An Australian reporter claimed they “don’t have the understanding of police killings here.” They do.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 3 months, you will know about the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement and protests, calling for both an end to police brutality and equality between races. It has been a worldwide movement, with people coming out in their hundreds of thousands to show their solidarity and support, despite the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
Although the Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013, the catalyst for these monumental 2020 protests was George Floyd’s murder at the hands of 4 police officers on May 26, 2020 in Minneapolis, United States. Since then, the issues of police brutality and racism in general have shaken the world. There have been calls for international change, such as in the UK, with the notable toppling of the slave trader statue in Bristol into the river. This is just one example of widespread action that is FINALLY causing structural change.
Despite what some media outlets would have you believe, the United States is not the only country that falls short in terms of race equality, police brutality, unjust prison sentencing … I could go on. As we have seen in the UK, many countries are being forced to take a look at the institutional racism that exists and what they can do about it moving forward.
This narrative of the ‘America problem’ is one of the more worrying things to come out of the BLM movement. It is the narrative pushed by media sources that racism is an issue endemic to the USA. We heard talks of this in the UK, with recurring statements of “oh, we’re nowhere near as bad as the US.” In Japan, many marches for this ‘America problem’ have taken place, however there is very little looking inwards at its own discrimination.
A poignant example of this damaging narrative with regards to the presence of racism was seen at a BLM march in America, where a white Australian reporter asked why they were so crucial. Her response at the end of the interview? That she appreciates the man’s perspective because “people in Australia don’t have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here.”
Well. As you can probably imagine, this made headlines. Australian people kicked off on Twitter, primarily commenting on how narrow-minded this was. It may not be as well-known, but in reality, Australia has a very similar foundation to the USA, with the Indigenous people suffering the consequences of white people taking over to this day.
Let’s take a look at the country’s history. Since James Cook and his British fleet arrived in 1770, the Aborigines have had their land stripped away from them, (Uluru was only handed back to its rightful owners in 1985) foreign disease wiped out whole communities and others were massacred. Between 1910 and 1970, the Australian Federal and State Governments forcibly removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families in order to assimilate them into white Australia. This was because of their belief in white superiority and that ‘full-blood’ Aboriginals would die out. This ‘Stolen Generation’, as they are known, suffered extreme physical and sexual abuse in the care of the state, and the effects within the Aboriginal community, and the children themselves as they struggle with PTSD, depression and anxiety, are still felt to this very day.
Even before learning about the police brutality that is present, it is clear as day that Australia’s foundations are deeply rooted in racist ideologies and violence against Aboriginals as a whole population. The only thing that makes this abhorrent history even worse is the knowledge that, after research into the History curriculum of Australian high schools, the only specific mention about Aboriginal people seen is through ‘describing the impact of the free settlers on the Aboriginal people’. Talk about silencing a whole community and historical perspective through lack of education.
In Australia, Indigenous people make up roughly 2% of the population, which in itself is a completely separate issue, but 27% of the national prison population. 443 have died in police custody since 1991 and 38% of cases weren’t even given any medical care where it was needed. This is a whole 20% higher than cases where the person in need was non-Indigenous. 1991 is used as the key marker of these statistics because it marked the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. So, you’d think there would be some improvement since the 90’s, right? Wrong. In fact, the percentage of the male prison population identifying as Indigenous has doubled, from 14% to 28.6% in March 2020.
As of June 2020, the Guardian wrote that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners are 10 times more likely to die in custody than the non-Indigenous population. But remember what the reporter said? We “don’t have an understanding of police killings.” I think we can all agree this is far from the truth.
Clearly, racism is not just the ‘America problem’, as many countries would have you believe. Clearly, Australia has a very long way to go in terms of race equality. Many people have shown frustration that it took the murder of George Floyd in the USA to get Australia’s home-grown problems brought to the forefront. However, as a result of his murder over 20 protests have taken place around the country, to show their solidarity but also to highlight this high death rate of incarcerated Aboriginal people.
Amid the protests, hope has risen for an Aborigine ‘voice to parliament’ organisation which will help narrow the equality gap and finally give them a role in the running of their country, which was so violently taken away from them 250 years ago.
So really. Not to call out any specific journalists or media sources, but in just one ignorant sentence you can practically deny a whole group’s daily struggles, pushing them two steps back. Please, do your research before you speak.
If you are interested in learning about the Aboriginal experience and culture, check out this website: https://www.commonground.org.au
To find out about individual deaths, go to this database:https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2018/aug/28/deaths-inside-indigenous-australian-deaths-in-custody