought enormous credit to thiscountry. And it’s very importantthat we keep that in mind (Howard,2003, p. 13).Australia and Australians are presentedas tolerant and accepting, “with good values”,where every other migrant group hassuccessfully been “absorbed”, and where thepresence of racism is non-existent or only in apathological few. By implication it is theseLebanese Muslims who are to blame for theirinability and unwillingness to be “absorbed”.As Hage (1998) argues, ‘tolerance’ isproblematic because of the unequal powerrelations inherent in the term. The ability to be‘tolerant’ implies an equal ability to beintolerant if one chooses to be.The implied attack on the ‘inassimilableother’ continued as Howard asserts that thesevalues “respect the equal rights and roles ofmen and women within our community”,eliciting in reader’s minds the discourse ofIslam as misogynist and uncivilised, alsoidentified at work in the newspapers analysed.It is clear whom Howard is talking about,though an actual reference to Muslims or Islamwould be inappropriate, it is implied howeverand so mainstream Australians are led intoseeing ‘them’ and their culture as the problem.The ideology of them as misogynist is alreadyprimed. Thus the whole statement may in factbe read as directed to the Muslim minority, sothat ‘they’, not belonging to the “overwhelmingmajority”, are seen to not share these “decentvalues” and “decent attitudes”.Moreover, this previous statement madeby John Howard blatantly ignores the tensionsand inequality existing in the country based onracial lines, and any reference to asylum seekersand the “humanitarian crisis”. It also leaves outthe fact that Australia had an explicitly racist‘White Australia policy’, up until the early 70s;effectively painting a rosy picture of Australianimmigration, so that what is left out is moretelling than what is actually said. Furthermore,it leaves out the struggle that migrants havefaced when coming to Australia. Also ofimportance, is the use of the word “absorb”reflecting Howard’s stance on integration, ormore accurately ‘assimilation’.‘Racism is repulsive but so is self- loathing: Anattack on elites’Extract 1 also alludes to another commondiscourse in the corpus of newspapers analysed,involving an attack on so- called ‘elites’,‘academics’ or ‘Howard Haters’. It representsthis discourse in the way Howard proclaims; “Ihave always taken a more optimistic view of thecharacter of the Australian people”. Howard notonly explicitly denies underlying racism inAustralia, he does so in a way that positionshimself as being loyal to this country and to theAustralian people. Thus this statementimplicitly suggests that those who dare tocriticise Australia by suggesting or evenconsidering the possibility that there may be aracial problem embedded in the social fabric,are doing Australia a disservice. It is portrayedas an act of betrayal of the country and of theAustralian people. “And I think it would be anenormous mistake if we begin to wallow ingeneralised self- criticism, because theoverwhelming majority of Australians have theproper instincts and decent attitudes and decentvalues”, he continues, further positioninghimself as a defender of this mighty country,mitigating and denying any hint of racism. Thediscourse of Australian values, is common inthe “texts”, and is suggestive of ‘their’The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 21 No 1 June 2009