Reflections on the Cronulla riot 2005 : is there a history of racial bullying in southern Sydney high schools?

In December 2005 youth unrest erupted in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla Beach, with an apparent focus on rejection and denigration of Middle Eastern youth and culture. Subsequently, further ‘riots’ occurred in retaliation in the following days with an escalation to individual personal attacks, property damage, affray, and a range of criminal behaviours in other beachside suburbs. This paper examines (a) the background to the conflicts, their origins, and manifestations in both the Australian beach youth culture and Middle Eastern inner suburban youth culture groups, with a particular focus on data related to racially based bullying in high schools in the southern suburbs where the behaviour was recently manifest. Issues of race and racism are discussed as they relate to both anti-Middle Eastern and anti-Australian populations, and the evidence for this in school reports of racial bullying is examined. It becomes apparent from the data that there is some evidence of racially–based bullying by local youths in southern Sydney school populations. However, further examination of media reports and subsequent legal actions seem to indicate that the original conflict, while located at Cronulla beach, was in fact conflict imported to the suburb by outer suburban Australian youth. The location of the conflict was incidental to the main purpose which was to send a message of a call to arms against an imagined enemy, with both sets of protagonists being external to the southern beaches. The focus of intervention is therefore suggested to be needed for antagonistic inner suburban youths of both Australian and Middle Eastern background