Exterminate exterminate

At a business forum the other day I heard a successful businessman of Lebanese extraction argue that Australia has a high level of low level racism but a low level of high level racism.

This, in context, was used to create the impression that our problem with racism isn’t really that bad.

Now this guy is well and truly part of the establishment and wears his Islamic religious beliefs as a sort of emblem of token inclusionism within the business community. That is, he gets to eat a lot of lunches off these conciliatory views.

He didn’t address the kinetic link between low level and high level racism – do they have a correlation? can the proliferation of the former pave the way for the latter?

Our parliament is now getting itself all worked up over the racial discrimination act all over again.

The key issue is whether it should be unlawful to offend or insult a person based on their race or religion. Unlawful meaning that the offended or insulted party, if they have the means and motivation, can take the suspected racist to court for reparations.

Most agree that the racial discrimination act needs to ensure that high level racism is unlawful or even illegal.

I believe that low level racism should be discouraged in other ways, through education and marketing, simply because an over-reach into this space will create very real incursions into personal freedoms.

And to be honest, making racial discrimination unlawful unfairly favours those with the means to prosecute offenders – that is, it ironically discriminates against the lower socio-economic victims.

It’s a very grey area, the bit in the middle between high level and low level discrimination, and I for one would err on the side of caution before using the law as a solution to a problem that is not properly understood.