A news story about the newly established African-Australian community taskforce contributes to scaremongering. There’s increased policing of South Sudanese-Australian groups not because there’s a specific problem – data show that the majority of youth crime is committed by White youth.
Many South Sudanese Australians are positioned as a “threat,” meaning their achievements, knowledge and hard work is subsumed by political rhetoric and media hyperbole.
The motivation to criminalise African-Australians coincides with the election year.
There are many videos, accounts and police reports of people from various African backgrounds being attacked by White people for simply being Black, emboldened by politicians and the moral panic. Where’s the white crime taskforce?
There is no moral panic over White supremacist groups, or the fact that two White supremacists were arrested in the past 18 months in Sydney and and the Central Coast with stockpiled weapons
In the past month, several “out of control” parties where police were called have been reported on by the media without racialising white people. These articles never use the word “gang violence,” despite the fact that there was violence by large groups of young White people in Western Australia, Melbourne; and Sydney.
Racist moral panics are cyclical and accepted as part of acculturation. This logic naturalises racism.
We need to reject this pattern of racist dog whistling.
Image: Victorian Chief Police Commissioner Graham Ashton gives a press conference surrounded by African-Australian community leaders.
The Other Sociologist 
As a white American with some ‘progressive’ inclinations, let me say that the same thing is found in the good ol’ US of A. I’m sure you’re already familiar with American racism.
What you’re describing reminds me of the Democrats during Bill Clinton’s administraton in the 1990s. In campaigning for the presidency, he gave a speech about being tough-on-crime while standing in front of chained black prisoners and in the background was the mountain that is infamous for being the site of the most important Klan memorial. A clear message was being sent.
Black leaders supported Bill Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies, as white progressives cheered it on. It led to further racialized policing and incarceration, along with a worsening of the school-to-prison pipeline. Yet, then as now, most crime is caused by whites and to an even greater extent for mass killings.
Research has proven that crime and specifically violent crime is correlated to two main factors that have nothing directly to do with race: poverty and lead toxicity. We’ve decreased though not eliminated the latter and the former is still a major problem. Of course, both disproportionately harm minorities because of a history of economic biases in housing and employment along with environmental racism.
No doubt it is the same basic pattern in both Australia and the United States. It’s the entrenched legacy of colonial imperialism that continues to shape the minds and behaviors, practices and policies of each new generation.
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