Friday 19 December 2008

In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, The Sydney Morning Herald, our ostensibly liberal broadsheet, gives broad coverage to a blonde, blue-eyed HSC student (page 7, 17-19 December 2008 issue) over students from Asian backgrounds, while reporting (page 17) on French President Sarkozy's aim of improving the representation of his country's migrants among the elites.

"We cannot ignore the ever-bigger gap between the diversity of French society and the social and cultural samesness of the elites that our education system produces. ... Or selection process bars entire parts of our society from reaching positions of leadership."

It's hard to defend the SMH, where 95 percent of journalists are of Anglo-Saxon background, which approximately mirrors the reality among public office holders.

The story on Kate Bones (pic), a blonde, blue-eyed girl from Lane Cove who attended the North Shore school, Abbostleigh, is about the fact that 23 students in NSW gained a perfect 100 in their matriculation exams this year. She is one of the 23, "close to half [of whom] were from James Ruse Agricultural High School" near Parramatta.

James Ruse, a selective school, is well known to be popular with students from Asian backgrounds. And while Kate Bones gets an entire newspaper column detailing her other activities, the nine from James Ruse - Sen Lin, Christine Zhang, David Pham, Nathan Wong, Caroline Banh, Ruby Kwong, Jane Xu, Victor Chan and Melissa Chen - get nothing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hear hear! plus we dont' even get a special ceremony like those that came top of their subjects did! i mean there are only 23 of us who got 100 compared to like over 100 ppl who topped their subject - i mean u didnt even need to get a good uai to top some of those subjects!
man, the injustice of the education system!

one of the asian 100-ers you mentioned said...

hi, i just passed by your blog here.. i'm not sure i agree too much with you. Suggestions of racial discrimination by the smh are a bit harsh, esp since the evidence you've shown does not look more than one-off.

ruse kid said...

it may seem racist at first glance, but i don't think so. i don't really care anymore about the subtle racism in articles or news these days. they keep on doing this and it will only make themselves look bad, not us.