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Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

There is something to be said for some of this. There is a certain complacency and unwillingness to engage self-critical awareness.

Don't believe me? Many Australian men are two inches away from overt racism on one side, and super-duper-liberal-moral-high-grounder on the other.

That said, Australians are generally very kind and fun. But hard work and struggle builds both character and moral fortitude, and the typical Australian male is without either: They're gfted a generous opportunity, chilling out on the doll, or pushing papers in some uncompetitive bureaucracy.

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> Australian men are two inches away from overt racism on one side,

I used to have several Australian coworkers who were generally quite pleasant and easy to work with, but several of them had an attitude and their interaction with dark skinned individuals was shocking. Having overheard them arguing with another Australian coworker about the case of the "abo gal fucked to death", I'm not surprised by your description using the terms "overt racism on one side, and super-duper-liberal-moral-high-grounder on the other". Their conversation was peppered with racist stereotypes, going as far as to blame the victim as being an "abo whore". I found out later that the victim was Lynette Daley, a young aboriginal woman who had been drugged and then, shockingly, literally, raped to death "blunt force genital tract trauma". There was little to no coverage of this here, but it does seem to have attracted at least a little attention in Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-09/nsw-dpp-under-scrutiny...

Yea exacrly.

We also sort of have this kind of dichotomy in America. As a matter of public policy, our wars and policies unfairly target Muslims while we preach that any and all discrimination is illegal and intolerable. I like how the South Park creators put it: https://i.redd.it/bbwo4ropuesz.jpg

Really? I'm Australian and I've worked in factories, in airlines, in government, in the country and the city and I have never seen or heard overt racism.

I did see it in Netherlands though. I also worked for a few years in Netherlands, and I was shocked to see a woman, one of the management / HR mock the only black employee relentlessly with monkey noises.

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