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Is Australia Racist? Ray Martin thinks he has the answer, but you may not agree

Ray Martin presents a look at the gulf between how we think and how we behave when it comes to questions of race and racism in this country.

Karl Quinn

Is Australia racist? It sounds like it should be an easy question to answer, but it's not really. If you're white, and especially if you're a white male, you probably think not. If you're not white, and especially if you speak a language other than English, you probably think it is.

"I don't think we're racist," says Ray Martin, who presents the one-hour documentary of that name that kicks off SBS's Face Up to Racism week. "I think our attitudes are generally much better than they were. The discussion of racism, of anti-discrimination, of reconciliation and so on is far more widespread and stronger than it was when I was a kid."

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Trailer: Is Australia Racist?

Part of a documentary series exploring racism in Australia.

Martin, whose great-great-grandmother was Aboriginal, is passionate about this area, as his body of work testifies: a 10-year stint with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation; serving as the first chairman of the Fred Hollows Foundation; a former chairman of the Indigenous Education Foundation.

More recently, he has stepped back into the television spotlight as host of SBS's First Contact, in which white Australians had close encounters – often for the first time – with indigenous Australians and their culture.

This latest show combines the findings of an academic survey into attitudes about race and racism with some hidden camera stunts to illustrate those findings. So we see a black-skinned woman in African dress being harassed in public by two young white women. We see a woman in niqab (a veil covering the head and face, but not the eyes) confronted by an angry white man in a town square. We see how people respond to an African man who greets football fans outside the MCG with a placard reading "Stop Racism Now".

The intention may be defensible, but does that hidden camera trickery pose any kind of ethical dilemma?

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"I don't think so," says Martin, who was no stranger to that sort of thing in his years as host of A Current Affair. "It's not reality television in a crass way, it's an attempt to put real people in real situations. It's fairly powerful stuff, especially when they're people who face this sort of experience of racism every day of their lives."

That's no exaggeration, says Anna Philp, the 37-year-old woman who bears the brunt of the harassment from the two young women (like Anna, they are actors) at bus stops around Perth.

Low-level negative responses to her black skin are "probably a daily thing, but I don't focus on it". She says she has learnt to mostly tune out the smaller incidents – someone clutching their bag a little tighter, or sidling away, when she sits down beside them on public transport, the stares, the uncomfortable body language. "I do get lots of looks, lots of comments, but I try to block it all out," she says. "I don't need that in my life."

Focusing on the negativity simply isn't productive. "You've got to screen it out or you would be in a puddle every day, just crying."

In everyday life, Philp, who was born in Mauritius but has lived in Perth since being adopted by a white couple at the age of two, does not wear African dress. She was raised vaguely Christian. She speaks with an Aussie accent, has a white partner and white friends. By rights, her experience of racism should be minimal. But it's not.

"I'm quite slim, and I've had people say, 'You're not in Africa, eat some more'. Some people will come right up in my face, or literally whisper something in my ear. That's when it does affect me."

That happens, she says, about once a month.

All of which might lead to the conclusion that yes, Australia is indeed racist. But then you have the results of this survey of 6001 Australians, conducted by Professor Kevin Dunn at Western Sydney University, that point the other way. To some degree, at least.

It found that 80.4 per cent of respondents believe "it is a good thing for a society to be made up of different cultures", 77 per cent believe "something should be done to minimise or fight racism in Australia", and 76 per cent "would stand up for someone who was being discriminated against" on the basis of their culture, ethnicity or religion.

The hidden camera results suggest that yes, indeed, some people would stand up for someone being victimised because of their ethnicity. And for Philp, that was a positive. "It was good to know that people would stick up for me," she says.

Anna Philp captured by hidden camera at a bus stop in Is Australia Racist?

Anna Philp captured by hidden camera at a bus stop in Is Australia Racist? Photo: SBS

Just as importantly, she was relieved that bystanders did not take the opportunity to join in the abuse.

Still, some did sit by passively, which did not come entirely as a surprise to Philp. "A lot of times I have been on my own in situations like that and no one has stood up for me," she says.

Martin recalls his days as a university student, when he worked part-time in a factory alongside Greeks and Yugoslavs who suffered their own share of abuse. "I saw that, the wog, the wop taunts," he says.

And did you stand up for them?

"I did, actually. I was young and bolshie."

To some degree, he's still the same. "The little man in my head says, 'Are you going to cop this or are you going to do something?'."

For Martin, the answer is clear; it was there in the words of his mentor, Fred Hollows. "He used to say the alternative is to do nothing, and that's no alternative. The fact it's hard is a reason, but it's not an excuse."

A woman comes to the defence of Anna Philp as she is racially abused in Is Australia Racist?

A woman comes to Anna's defence when she is racially abused. Photo: SBS

Still, there's clearly a disconnect between our self-perception and our behaviour, and between the expressed will of governments – to "close the gap" between indigenous and white Australia, for instance – and their actions.

Perhaps that's why there are fewer people who think they are prejudiced against other cultures (62.7 per cent) than there are thinking there is racism in Australia (79.3 per cent). It's always someone else who is at fault, not me.

And that, says Martin, is where this show helps shine a light on the contradictions and the consequences around the question of our disputed racism.

"The value of doing a show like this is that it focuses on real people," he says. "It focuses on the injustice of people saying these knee-jerk things without thinking about it – without realising how hurtful and dangerous it is."

Is Australia Racist? Airs on SBS on Sunday, February 26, at 8.30pm as part of Face Up to Racism week, from February 26 to March 5.

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin

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