Sigma’s Simulacrum of Reality

While scrolling through some of my old bookmarks, I came across this interesting article again. It was on a Macquarie Uni’s professor’s, Professor Andrew Fraser’s views on race in Australia earlier this year.

Particularly of interest to me was this statement by him: “Look at the annual HSC results - the consequence of which is that Oz is creating a new heavily Asian managerial-professional, ruling class that will feel no hesitation … in promoting the narrow interests of their co-ethnics at the expense of white Australians.”

For those who don’t know, the HSC is the Australian equivalent of Malaysia’s STPM (uni entrance exam).

Predictably, that guy got a lot of heat from the mainstream mass media, as well as from a wide segment of society. But I’m not writing this to contribute in bashing the poor guy. Hey, everyone’s free to have their own views on these things

What I wanted to talk about is on that statement he made above. Like it or not, he’s right except for the ‘Asians-only club’ mentality. The HSC in Australia has been dominated by Chinese/Koreans/Indians in recent years now. This can be seen in the racial composition of students in the most sought after courses here such as medicine, dentistry, and optometry, which can be seen in this article here. According to this article, almost 60% of the dentistry and optometry students here are of Asian background. However, the article has mistakenly stated that Australian medical schools here have resisted this trend. This is actually not true for 2 reasons. The first is that since Asians here consists of only 7% of the population, thus even with only 30% of them being accepted into medical schools means that Asians are still 5 times over-represented. And that’s only in medicine! In dentistry and optometry, they are 8 times over-represented!

The second reason for the lower than expected number of Asian medical student is Australia’s practice of a subtle form of racial discrimination. Unlike dentistry and optometry students (in which acceptance is based solely on their HSC marks), potential medical students here have to take a very subjective interview test before being accepted. This gives university officials here a covert opportunity to restrict the number of Asian students getting into medical schools. One has to ask, what do I care if my doctor has shitty interpersonal skills? Do you want a kick-ass doctor who is terrific at diagnosing and operating on you but has crappy interpersonal skills (ala Dr. House), or one who’s absolutely charming, but knows next to nothing about how to cure you (ala Dr. Nick in The Simpsons)? The most ridiculous about this issue is that potential law students don’t have to take any interviews! Why then do potential medical students have to take those interviews when potential law students, who would have to use English extensively in their careers, don’t? Lol! Hypocrisy at its finest! Didn’t exactly do a very good job in hiding this form of discrimination now, did they?

Anyway, back to the topic. So basically, what Prof Fraser said there was right. There are a lot of Asian professionals in Australia right now, far above their population proportions. Doctors, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, engineers, accountants, you name it. Asian migrants into Australia don’t fit into the typical stereotype of poor, uneducated, working class workers. Its the other way round instead! It is now the Anglo-Saxons who are mowing their lawns, serving them burgers, or driving them around in buses.

So what does all this mean to Australia? Nobody can know for sure. But I can venture a guess. I guess that in the future, there will definately be more Asian leaders around. And yeah, the professional class will probably also be dominated by Asians. Already the head of the Australian Medical Association is an ethnic Indian-Aussie. But is this necessarily a bad thing? Most people don’t give a toss what race their doctors/dentists/pharmacists/bosses are, as long as they’re competent or pay well. So what? Political power is still overwhelmingly in the Anglo-Saxon Australian’s hands. But what if the Asians gradually start to participate in that particular field as well? Well, most of the second generation Asians here no longer think of themselves as anything else other than 100% Aussies. So it’s a non-issue to them. If a second generation Vietnamese-Aussie gets elected PM in the future, it’ll be ridiculous to think that his allegiance would lie anywhere else apart from Australia . And as for threatening the traditional way of life of white Australians, again, a non-issue. Since Asians only consist of 7% of the population, Australia’s Anglo-Saxon Protestant traditions remains far from being threatened.

So yeah, to me, there really is nothing much to be worried about in respect to an ‘Asian invasion’ in the upper-class of Australian society. Australia will still benefit and take credit from these people’s contributions. Its merely semantics whether this class of Aussies are white-skinned or yellow/brown-skinned