Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

In 2016, 28 percent of Australians were born overseas, some 18 percent from non-English speaking backgrounds. Since the early 1970s, Australia has adopted multicultural policies as a response to its population diversity, but tensions between multicultural policies and a legacy of Anglo privilege and cultural dominance remain. Underpinning racist attitudes are (i) ‘old’ vs ‘‘new’ attitudes to understanding racism; (ii) issues of socicall distance between groups and the formation of outgroups and (iii) contact associated with acceptance or conflict. Focusing on Sydney, Australia’s largest immigrant receiving city, this study examines the basis of racist attitudes (ii) social distance between groups and outgroup formation and (iii) levels of acceptance of different groups: Muslims, Africans, Aborigines and Asians. Results are often inconsistent with the generality of social science research in this area. Socio-demographic characteristics are largely unrelated to racism or with levels of acceptance across the city. Degree of presence, in itself, has littler to do with acceptance levels Nor have ‘old’ or ‘new’ racism mindsets. Rather we turn to the general area of public discourse and the media. As Jakubowicz (2010) has observed: ‘ the media play a central role in the production, circulation, and transfornmation of ideas about race.’