Did you just call Australia a racist?

The racist rant aimed at South Sydney league star Greg Inglis yesterday again raises the question, "When will we ever learn??". I am dumbfounded by the never ending tirade our indigenous Australians seem to face. It's not only the indigenous who face this day to day though. I've witnessed countless racist attacks on unsuspecting members of the public whilst at work. Some of these are spite driven, with a horrible undertone delivered to it. Other attacks are softer, almost to the point of a bit of harmless fun. Which again is far from acceptable.

The overwhelming feeling from me is that we still don't get it as a nation. We have our campaigns and groups which encourage anti racism and these things are great. However there are still countless racist rants floating around by people who do think it's okay. Sure we're talking about minority who offend here but if we all sat back and took a look at what we saw around us, we'd be shocked to realize this "minority" is a little bigger than we'd like. I couldn't tell you the amount of times, myself being an Australian, that i've had to listen to someone be racist and confide in me thinking that their rant is okay because i'm an aussie and that i'll agree. WRONG!

I've worked with people from different cultures and i've learnt to understand them and appreciate them. There are things we can learn from them. A lot of these things never happen because they get lost in translation, which is often why a lot of people seem to racially rant because they feel these people are dumb.  That too is wrong. This is a generic and dumb conclusion to draw.

My concern for this country is not so much that we don't do enough to eradicate racism, I think we're trying to do so. My concern is that too many of us just don't get it. I know plenty of people who i don't think are racist but will make racist jokes. We all know these people.  They think so long as the victim doesn't hear it, that it's okay. We'll not really! At it's most simplest form, life is about people interacting with other people. We can teach people things and we can learn things from others. None of us are perfect, or have things figured out. There is a lot to learn from everyone we come into contact with. I've found people from other cultures always have something we can learn from. We should be embracing cultures. Not arrogantly shooting them down and portraying ourselves as superior.

One of these days, the world will finally GET it. At least i hope........