Australia’s refusal to name and confront racism has prevented meaningful progress on eliminating it, the nation’s Race Discrimination Commissioner has told an Adelaide forum.
Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman was in Adelaide during “Harmony Week”, and addressed an event hosted by the Multicultural Affairs Commission of South Australia, in partnership with the Don Dunstan Foundation and Reconciliation SA.
The commissioner pointed out that the occasion – March 21 – was globally recognised as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
In Australia, however, the Howard Government rebadged the event as “Harmony Day” in 1999 and it has remained that way – uniquely in the world.
“The 21st of March has been a date globally recognised as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” Sivaraman (pictured below with Equal Opportunity Commissioner Jodeen Carney) told the event at UniSA. The date was set by the UN in 1966 as a day of mourning after the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa where 69 people were murdered by police at a peaceful demonstration against apartheid.
“For me, it is somewhat jarring that a day recognising a massacre born of racism, is replaced with a day of celebration under the banner of Harmony Day,” he said.
“Harmony is a wonderful ideal. But we have to ask ourselves, as a country, why we are to loath to talk about racism? Because to get to a harmonious society, we first need to address racism.”
The Commissioner argued that the “refusal to name and confront racism has prevented meaningful progress on eliminating it”.
He said while government had a key role to play – despite approached to racism being disjointed and ad hoc – everyone in the community could also take action in their own workplaces, for example
