Racism is a controversial topic across the world. American Heritage Dictionary will tell you racism is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. In this situation, the people sitting next to your colleague, and Australian Volunteer to Papua New Guinea, are accusing all Papua New Guineans as a whole of being poor, gross, and unfortunate. A big part of racism is taking one small example and assuming that the entire race is the same way. It is not fair what-so-ever to do this. The people your colleague sat next to were rude and overgeneralized the entire population of Papua New Guinea. It is great the your colleague was able to keep her stand and not get sucked into the belief that ALL Papua New Guineans carry money in the buttcracks, making them gross, filthy poor people. Racism is everywhere, and even if it is not directed towards yourself, you can still be deeply effected and hurt by it.
Papua New Guinea is an island located in Oceania. Papua New Guinea's leading agricultural products are coffee, cocoa, copra, palm kernels, tea, sugar, rubber, sweet potatoes, fruit, vegetables, vanilla; shell fish, poultry, and pork. Its leading industrial products are copra crushing, palm oil processing, plywood production, wood chip production; mining of gold, silver, and copper; crude oil production, petroleum refining; construction, and tourism. Papua New Guinea is also importing partners with Australia, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia. Their exporting partners are Australia, Japan, and Singapore. Papua New Guinea spends $1.686 billion on imports yearly
and sells $4.096 billion exports yearly too.
Papua New Guinea is the official independent state which occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. They gained their independance from Australia on September 16, 1975, but they are still a member of of the Commonwealth of Nations and Queen Elizabeth II is the queen. In Papua New Guinea the queen is represented by the governer-general who is Sir Paulias Matane. Like many other in the Commonwealth of Nations power actually lies with its prime minister who is Sir Michael Somare. The unicameral National Parliament has 109 seats, of which 20 are occupied by the governors of the 20 provinces. The members of the parliment are voted for when a prime minister calls a national election, which can be whenever he or she wants as long as it is no more then five years from the last national election. In the first years after their independance the new government called national elections so often when they had little confidence in the people that they had just elected. In the past five years the government passed legistlation preventing votes sooner than 18 months from the last election. Ever since their independence in 1975, the national election has attracted many canditates. The winner usually has about 15% of the national vote, where as in the U.S. the winner has about 40% of the national vote.