Chapter One

Racism has existed more or less in every society, including Australia. In my twenty years (1986–1989 and 1994 till now) of living in Australia as a minority (third-generation) overseas-born Chinese, it has been my experience that the majority of Australians are good people despite massive incidents of racist attacks and racist policies throughout the history of this country—past and present. Only a small number of the population (I reckon 10 to 20 percent) are true racists. And among this group of people, my observation is that many have been misled by their media and right-wing politicians about other cultures. Once you greeted them with a smile or initiated conversation, followed by a few more contacts, the hostility eventually disappeared or at least was reduced.

It is very easy to brand a culture or country as racist if we use small stories, past history, or individual incidents when they occurred to fuel fear and bigotry. In this chapter, I will use a series of examples to demonstrate how the Australian media are fuelling racism against minorities in this country. I will begin my analysis using an incident of a schoolboy who claimed he was bullied by a Muslim over his salami sandwich in November 2009 as a classic example of negative racial profiling by the Australian media over a common social phenomenon: school bullying.

School bullying: a common social phenomenon in Australia

School bullying is a common social problem in Australia. A report by The Age on 29 March, 2010, under the heading "School bullying and injuries cost state million