i'm not a racist but...

Whenever some starts a sentence with "I'm not a racist but...", you know this conversation is not going to go somewhere pleasant.

So are Australians racist?

Well of course we are. Human beings are probably hard-wired to be prejudiced to those outside their social group. I am a racist. I try not to be. I do not think that prejudices based on race are good thing or to be cultivated but nevertheless I probably exhibit them to a degree.

So are Australians (and esp. white Australians) more racist than other countries?

That's a little harder to decide. Thankfully Andrew Leigh* & co at ANU have done some experiments on this involving CV applications, return to sender letters and reaction times (full report here).

So when it comes to wrongly addressed letters, Australians are not that racist. The reaction times stuff is a little ambiguous but (and this is the part of the research that caught the news headlines) if you want to get an entry-level job in data entry, sales or waiting and you are Chinese or Middle-Eastern then you may need to change your name** if you want to get more call backs. There's so much in this study that I could write about I'll let you read it instead.

In international comparisons, Australians appear to exhibit "CV Prejudice" at similar levels to Swedes (in their attitudes to Arabs & Africans) and Americans (in their attitudes to African-Americans). N.B. This is just one behavioural test. It's not like there's an international racism index - altho that may be something to consider...

This once again reminds of my great good fortune in matters of birth. Ain't nothing like being a white, middle-class male to put a smile on your face!

*Prof Leigh's work has kept on appearing on my radar over the last few years. I'd definitely subscribe to his blog.

**There's some interesting additional stuff in there about what qualifies as a good CV when applying for jobs in different categories too.