Indigenous Australians say they are far from surprised by a new study revealing unconscious racial biases against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Three out of four Australians hold a racial bias against Indigenous Australians, according to the research from the Australian National University.
Advocate and academic Dr Stephen Hagan said it was exhausting to constantly come up against discrimination.
"It's exhausting, it really is," he told SBS News.
"There's a deficit model associated with someone of Aboriginal appearance in this country. That's the harsh reality, Australia is a very racist country."
Mr Hagan has lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commission after he was allegedly singled out at a Townsville petrol station.
"He said, we've had some issues with drive-offs, I said a beg your pardon. He said you're gonna have to pre-pay. I said pre-pay, pre-pay what? Are you asking the same thing to all these white customers here.
"He just saw an Aboriginal man and I find that in 2020, to be quite offensive."
The findings from the study, released on Tuesday, revealed an invisible barrier hampering Indigenous Australians, author Siddharth Shirodkar said.
"If it's unchecked, unacknowledged and unconscious, then it can seep into our everyday decision making," he said.
Men were more biased than women against First Nations peoples, the study found.
Western Australians and Queenslanders showed higher levels of unconscious prejudice, while people in the Northern Territory and ACT showed less.
People who identified themselves as "strongly left wing" still showed signs of negative views against Indigenous Australians, while those who put themselves on the right-wing side displayed higher levels of bias.
Writer and University of Wollongong lecturer Summer May Finlay said it was the responsibility of all Australians to campaign against discrimination and racism, not just Indigenous Australians.
Three in four Australians hold racial bias against Indigenous people Source: AAP
"As three per cent of the population, we can't be expected to carry the 97 per cent," she said.
"The 97 per cent have to do the heavy lifting around this. Come to the rallies, call out racism at the pub, on Twitter, with your friends."
Australians showed the same level of bias against Indigenous Australians as people held against African Americans in the United States, the study found.
The study tested 11,000 Australians over a decade since 2009.
It looked at the response time of online volunteers to an association test, which flashed images of white people and Aboriginal Australians as well as positive or negative words.
It found the majority of Australians showed a preference for white faces.
Mr Shirodkar said while Australians might hold an unconscious bias, they still could choose whether or not to act on it.
Share
