A governance of denial: hate crime in New Zealand and Australia

In Australia and New Zealand, the strategies employed by governments to remedy prejudice, intolerance and hatred occur on a continuum; ranging from global mission statements about multiculturalism/ biculturalism, through to the enactment of civil anti-discrimination and anti-vilification legislation. In some jurisdictions, these civil remedies have been extended to criminal codes and sentencing legislation, and enshrined in human rights charters. In the place of a comprehensive outline of each of the nine jurisdictions, case studies from throughout the region are presented as exemplars of the strategies employed and barriers faced in reducing prejudice-related violence.

The differences between the Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions belies a common theme that frames the delay in developing legislative responses to hate crime and the paucity of cases to reach the point at which they begin to establish an agreed set of norms and values about the abhorrence of prejudice and hatred. At most turns—whether political or public rhetoric, or legislative and policy development - there is a frontier denial, minimisation and negation of prejudice and hatred.

Tertiary educators' voices in Australia and South Africa: experiencing and engaging in African music and culture

Music tertiary educators can foster positive experiences that promote diversity, enhance intercultural and cross-cultural understanding through our teaching. Through findings of interview data of tertiary music educators’ understandings of multicultural music practice at two South African universities and at an Australia university, I used interpretative phenomenological analysis to analyse the data. Two major themes emerged: why is it important to teach multicultural music like that of Africa, and what are some of the effective ways of preparing students to best teach it? The data provides insights into an appreciation of and respect for music and cultural diversity. In multicultural societies educators cannot deliver courses based solely on one’s own identity and cultural perspective. I argue that music education may be seen as an agent of social change where music teaching and learning can occur through exploring, experiencing, expressing and engaging in the music of our own culture and that of others.

Interviewing pairs: discussions on migration and identity

This article examines a research method of conducting interviews with pairs of individuals, who may be friends or relatives. The authors critically reflect on their experiences of collecting qualitative data in an interview with two respondents. While one-on-one interviews and focus groups are more established and well-studied forms of gathering research data, we argue that paired interviews as a data collections method present additional advantages as well as some challenges for qualitative researchers. The researchers embraced the opportunity to interview pairs of individuals with the intention of minimising the asymmetry of power habitually inherent in interview situations. In the authors' experiences, paired interviews served to empower those being interviewed and reduced the discomfort felt by some in the personal interview situation. This form of interviewing tended to give more autonomy to the respondents and prompted them to provide more nuanced responses. Paired interviews assisted respondents in feeling relaxed and comfortable, provided a vibrant environment that encouraged respondents to build on each other's ideas and enabled them to enhance each other's stories. Respondents were better motivated to build discussions around an interview question and then illustrate their responses with examples. In our studies, we found that our respondents tended to offer more thorough and comprehensive narratives in the setting of a paired interview.

Muslim active citizenship in Australia: socioeconomic challenges and the emergence of a Muslim elite

The most recent national Census demonstrated that Australian Muslims continue to occupy a socioeconomically disadvantaged position. On key indicators of unemployment rate, income, type of occupation and home ownership, Muslims consistently under-perform the national average. This pattern is evident in the last three Census data (2001, 2006 and 2011). Limited access to resources and a sense of marginalisation challenge full engagement with society and the natural growth of emotional affiliation with Australia. Muslim active citizenship is hampered by socioeconomic barriers. At the same time, an increasingly proactive class of educated Muslim elite has emerged to claim a voice for Muslims in Australia and promote citizenship rights and responsibilities.

Will the real Waleed Aly please stand up?: Media, celebrity and the making of an Australian public intellectual

Abstract: Waleed Aly is arguably the most visible and vocal Australian public intellectual from a non-Anglo-Australian background. The ubiquitous Aly is a veritable Renaissance man - he is a television presenter, radio host, academic and rock musician. He is also a former lawyer, and served on the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria. In short, he is the 'go-to' Muslim for commentary on a wide range of political and civic affairs. This article argues that Aly's media profile and celebrity status have as much to do with an Australian cultural imaginary that posits 'whiteness' as an uncontestable normative value as it does with Aly's undoubted skills as a journalist, academic and cultural commentator. It examines Aly's career with reference to Ghassan Hage's concept of 'whiteness' as a form of aspirational cultural capital and various theories of persona and performativity. For Hage, 'whiteness' is not a literal skin colour; rather, it consists of elements that can be adopted by individuals and groups (such as nationally valued looks, accents, tastes, cultural preferences and modes of behaviour). While entry to what Hage calls Australia's 'national aristocracy' is generally predicated on possessing the correct skin tone, it is theoretically possible for dark-skinned people such as Waleed Aly to enter the field of national belonging and partake in public discourse about a range of topical issues. More specifically, the article substantiates its claims about Aly's status as a member of Australia's cultural aristocracy through a comparative discourse and performance analysis of his presentation of 'self' in four distinctive media contexts: Channel 10's The Project, the ABC RN Drive program, ABC TV's Q&A and the SBS comedy-talk show Salaam Caf , which looked at the 'funny side of life as an Australian Muslim' and showcased other multi-talented Muslim professionals of both genders.

Advertising the 2015 Cricket World Cup: representing multicultural female sports fans

Intersectional accounts of how women sports fans from diverse cultural backgrounds are represented remain largely unconsidered in fandom literature. This article examines an Australian advertisement for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, which features as its main protagonists female cricket fans supporting a variety of countries. It makes use of a transnational feminist cultural studies paradigm to frame a discussion of how commercial sports media narratives situate these fans as ‘‘ordinary.’’ In considering how the multicultural female sports fan is configured as ordinary in the Australian sporting context, I demonstrate the ways In which narratives of gender and nation are mobilized to situate multicultural women as marginal to both the Australian nation and cricket, despite the prominence given to ethnically diverse women in the advertisement. This manoeuvre, I argue, responds to the cultural and economic transformations of cricket globally, simultaneously denying and universalizing difference as a mechanism to assuage the anxieties generated by the decentering of Western power in international cricket.

Migrant mobilities: cruel optimism and the case of AJ D’Cruz

Migrants are mobile by definition. They literally uproot themselves and move to sometimes-distant lands for a variety of reasons. Some move away from real or imagined threats to their very existence. Others seek a better quality of life. And some adventurous souls are inhabited by a restless wanderlust – a desire to roll the dice and see what happens. Such mobility requires fortitude and faith. Migrants move through space and, if they have an aspirational disposition, they attempt to accumulate symbolic capital to move up those social and economic hierarchies that bestow status and prestige within their adopted homes. The migrant journey to Australia often ends with the realisation that one has to make and re-make one’s identity, and perform a series of adjustments – adjustments in terms of comportment, dress, accent and disposition. My father was a migrant to Australia. More specifically, he was an Anglo-Indian migrant – a member of the ‘mixed-race’ community produced by British colonialism. He left India for the UK in 1962 and, after living in London for 10 years or so, immigrated to Australia in 1973, dragging his immediate family with him. Lured to the so-called ‘lucky country’ by the optimistic prospect of building wealth and prosperity under the Southern Cross, his ambitions were thwarted by casual and institutional racism. He died prematurely at the age of 53. This multi-media presentation tells his story through a series of encounters with the historical archive and the material remnants of my father’s relatively short life (letters, photographs, sound recordings, 8mm films). It provides a singular account of the performance practices involved in becoming a ‘New Australian’. Combining personal anecdotes and philosophical ruminations on history, technology, and cultural identity, the performance interrogates and performs a series of migrant mobilities.

Religious ambivalence: suppression of pro-social attitudes toward asylum seekers by right-wing authoritarianism

A survey of 168 White Australian community members examined whether ambivalence toward certain social groups by some religious individuals constituted a suppression effect in which authoritarian motivated prejudice suppressed more pro-social attitudes toward asylum seekers. Using mediation analysis, it was found that Christian religious identity was not significantly associated with prejudice at a bivariate level. However, when Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) was taken into account, Christians (compared with non-Christians) were less likely to hold negative attitudes toward asylum seekers in Australia. Inclusion of acculturation ideologies (assimilation, multiculturalism, and color-blindness) in the models indicated that the suppression effect was specific to RWA rather than due to other intergroup attitudes. However, findings suggest that multiculturalism may be one proximal indicator of Christian pro-sociality.

Assessing Merit Aid and Need-Based Aid At Private Institutions

Institutions provide students with full tuition merit awards through formal scholarship programs for outstanding performance in academics, leadership, community service, and athletics. This brief outlines how institutions fund and utilize merit to increase retention rates, particularly for minority and first generation students.

Um olhar multicultural sobre as políticas públicas para indígenas no governo federal

Este trabalho parte da premissa de que as políticas públicas universalistas não podem ser concebidas uniformemente para uma população sem se considerarem as diferenças culturais, porque tal situação comprometeria os resultados desejados. Para elucidarmos melhor tal premissa, selecionamos a questão indígena brasileira. A referência teórica desta pesquisa, o multiculturalismo, é estrangeira, portanto não ignoramos as limitações e a necessidade de adaptação de que necessita quando transportada para a realidade brasileira. De duas análises já existentes sobre o nível de políticas multiculturais nos países Latinos, comparamos a situação do Brasil com os outros países a fim de formar uma idéia geral sobre o contexto brasileiro em relação aos demais. A pesquisa, então, parte da revisão das condições históricas dos indígenas desde os anos 1970 e é complementada com indicadores demográficos das populações autóctones cotejadas com a nacional. Nesse momento já podemos apontar as dificuldades no aspecto normativo das políticas públicas multiculturais. Uma análise detalhada das propostas de políticas públicas específicas para os indígenas, no Plano Plurianual de 2008-2011 do Governo Federal, indica possíveis contradições entre diferentes programas e ações. Também verificamos a forma como o Ministério da Educação (MEC) e a sua Secretaria específica (SECAD/MEC) abordam a questão da diversidade cultural, na defesa de programas e ações sob perspectiva diferente dos do multiculturalismo. Finalizamos com um estudo dos limites e das oportunidades desse tratamento na questão indígena no Brasil, do que se conclui que há um movimento incipiente pró-multiculturalismo no país.