Move over Los Angeles, Move over Paris…
December 13th, 2005
Over the last few days residents of Sydney, Australia, have been confronted with some serious violence and racial hatred. The flashpoint of this trouble has been the beachfront community of Cronulla, in the south of Sydney. The trouble has apparently arisen over simmering tensions between the mostly Anglo-Australian (i.e. white) locals and youths of Middle-Eastern extraction. You can read the back-story here, here and here.
I’ve been to Cronulla before, and it’s a beautiful place. It’s a real shame that such ugliness has to raise its head at all, especially in a place that seemed as nice as Cronulla.
Sadly, for a number of years now the Middle-Eastern community, and particularly the Lebanese community, has been battling an image problem created by a few bad eggs. Like all Islamic communities throughout the “western” world, they have had to deal with suspicion and some misplaced resentment following the Twin Tower Attacks of September 11, 2001. There was also widespread anger a couple of years ago when some youths, apparently of Lebanese extraction, were convicted of raping a teenage woman in Sydney. Sadly, it seems that the wider community lacks the discernment and wisdom not to judge the whole community on the actions of a few degenerates.
I have no doubt that some of these Lebanese, Syrian, Pakistani or whoever youths have been acting like jerks. I have no doubt that a few of them have even acted like criminals. But to have a riot over that is lawless at best, and morally and socially corrupt at worst. Sadly, the next time I hear someone refer to Australia as a melting-pot of cultures, I’ll have to disagree. Sydney, meet Paris, meet Los Angeles.
[…] As evidenced by one of my previous posts, there is still a lot of cultural differences and racial hatred that exists in this country. I thought an online resource in a similar vein to that of the Thora Institute that addresses these perceptions of different peoples could be useful. If you know of one, let me know in the comments below. […]
[…] I’ve been watching a really interesting documentary series called Race on the ABC recently. As the issue of race relations is something I’ve written about here and here already (funnily enough, it wasn’t a subject I was planning to write about when launching this site), I thought I’d share this gem of a documentary with you. […]
[…] Spectators of different ethnic groups attacked each other at the Australian Open (Tennis) yesterday. Wow. I didn’t imagine this could happen at the tennis. I’ve written about this sort of behaviour before. I’m over writing about it, really. I guess it is a sign of the times, and a sign of the sick problems this society has to deal with. […]