[ExI] To Arms!

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/3/31 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:

> I don't listen to the news anymore, but I thought that there
> had been quite a bit of violence (beach violence?) in Australia
> between young Muslims and some other group.

You're probably thinking of the 2005 Cronulla riots in Sydney
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots), which as far as
I'm aware was unique in recent Australian history. A Google search for
"race riots Australia" gives multiple references for the 2005 incident
and one reference to the 1873 anti-Chinese riots at the Clunes gold
fields.

>> and I have never felt
>> unwelcome, let alone unsafe, in any part of Melbourne due to the
>> presence of a large ethnic minority (or in some cases, majority)
>> population: South-East Asian, Middle Eastern, East African, Southern
>> European.
>
> Your time will come. America and its ethnic problems
> are a harbinger of things to come for you. Not all
> cultures were created equal.

I think we have had long enough to see the results of ethnic problems.
The pattern is that for perhaps the first decade or two after a new
group of immigrants arrives there is some bad feeling towards them
from from those already here, but then they are accepted by all except
hard core racists. The most difficult times have been during economic
recessions, when it is easy for unemployed Australians to blame the
newcomers for taking their jobs.

There are, as you might expect, certain ethnic groups over-represented
in the crime statistics compared to the Australian born population.
According to table 4.1 in the following paper from the Australian
Institute of Criminology, people from Romania, Yugoslavia, the Soviet
republics, Vietnam, Lebanon, Turkey, Fiji, New Zealand and Cambodia
(in descending order) are more likely to be charged with crimes than
the Australian born, while people from other countries are less likely
to be charged with crimes.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/ethnicity-crime/ethnic-ch4.pdf


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou