The Politics of Ethnic Identity: 'Conspirators' against the State or Institutional Racism?

Abstract

In April 1978,180 or so Greek-born Australians in Sydney were arrested and charged with conspiring to defraud the Department of Social Security - an event popularly known as the 'Greek Conspiracy'. A number of published sociological accounts declare that this event constitutes an instance of eth nic/racial discrimination against the Greeks. This paper tries to go beyond that level of analysis and attempts to illustrate the way the racist ideology itself, in this instance 'institutional racism' was generated. To delineate the content of that ideolo gy the analysis focuses on the 'public discourse' of the event as articulated in the Anglophone media.