The Australian Bite
Posts Tagged ‘ race’
Things that make us go cringe
15 October 2009
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Australians can get pretty feisty when it comes to playing around with our national icons, as Kraft found out when it tried to use crowdsourcing to name a new Vegemite/cream cheese blend. The public were invited to send in suggestions, but when the name selected from their entries was announced, it was widely condemned as rubbish, leading to a major backdown and a (this time) public-approved rebranding. More on that story on this week’s Australian Bite, as well as another cringe-worthy incident, which brought Australia into the international spotlight for all the wrong reasons . . . that’s the blackface Jackson Five skit perfomed on the TV variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Oh dear . . .
Aboriginal group takes complaint to UN
21 February 2009
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Prescribed Area sign in Australia's Northern Territory. Photo by manniac aka Manfred Renner
This week on the Bite, we hear why a group of Northern Territory Aboriginal people are taking a complaint against the Australian Government to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. And we take a look at a travelling exhibition featuring the work of one of Australia’s best known photographers, the late Max Dupain, best known for his picture of “The Sunbaker”.