Racism in Australia is not just a thing of the past

POLICE ON HORSEBACK gathered in a circle to defend the statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Australians inspired by American protests, and calling attention to the plight of their country’s indigenous peoples, might have toppled the statue. The moment was replete with historical irony. The “discoverer” of Australia met his end on a Hawaiian beach, at the hands of a crowd of angry natives. The police seemed determined not to let it happen to him a second time.

The whole messy issue of Australia’s past rose up and wound itself in knots around Cook’s bronze form. The conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, condemned the protesters. But he drew a distinction between Australia’s history of white settlement and America’s. Australia had been “a pretty brutal place”, he conceded, “but there was no slavery.”