On violence against Indian students
The following is something I wrote some time ago, as a comment on the then-prominent issue of violence against Indian students in Australia, and specifically in response to the various strategies deployed to play down the quantity of this violence, and to undermine any suggestions that racism, or race in any sense, was a significant factor in whatever violence there was. Is. Shortly after I wrote it, I sent it to Liz Thompson, to make sure that she was comfortable with the references to her, and also to make sure that I wasn’t saying anything ridiculous. Having received permission and reassurance on these fronts, I then forgot about it. But for what it is worth, here it is.
Many have claimed that Indian students are no more likely to be attacked than anyone else, or anyone else deemed to be in similar circumstances – claims often based on interpretation of statistics concerning police reports. Such statements may be in good faith.
Such statements, however, are almost certainly rubbish. No-one should be surprised that most people in Australia find it easy to believe such claims, minimizing violence which they do not suffer against people who have been socially almost invisible. The analogy I’ve sometimes used for the ability to not notice tens of thousands of people living, studying, working in taxis and 7-Elevens is with the legendary ability of yuppies in New York to not notice the homeless people they step over on the street, though this might be a little unfair.
In any case, these claims about the levels of violence seem to suggest that Indians are whining more than anyone else – as if there is an acceptable level of violence. And the claims of racial parity (that everyone gets attacked) also have the effect – and in many cases the intention – of seeming to reduce the evidence for ‘racism’ in this violence, at least in the somewhat simple understanding of ‘racism’ being invoked. (Claims about, or that it is, non-whites attacking Indians have similar effects, while claims about anti-Indian violence from Muslims – or people of Middle-Eastern appearance – help to absolve ‘Australians’ while shifting responsibility to those Islamic people (or those multicultural people, if you like). The convoluted ironies only increase when one considers that Indian students have sometimes experienced racism at least in part because anti-Islamic sentiments exist amongst ‘Australians’ unable to distinguish between, and indifferent to distinctions between, Muslims and any other brown foreigners they may encounter.)
But those statistics: can they really be trusted?
No.
Everyone who ever seriously considers crime statistics must always consider the questions of reporting. This is hardly a secret, and is one of the reasons, for example, why statistics about rape are notably difficult to interpret. The fact that no-one in the mainstream media appears to have even mentioned this issue in reporting such claims, and that police similarly take such statistics as automatically reflecting the realities people experience, is either evidence of stupidity or complicity in the kind of intentions I discuss above – intentions which of course dovetail with desires to protect Australia’s third biggest source of export income i.e. the many many billions of dollars generated by the ‘international education industry’.
But I’m not just suggesting that the claims about violence are questionable, that the claims that Indian students are no more subject to violence than anyone else, and that therefore the evidence for racial motivation is weak, are based on statistics which do not prove everything they are alleged to. I’m suggesting that the claims are rubbish.
I’m not just suggesting that the issues of levels of reporting is important; I’m stating that an enormous amount of violence has not been reported. I’m stating that the violence is not limited to but often from whites, including from suit-wearing types in the city, and I’m stating that it is often accompanied by racial abuse, or abuse of foreigners which is open to anyone enjoying legitimacy in Australia’s multicultural patriotism i.e. against those viewed as non-citizens. And I’m stating that some of the racism and some of the violence has been from police. And I’m stating that violence by police goes unreported not only because of the usual calculations of those so attacked concerning the usefulness and potential consequences of reporting police violence, but also because so many of the Indian students work as, say taxi drivers – work which entails regular, even constant encounters with police, mostly in the city. A fact which gives a different complexion to the idea of complaining about police violence.
And of course people on visas have additional, very strong reasons to wish to avoid problems with the law.
My evidence for all this is not statistical. It is somewhat impressionistic, and not even my impressions. It is largely based upon the constant involvement of my friend Liz Thompson, over a period of years, with a large number of Indian and other international students, and with a large number of South Asian taxi drivers – as much as any other whitey and probably more, involvement in their lives and their struggles, participation in their networks. Through this experience she has developed knowledge of the patterns of conflict and violence experienced by these students and workers.
And it is on this basis that I am truly confident in saying that the claims made about the meaning of those statistics by police and in the media are, in a word, crap.
