S02E01 - COVID-19 and Australia's history of racism

May 13, 2020 Jay Ooi

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S02E01 - COVID-19 and Australia's history of racism Shoes Off

Transcript

Jay Ooi

COVID-19 has brought out a lot of targeted attacks in Australia.

Erin Chew

A lot of them are walking on the sidewalk, people stopping their cars and yelling racial slurs at them, saying to them, "coronavirus, go back to China," this stuff

Jay Ooi

But where do these come from?

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

So that the arrival the Chinese allow these white people to unify and form a government. But underpinning that unification, like tying these strange parties together was racial hatred and fear, a fear of difference, a fear of loss.

Jay Ooi

And why is it still around?

Professor Angela Woollacott

It was the in force and it was lived daily reality as well as the public international face of Australia for the whole first half of the 20th century.

Jay Ooi

Hello and welcome to Shoes Off, stories about Asian Australian culture. I’m Jay Ooi.

We’ve seen reports, videos, and maybe you’ve had your own experience of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s something that a lot of us Asians are dealing with at the moment, and at first I didn’t really know how to cover this topic. Racist attacks are happening, and yeah, it’s bad. What more is there to say? Well, today I want to explore the roots of this racism in Australia.

Erin Chew

when COVID-19 actually started in Wuhan, when it all happened, I was actually in Malaysia at that time by myself

Automatically, I already knew that there was going to be some racial component, when we go back, when I'm in Australia.

Jay Ooi

That’s Erin Chew, a writer and social activist who conducted a survey on Aussies experiencing racism due to COVID-19.

Yeah, so what happened at the airport?

Erin Chew

A lot of us, I was wearing a mask as well and a lot of people were wearing masks.

As I was walking out into the arrivals hall, I could see this Anglo-Australian woman look, she was probably waiting for somebody from a different flight and she looked at all of us quite suspiciously. I happened to, when I walked out, I actually walked past her and then I started to cough because I had a dry throat. She said to me, "Can you please get away from me, I don't want to catch your virus," and she literally walked off.

Jay Ooi

Now this might sound kind of like self preservation, but it’s important to note the language used - “your virus”. This idea that the virus belongs to Chinese people. And again, this might seem almost understandable given that we think COVID-19 started in Wuhan, China, so why is it not helpful to call this, as Trump said, a Chinese virus?

Erin Chew

First of all even the World Health Organization has always stated that we shouldn't name diseases or any type of viruses after a geographical name.

If you call a virus, like Donald Trump did, the Chinese virus, what happens is people who have a certain ignorance or who have certain ideas of what that means or who have certain ideas of what China means to them… they'll start generalizing that calling it the Chinese virus and anybody who looks Chinese, who looks remotely Chinese, must be responsible for this virus.

Osmond Chiu

The naming of COVID-19 as a Chinese virus is problematic, I think for a number of reasons. I think firstly, it implies that it is a disease related to people who are Chinese. And it is particularly problematic because when we talk about someone being Chinese in English, there really is no distinction between is someone actually a citizen of China? Do they have Chinese heritage and live in say a Western country? It sort of pulls in a lot of people and creates this sense that anyone who might look Chinese might be a carrier of disease and this virus. And that's without going into the deeply racist nature of the term itself.

my name's Osmond Chiu. I am a research fellow at the Per Capita Think Tank. And I've worked in policy circles for the last decade or so.

Jay Ooi

So referring to COVID-19 as a Chinese virus means that anyone who just looks Chinese to someone else can be a target for comments and attacks out of fear that they have brought this coronavirus to Australia. It doesn’t matter whether the person has been in Australia the whole time this pandemic has happened, or their whole life, or maybe they’re not Chinese at all but to others they fit into the category of what Australians think “Chinese” are, and now, all of these people can be targeted. Even Chinese migration to Australia is super complicated because the Chinese moved everywhere - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Cuba, Brazil, Panama, the list goes on.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

So these are diaspora communities, very similar to the ways that Europeans have their diasporic communities. So when they migrate here, the difference is we wouldn't say to a Canadian, "Hey, you're to blame for Trump," right? Wouldn't say that to a Canadian, okay. In fact, we probably wouldn't say it to an American with an American accent. We definitely wouldn't say it to a white person who just happens to look white.

So I am Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson, and I'm a lecturer in Australian history at the University of Sydney. I've long had an interest in China-Australian relations.

But you can imagine you come here as an Asian-looking person. Often many Australians somehow think you're a representative of the communist regime or a Chinese spy. This is bizarre, absolutely bizarre, that this is the case. It speaks to the prevalence of Euro centric ways of thinking in our education systems.

and it's all about the inadequacies of the person who is racist, than the person on the receiving end of that racism, very hard to educate someone if it's not even point that, yeah, all Chinese, like you guys are all from Mainland China. By the way, you've all got Coronavirus. I mean, it's absolutely bizarre.

Like I know very little about England. I don't understand the Westminster system. I don't know half of the Royal Family. I'm partly from Scotland, never been to Scotland. I can't pronounce the names of the villages in Scotland, right. Can't tell you anything about Scotland that's because I'm not from Scotland.

Jay Ooi

So even the Chinese communities in Australia, their ties to mainland China can also be little to none, yet because they look Chinese, they can be a target. And in Australia, they have been.

Osmond Chiu

There's been a fair bit of media reportage on examples of racist abuse that people have experienced in public places, examples of spitting. Even there was an example in Tasmania of a Hong Kong Chinese student who was violently attacked. But I think that's only skimming the surface.

Jay Ooi

Yes, there are plenty of other cases - I’m sure you’ve seen some circulating on news sites, like the Melbourne student who was attacked by a white lady, or a Telstra store worker who was told to go back to their own country. Even vandalism of a Chinese family’s property saying, ‘COVID-19 China Die’ - these incidences can be very unsettling for people who have nothing to do with the disease. In fact, as of the 18th April, the Australian government health website shows that more than 80% of all cases have come from either Europe, cruise ships or the USA and not China.

Erin and Osmond started seeing all these attacks against Asians happening and not decreasing, so they decided to create an online incident report for people in Australia who have experienced racism as a result of COVID-19.

Erin Chew

To give them that opportunity to add their voice to something else, to some kind of mechanism, I think it's extremely important.

Jay Ooi

There are of course other avenues to report it - the police, the Human Rights Commission, the Race Discrimination Commissioner, but these are much more formal processes, so Erin and Osmond’s survey is something quick and easy you can do from home. Within a week of the survey being live, they had over 100 responses, and this is just through online sharing - no federal or state announcements or anything of that scale.

But why is this happening? Despite far more cases in Australia coming from Europe and the USA, why haven’t we seen a similar fear of ‘European’ looking people? And why does me saying that out loud sound so outrageous, when the flip side seems expected and almost normal here?

Osmond Chiu

So, I think there has always been this underlying anti-Chinese sentiment. And that kind of goes back to the 19th century in my view. But what I think makes Australia unique is that it was defining in a way that it wasn't elsewhere.

Jay Ooi

So, how was our anti-Chinese sentiment a defining feature of Australia? What is Australia’s history with Chinese people?

Professor Angela Woollacott

So Chinese people started arriving in Australia as early as the early 19th century, and they were brought here first as small groups of laborers and they'd worked on farms, pastoral stations and other properties as servants and shepherds. And then it leapt hugely in the 1850s with the gold rush, the beginning of the gold rush.

My name's Angela Woollacott. I'm the Manning Clark Professor of History at the Australian National University. I'm a historian of Australia who's interested in broader transnational and international and imperial contexts for Australian history. And one of my areas of interest over the years has been that of the Chinese in Australia.

Jay Ooi

So there’s actually evidence that the Chinese knew about Australia before British settlement, but if we’re talking post 1788 settlement, the Chinese came to Australia starting in the early 1800’s, with a bigger influx in the 1850’s onward during the gold rush. Now let’s keep in mind what Australia was like - the first Victorian settlement wasn’t until 1803, so picture no cars, no x-rays, no electricity... so what we now know as Australia was a very different place in the 1850’s.

Professor Angela Woollacott

So the first part of the 19th century was one of invasion of Europeans. Invasion and great disruption for indigenous people, great loss of life for indigenous people through smallpox and frontier violence and disruption of loss of their livelihoods, and then very fast growth of these British settlements. So it was a period of enormous change.

Jay Ooi

Now this gold rush attracted a lot of migrants to Australia, not just the Chinese. But the Chinese were definitely a target. So much so that state governments started putting restrictions to lower the number of Chinese people who could enter.

Professor Angela Woollacott

On the goldfields there was fear about how much gold the Chinese might take. Although, as historian Ann Curthoys who's worked on the Chinese and the goldfields has pointed out when prospectors said, "Oh, the Chinese are taking too much gold," they didn't say that about other immigrant groups like people from America or continental Europe. So there was very clear racism going on.

Jay Ooi

Why do you think there is this distinct fear of the Chinese immigrants versus the other immigrants that were in Australia at the gold mines?

Professor Angela Woollacott

I think it's essentially racism, but we also should probably see it as connected to religion. So in the 19th century, the British Australian settlers were very dominantly Christian. Christianity and religion was extremely important. And with the Chinese people not being Christian, that was a very important factor. They were seen as pagan, as different as other in that sense. Of course language a factor too because the Chinese language was ... Very few British settlers here would have had any Chinese language skills.

Jay Ooi

I asked Dr Loy Wilson the same question - why was it particularly bad for the Chinese as opposed to other immigrants.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

I don't think historians have adequately answered that question. I have spent my career trying to answer that question. It breaks my heart frankly.

So there's a wonderful book by the historian Marilyn Lake called Drawing the Global Colour Line. She looks at what she calls white man's countries, these settler colonies. Right? She looks at the introduction of anti-Chinese legislation, anti-Asian legislation. So her explanation is quite, quite out there, but it's quite interesting. So she says that we wouldn't have the nations we have today without Chinese immigration. That actually, and Adam McKeown makes this argument too, that actually, if it hadn't been for this very large wave of Chinese immigration, this sort of motley crew of random white people from random parts of Europe that have like random cultural backgrounds, like Scottish, different accents, that frankly, hate each other. Right?

Jay Ooi

That's what I thought.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

Catholics couldn't marry Protestants. I mean, different villages in Scotland hated each other. Scots and Irish hated each other. Irish and English hated each other. Right? So she said, these guys wouldn't have banded together in these nations, right, Australia, if it hadn't been for the mutual hatred of the Chinese. So that the arrival the Chinese allow these white people to unify and form a government. But underpinning that unification, like tying these strange parties together was racial hatred and fear, a fear of difference, a fear of loss. Right, and that we wouldn't have the border system.

She says it's because we didn't have a strong sense of unity in the first place. We'd taken Aboriginal land, wasn't ours. We weren't very good at farming it. We weren't very good at understanding it. We're far away from home. So why are we here? Well, the Europeans don't want us back, but if we band together against somebody else that we hate even more than each other, then maybe we can find a reason for being here and for taking over this land, that's not ours. So this is her argument.

Jay Ooi
It's a very interesting perspective. But I guess we always kind of need a common enemy to some extent, and and the Chinese served that purpose I guess.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson
Another argument, Jay, that comes out a lot is about jealousy, comes out a lot, and still comes out today, still comes out today, comes out with the HSC. Right? Comes out with things about James the kind of like dog whistle of HSC results and comes out with bamboo ceiling debates to this day as well. It's that jealousy, right. It's the idea that the Chinese were too successful, too hard working, right. They embarrassed the Europeans. Then the Chinese made European women, right? The Irish women. This argument is important. It does, I think have some kind of legitimacy in that a lot of the racism that is directed towards Asian people is that that jealousy is quite specific, right? It's like, how dare you work so hard? My kid can't get into university because of your kid,

Jay Ooi

Okay, we’re digressing a little bit, so back to the gold rush. So the Chinese were different in many ways - religion, language, dress code and daily practices. But they were also very well known for working hard, even beyond the gold rush - more on our Chinese history in a future episode. And maybe it’s because of their success, their ability to actually acquire so much gold, or maybe it’s because they were seen as more different than the other Europeans that the governments started putting restrictions in place. The Chinese, as opposed to other immigrants, were positioned as the main competition for Australian resources.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

and now because of all these immigration restrictions that emerge because of anti-Chinese racism in the 1850s, the boat often couldn't stop in Sydney, had to go around to Robe in South Australia, where Chinese migrants were allowed to dock, this little town of Robe. They would get off there. It's cold, it's the Australian Bush, you're with your friends and somehow you have to walk all the way from Robe to the Victorian or New South Wales goldfields. Now this is a defining moment for many people. Are they going to survive as they walk? They often find you know the bodies of their comrades. They find characters in Chinese on trees, it's confronting.

Professor Angela Woollacott

The White Australia policy under the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was enforced because the British Imperial Government, when the legislation was being drafted, thrown out, the British Imperial government said, "You can't just do it by race." Partly because the British empire, including subjects of all kinds of races around Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and so forth. They just said, you can't just exclude people by race. It was done by a dictation test. So this was something that Australian officials copied from Natal in Southern Africa. So immigration officials have the power when people arrived in Australia to make them do a dictation test in any European language. And they could just randomly choose a lesser, like Hungarian, or some European language that there was no way an arriving person might be able to know. So that's how it was actually implemented.

Jay Ooi

So a bit of history. Before 1901, each state functioned as its own entity, and this dictation test that could be in any European language was in effect in some states. But when we federated and became Australia as a whole, this became a national policy. Picture it - everyone celebrating the nation coming together, and one of the first things our new national government does is restrict Chinese people from entering our borders. Australia as we know it today began by excluding Chinese people.

Professor Angela Woollacott

it was such an integral part of Australian policy and culture for such a long time. And one of the things that I think is really important for us to realise and to be sobered by is the fact that overseas other countries saw Australia as an overtly racist country for a very long time. From the late 19th century right through to the 1970s, people overseas would just look at Australia and see white Australia, this overtly racist country.

And I think in that way, Australia historically needs to be compared to the Jim Crow South in America and to apartheid in South Africa. And I think for a lot of Australians, that's not a comfortable comparison to draw, but historically it is absolutely warranted and justified and we need to see the comparisons. And of course this is very much about the treatment of indigenous Australians as well as migration policy, all of that is part of it. But I think the Australians need to know to be aware that we do have this very uncomfortable history of having been an overtly, officially a country that privileged whiteness, prioritise whiteness and put it front and centre in our immigration policy.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

I think we're looking at something akin to slavery here in terms of kind of the racial, the structural racial hatred that develops. It's one thing to have racism, okay, a belief that the Chinese are inferior, a threat. It's another thing to put that into law. So in Australia, we structurally translate our racism into a legal system that has the first colour bar, that is saying if you are a certain colour or race, you cannot enter this territory. It is for white people. 1850 early Victorian history, Victoria first place in the world to put that colour bar in place. Then we have laws then that Chinese have to live in a certain part of the goldfield. They're segregated, segregation laws based on race. So we translate this into law.

Jay Ooi

Yes we have a very distinct history of legislated racial discrimination, and it’s one we don’t talk about enough. Our foundations are that of racism and exclusion, and we have yet to formally recognise this racism against the Chinese. But beyond trying to keep Chinese people out, there’s more that was happening on our shores.

You were talking about venereal diseases in the Northern territory. What sort of time period are we talking about here?

Ben Silverstein

This is during the first world war that it becomes a major controversy but from the early 1910s, and then I suppose concern about it is really whipped up through the 1915, 16, 17, in that period.

Jay Ooi

This is Dr Ben Silverstein, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ANU, and venereal diseases is another way of saying sexually transmitted infections.

Ben Silverstein

It's from 1915 that the Commonwealth government starts to make this a concern, or a more substantial concern. There was a large amount, a large proportion, of venereal disease in the Northern territory at this time, 1915/16. What I find really interesting about it, in the Northern territory at least, is the way that it's represented. Rather than turning ... Well, not rather than turning. We might have a medical way of explaining the spread of syphilis, the spread of other venereal diseases. The way that they explained it was primarily as a consequence of what they would call race mixing. The spread of venereal disease was attributed often to practice of Chinese men having sex with Aboriginal women and then they would describe it spread into the white community by white men having sex with those same Aboriginal women. So, you see this process, or at least this argument about a process, of transmission from Chinese men to Aboriginal women to white men and therefore onto white women.

It's really processes of race mixing that they blame for the spread of disease and this is reflected in the way that they govern it. They start banning contact between people who they're describing different races, they ban sexual relationships, whether they're consensual or coerced, between Aboriginal women and non Aboriginal men. And this is the way that disease is regulated and I think we see that really often in a whole lot of settings, colonial settings in particular.

Jay Ooi

Yeah, and I guess it would stem from the idea that the white people are clean and these other people, coloured people are dirty. Is that right?

Ben Silverstein

Yeah, absolutely. That white people are clean and are not diseased until they come into contact with people who are described as of a different race. It's the mixture that makes people sick or that spreads disease. And so, once you attribute contagion to that, to move to a form of racial segregation as a way of preventing disease or preventing ill health to the white population, becomes a logical move.

Jay Ooi

So race mixing was seen as a way that diseases were spreading to white Australians. Chinese people were the diseased ones who were spreading it to the white population.

And do you see this as a sort of parallel to what's happening with coronavirus today?

Ben Silverstein

Yeah. I think we see, particularly in the early weeks, days and weeks, of the spread of coronavirus in Australia or as it began to spread. There was this attribution of that spread to contact with Chinese people or with people who've returned from China. We saw that panic among some people over whether you could catch a catch coronavirus from eating Chinese food or from being near people of Chinese ethnicity, whether they'd been near someone infected or not. There wasn't a sense that contact with Americans or contact with American food or Italian food or Italian people would cause contagion and the spread of disease. There was a sense that it was the mixture or that it was what was often termed as race mixing the that would cause contagion, that would cause the spread of coronavirus.

Jay Ooi

So we also have a history of blaming minorities for diseases. But Australia now kind of prides itself in being a multicultural country, so why hasn’t this history of racism gone away? Here’s what Professor Woollacott had to say.

Professor Angela Woollacott

We are a very multicultural society and in many ways, we're a very successful multicultural society and yet the racism is there. And because I'm a historian and because I know just how virulent racism could be, such as the violence against Chinese miners in the gold rush and overt instances of racist violence on streets in Melbourne.

I think my fear is that there's a kind of deep cultural well of racism in Australia that the exclusion policies of the late 19th century that became entrenched in the White Australia policy, which was in power throughout the ... It was the in force and it was lived daily reality as well as the public international face of Australia for the whole first half of the 20th century. And then even then it took until three quarters of the way through the 20th century for it to be ended. I think Australian culture has integrally included racism for so long historically that it's kind of been built into the fabric of Australian history and culture. And that when there is any kind of spark or event that brings fear and anxiety to the fore or concern about a quality or things that can trigger it. I mean, essentially it's not too hard to scratch the surface in Australia and for racism to come to the fore. And it's very sad that that happens.

Jay Ooi

I asked Dr Loy-Wilson about this idea of multiculturalism.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

Look, like all of us, I love the idea. It's a beautiful idea. I love it. Love the festivals, I love the posters. Of course we haven't. Of course we haven't. If there's even one race-based attack that happens to people who are just living their lives in this country, of course, we failed. Of course, we failed. With the existence of this ongoing kind of racial vilification, the danger that people of non-Anglo appearance experience in this country of course, more so in different periods of intense fear and anxiety like the Coronavirus era, but also during 9/11 for Muslim communities and throughout the 00’s Muslim communities, we are not a multicultural nation. Using that word is offensive for those people. Because it says to them, what are you complaining about? It’s multicultural, what are you complaining about? It's a festival dedicated to you. We like your food. As Ghnassan Hage, the theorist says, it's superficial, right? It doesn't deal with the heart of the matter. It allows Europeans to engage in the ritual of racial harmony, the ritual of racial inclusion, eating yummy food, for example, going to a festival without the hard work of what that actually means. You got to do the hard work, right? You got to do the hard work. The hard work involves looking at your own privilege. So until we have a country with structural privilege is given disproportionately to Anglo people and white people. Okay? So when privilege is divided in that way, you can't have a multicultural nation. It is a monocultural nation that allows occasionally other cultures to have sanitised expressions of cultural difference funded by Europeans, approved by Europeans, non threatening to Europeans. So no, I love the idea. I love the idea. But no.

Osmond Chiu

I guess we've never really unpicked that false ... That sort of false creation of this Chinese other. And it's really been there throughout Australia's history after white Australia ended. This concern about being on the doorstep of Asia and this fear.

Jay Ooi

That’s Osmond Chiu from the start of the show.

Osmond Chiu

This fear of constantly being taken over that's existed at a subconscious level because of where we are geographically in the world.

Jay Ooi

And so, then COVID-19 is then allowing people to ... Well, it's bringing out this fear that they've had and it's making it ... I guess, they're more likely to be overt about it. Is that right?

Osmond Chiu

I would say so. And I think part of the issue is that people don't see it as racist. And this is a general problem in Australia and this is a constant retort you see, that people are saying the reaction isn't one based on racism, but actually just fear. And it highlights that in Australia, we really struggle with understanding casual racism and systemic discrimination.

Jay Ooi

Yes, it’s the sad reality that our history of racism against the Chinese and other minorities didn’t disappear with the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. Change within our people doesn’t happen so quickly, and it only takes a spark to bring back some of the flames. And it’s affecting a lot of Australians.

Osmond Chiu

And I don't think it's emphasised enough that the best estimate at the moment is that about 14.7% of Australia's population is Asian Australian. And I'm using that in a very broad sense, and not just East Asian. But I don't think it's emphasised enough that that is the equivalent of the African American population in the United States.

And when we're talking about these issues, it's affecting a large proportion of the population. When you think of even just Chinese Australians in somewhere like Sydney, that's at least 10% of the population. It's not like a tiny minority of people who are affected. It's actually quite a sizeable and growing minority of Australians.

Jay Ooi

So COVID-19 has brought out a racist side of Australia that we try to pretend doesn’t exist, and it’s causing real damage to a lot of Australians. We’re good at thinking we’re not racist, but our sad reality is that our nation has a long history of racism, particularly against Chinese people. The Chinese have been painted as stealing our resources and spreading diseases in the past all whilst being vilified for working too hard and out-performing the Europeans, and whilst we did officially get rid of our White Australia Policy, deeply rooted racism doesn’t just go away, and this coronavirus is just one way to bring it all to the surface. People suddenly think it’s okay to target anyone who looks Chinese, even though most of our local cases are not from people who came from China.

Writing this episode and chatting to all these people, it genuinely made me sad, not just because of the actual attacks, but because it’s not the Australia that I so wished we were. And it really spelled out our rather ugly history in a way I never fully realised. As much as I call Australia home, and the only home I’ve known, our history of racism, particularly against Chinese people, is something we need to be more aware of, because it has shaped our country. But there’s also a lot of we can learn from the Chinese in our history.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

But there's also a lot of stories of these men unionising, these men contacting community members in towns and New South Wales, these men taking their employers to court for bad treatment. Very important to emphasise from the start, that these men came out as workers were not victims, that they often had agency and tried to claim their rights.

They get very good at operating under that surveillance, so kind of like ducking down, figuring out when inspectors are going to come up past, figuring out what Europeans are going to cause some trouble. Also, these guys were often armed. They had knives, they had what were called tomahawks. They had poles. So they weren't kind of weak, they were tough.

Jay Ooi

Even more than that, the Chinese formed brotherhood organisations to protect their money and resources from theft and burning. In fact I’ve hardly touched on the day-to-day racism the Chinese faced in the 19th century, and believe me, there’s a lot, but despite this, they were resourceful, they banded together and fought the racism that they continually faced. And I think COVID-19 is a reminder for us, that we can do the same. Know our history, understand the world we live in, band together and stand up against racism.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson

The thing we do is we do exactly what you do, and we try to understand and we try to educate. We just try, we just keep trying, right? There's so many Asian-Australian activists that might keep banging their head against the wall. But I think people are beginning to listen.

Jay Ooi

Here’s Erin and Osmond from the start of the show.

Erin Chew

the racism is bad, but it has actually woken up the community, that there is a racism issue in Australia. Many of those who may have been sleeping for quite a long time may have experienced something or seen experiences and read about these experiences, so in many ways they've woken up to this issue. I think in some ways that's the silver lining of that situation.

Osmond Chiu

And my hope is there's that realisation that things like racism and discrimination still do exist. And I hope it can galvanise people so that we can go, "Okay, this has happened. What can we do to stop it from happening again in the future?" And that's my hope, that it sort of awakens people and activates people.

Jay Ooi

This episode of Shoes Off was written, produced and edited by me Jay Ooi.

Special thanks to all our guests Erin Chew, Osmond Chiu, Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, Professor Angela Woollacott and Dr Ben Silverstein, as well as Nadia Rhook who I couldn’t fit in to this episode but you’ll hear from her soon.

There was a lot I couldn’t fit into this episode, like the lived experience of the Chinese in 19th Century Australia, and how other Asian countries are dealing with COVID-19 compared to Australia, but I hope this has given you a glimpse into the complexity of race and racism here. Let me know what you think or what you would like to have heard more of at facebook.com/shoesoffau.

If you liked Shoes Off please subscribe, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or head to shoesoff.net where you can also find a bunch of resources mentioned in today’s episode.

And if you have someone who you want to get on side when it comes to race and racism in Australia, please share this episode with them.

Thanks, and catch you next episode.

Professor Angela Woollacott

But most Australians, politicians, leaders immediately denounced racism when it occurs and they have to, they need to. And it just has to be immediately crushed. It's so important for all leaders in Australia to denounce it the instant it raises its ugly head and to say, "This is not Australia. It's not okay. We are not that and this has to be stopped. It has to be prevented. It has to be prosecuted." People have to be prosecuted for these instances. So I think it's crucial that our leaders do that.

I think the great majority of them are very good at that. And I think the great majority of Australians aren't racist in a conscious way or in a regular way. But I think that culture is a very deep and complex matter and that perhaps like sexism, misogyny other kind of forms of discrimination that even when extensibly it's not there, it's not approved, it can come to the fore for reasons that are irrational or unfortunate and ought to be condemned.