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High rates of racial discrimination experienced by Mandarin-speaking youth in major Australian survey clarified

Xinhua, December 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

Australian community service group Mission Australia has clarified recent media reports that pointed to Mandarin-speaking youth in the country experiencing high rates of racial discrimination.

"Of the 192 respondents who reported speaking Mandarin at home, 32.8 percent (63 respondents) reported experiencing discrimination due to race/cultural background," Mission Australia's media manager Aimee Meredith said in an email to Xinhua.

Nearly 22,000 young people aged 15 to 19 years responded to Mission Australia's Youth Survey 2016. The survey results, which were released earlier this month, were widely followed by many members of the Chinese community following extensive local media coverage, which included references to Mandarin-speaking young people who comprised the respondents experiencing "the highest rates of racial discrimination, at 90 percent".

In its initial report of the survey, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had "left out the initial subset of respondents who spoke a language other than English at home and experienced discrimination, which is now included in the story", ABC journalist Raveen Hunjan said in an email to Xinhua.

"Of the 386 respondents who reported speaking Chinese at home, 22.8 percent (88 respondents) reported experiencing discrimination due to race/cultural background," Meredith further clarified in her email to Xinhua.

"Of the 160 respondents who reported speaking Cantonese at home, 33.8 percent (54 respondents) reported experiencing discrimination due to race/cultural background."

In its survey report, Mission Australia said that more than one-quarter of young people in the nationwide poll experienced unfair treatment or discrimination in the past year, with race/cultural background cited as one of the top three reasons. The other two were gender and age.

"These levels are simply unacceptable and we must ask ourselves what we can all do to change that. Political and social leadership is required to help change some of these pervasive attitudes," Mission Australia CEO Catherine Yeomans said in its report.

"We have to challenge stereotypes and explicit discrimination when we see it. This needs to be addressed by governments, as well as in the media and at schools." Endit