Joumanah El Matrah: The feared other: Peter Dutton's and Australia's pathology around race

Joumanah El Matrah writes about The feared other: Peter Dutton's and Australia's pathology around race.

Dutton’s elevation to the home affairs ministry was always to read crime through the lens of ideology; this is the only context in which linking crime to race makes sense. Increasingly it appears that this government wants us to conceive of ourselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and right now from foreigners that come from one of the most discriminated communities in Australia. Dutton seems compelled to persuade us that those who are most disempowered in our society are our greatest threat.

Ideology is perhaps also why Dutton chose to portray Victoria as a state of residents too frightened to leave home. This is a state that is both Australia’s progressive heartland and the nation’s best attempt at a highly diverse society. Dutton’s implication is that this is the cost of progressive politics and the cost of any sort of pride in our cultural diversity. But this is not a state of scared people, and how most Victorians would respond to Dutton’s comments was best captured by Victoria’s minister for youth affairs Jenny Mikakos’s description of them as “bullshit”.

The damage of wholesale vilification of a community, especially its young people who already face considerable challenges, is sometimes irreparable. It is not only the damage that is wrought from labelling a community as one prone to violence, it is also the damage that is wrought by communities having to defend themselves against accusations of violence as if they are personally responsible.

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Racism divides us so that the elite can rule.

Resistance starts with overcoming fear.

In seeing the dignity in others, we see the dignity in ourselves.