Missing data hides true reality of deep racism problems
Australians' experiences of racism are being erased because of a failure to adequately collect and use data, the human rights watchdog says. A report by the Australian Human Rights Commission has found data on race and racism in the nation is fragmented or collected inconsistently. This means people's experiences of racism were severely under-counted or erased, and made the "critical problem" harder to tackle, Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said. "We're missing so much of the picture at the moment," Mr Sivaraman told AAP. "Racist violence is on our streets in the worst possible way. "Yet we still don't have good means of collecting data on where racism is occurring, who it is affecting, and what solutions will work best." He said data on racism was gathered in a piecemeal way from a combination of police reports, work by community organisations or complaints filed…