It’s no surprise Inclusive Australia’s ‘Measuring Social Inclusion’ survey last year discovered three out of five respondents “believed that White Australians were the victims of discrimination to some extent”.  While the degree of discrimination varied from slight to extreme, 73% surveyed agreed it was an important issue. 

There’s no doubt white Australians have every right to feel discriminated against.  As a result of governments pushing multiculturalism and — more recently — the Black Lives Matter movement and neo-Marxist inspired critical race theory white Australians are increasingly targeted as racist and xenophobic. 

Beginning when Gough Whitlam was prime minister and Al Grasby the minister for immigration the school curriculum has taught students Australian society is inherently racist and that it is unfair and discriminatory to expect migrants to assimilate. 

As a result, while the overwhelming majority of migrants endorse and celebrate our way of life, a sizeable minority live in ethnic enclaves and refuse to integrate into mainstream society.  Even more dangerous is that some support overseas terrorist organisations and see nothing wrong with using violence to further their cause. 

Proven by the recently released revised national curriculum it’s also true that Western civilisation is either ignored or seen as inherently oppressive and racist.  While all students are made to study Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture studying ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome is voluntary. 

As a result across Australia students leave school without any knowledge or appreciation of the civilisations the historian Geoffrey Blainey describes as “the mainsprings of the civilisation most Australians inherit”. 

While there’s no doubt Indigenous people suffered as a result of European settlement represented by the arrival of the First Fleet, it’s also true that students are presented with what Blainey describes as a black armband view of history. 

The new curriculum tells students to analyse the “impact of invasion, colonisation and dispossession of lands by Europeans on the First Nations Peoples of Australia such as frontier warfare, genocide, removal from land, relocation to ‘protectorates’, reserves and missions”. 

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory also explains why white Australians feel embattled.  BLM activists argue Western societies like Australia are characterised by structural racism where white supremacism oppresses and exploits non-whites. 

As an example, cultural-left activists argue, given the high incidence of Indigenous deaths in custody, that Australia’s legal system is inherently racist.  Ignored, as argued by Anthony Dillon in Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, is the evidence proves otherwise.  

Dillion refers to the publication The Health of Australia’s Prisoners: 2015 that states “Indigenous Australians were no more likely to die in custody than non-Indigenous Australians”. Specifically, “With just over one-quarter (27%) of prisoners in custody being Indigenous, and 17% of deaths in custody being Indigenous, Indigenous prisoners were under-represented”. 

Critical race theory argues Western societies like Australia are eurocentric and characterised by white supremacism where non-whites are consistently oppressed, marginalised and treated as less than human.  As a result over 150 academics at Sydney University knocked back funding to establish a centre to study Western civilisation. 

One of the academics at Sydney University goes as far as arguing the curriculum must be de-colonised and purged of whiteness as existing subjects like history, literature, art and music are guilty of “racism, sexism, classism, historical injustice and prejudice based on religion”. 

White men and boys are special targets of woke, cancel culture activists and have every right to feel discriminated against.  In addition to being criticised and lampooned as ‘pale, male and stale’ all men are characterised as misogynist, sexist and chauvinistic. 

Workplaces have become politically correct minefields where meritocracy has been replaced by positive discrimination and quotas for women and the merest suggestion of what is deemed as sexist behaviour leads to dire consequences. 

Whenever the evil and heinous crime of rape occurs all men are portrayed as either complicit or guilty.  School programs like Safe Schools and Respectful Relationships teach primary and secondary students there is nothing beneficial or worthwhile about being masculine. Some schools have even asked boys to stand at assembly and apologise for being male. 

Such are the increasing concerns about men and boys being discriminated against that a group of mothers have started a Mothers of Sons website detailing examples of how courts and the law, especially violence intervention orders, are weighted against men. 

Prejudice, bias and unfair discrimination are all unacceptable in a civilised society.  The danger, though, in these politically correct, woke times is that not all are treated fairly and equally.  In the case of White Australians the campaign for tolerance, in fact, has led to intolerance. 

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. His new anthology, Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, is available on his website.