DRIVERS who fly Australian flags on their cars to celebrate Australia Day are "more racist" than people who do not, according to research from UWA.(Via
University of Western Australia sociologist and anthropologist Professor Farida Fozdar and a team of assistants surveyed 513 people at the Australia Day fireworks on Perth's Swan River foreshore last year to find out whether there was a link between car flag flying and racist attitudes, Perth Now reports.
Professor Fozdar said the team found that of the 102 people surveyed on the day who had attached flags to their cars for the national holiday, 43 per cent agreed with the statement that the now-abandoned “White Australia Policy” had “saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries”.
She said that only 25 per cent of people who did not fly Australia car flags agreed with the statement.
In what is wrong with this "research" effort, the only question is where to begin. First, 102 people is a tiny (sub)sample. Second, agreeing that the White Australia Policy "saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries" does not demonstrate racism. One can agree that monoculturalism has advantages without being racist. Moreover, a majority of flag-fliers did not agree with the statement. So, tagging an activity which a majority of those engaged in where found not to be racist as associated with racism is slander by correlation. (As is typical, the media reporting is worse than the actual study.)
Going through the rest of the responses, the differences found between flag fliers and non-flag fliers were consistent in direction, but rarely had a different majority opinion. It is not surprising that flag fliers tend to be more patriotic and patriotism is associated with a strong sense of separate identity. But the sample was so small that the results must have come with large margins of error.
The linked op ed which argued that not following the official protocols on flag use was disrespectful seemed to rather miss important aspects of Oz culture.
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Comments
Although, it does remind me of a conversation I recently had while catching up with an old punk buddy of mine. In the, ah, more extreme elements of those circles, it seems that having a southern cross tattoo is now being seen as tantamount to having a swastika.
While I was quick to point the fallacy of this, he equally pointed out that in real life, someone with a SC tatt was almost always going to be a racist.
Agreeing with the white australia policy doesn't demonstrate racism? Err, no. The policy is a racist policy, agreeing with it is, ipso facto, demonstration of racism. Whether or not it's actual racial hatred, or just ignorant "not like me = bad" is a very open question, but both are certainly racism.
The survey also asked quite a few more questions than that single one, and as you say, there is a consistent direction.
Also, from personal experience, I'm a lot more likely to get some kind of idiot racist comment yelled at me from a passing car flying the flag than one without on 26th Jan.
Of course, flying the flag is far from inherently a racist action - as you rightly point out, the majority of flag fliers aren't doing it because of that. Just because some racist fools choose to use that particular patriotic action as a symbol of their racist attitude doesn't mean the symbol becomes racist.
Agreeing that something has benefits is not the same as agreeing that it should be implemented. Perhaps forcibly performing medical experiments on a fraction of the population would provide medical benefits but merely concluding that it would doesn't mean that that same person wants to put it into action.
Your anecdotal experiences with bogans, though, do match my own and I'm 'part-bogan' myself.
If that is the case, then it was not a random sample and therefore the study's conclusions are not generalisable to all 'flag displaying' drivers.
I suspect I've missed something.
If flying our ANF on our car maakes us Rascists, well too Bloody Bad, We are Rascists, then, but we would prefer to be known as Patriots.
A Message to you Do Gooders and Socialists, Build a Bloody Bridge and Get over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!