Australian politicians have long spoken of being a multicultural society, promoting tolerance and integration. Proud of a society where one can reap in financial or social status rewards through sheer hard work - where the nature of ones race or ethnicity is not a factor. According to Bessant (2002) however, racist attitudes are alive and well' today. It is a society characterised by serious inequality, where race and ethnicity are at a disadvantage to equally accessing resources in Australia. This essay looks at the brief history of Australia in relation to racism, then how race and ethnicity perpetuate social inequality and how the others' experience these inequalities today through education, employment, wealth, housing and health - inequalities which in itself determines and maintains a cycle of social immobility. Racism has played a central role in Australia's history, firstly, in the relationship between Indigenous people and European colonists. In the 1788 colonial period, Europeans brought massacre and diseases to Indigenous people. Aborigines endured a long history of social injustice through the European invasion which saw demographic, spiritual catastrophe, and cultural dispossession. Women became concubines and children were placed in white families (The Stolen Generation). Indigenous people have been in Australia for more than 100,000 years however it was only in the 1967 referendum that gave Indigenous people the right to vote, to be counted in the census and classified as people (previously classified as flora and fauna). The White Australia Policy in the 19th century encouraged immigration only from Britain and Asians' and non-whites' were excluded. A dictation test was used to screen out people with undesirable' characteristics. By the 1950s all countries were welcomed into Australia to help Post War reconstruction'. Labour shortages...