My family arrived in Australia in 1954. It was a white Australia we came to, essentially a sort of reflection of an English society.
We were Dutch, and my parents held fast to many of the Dutch traditions, attending a Dutch church, celebrating St Nicholas instead of the commercialised English/Australian Christmas, at least until the kids started to kick up a bit... the gifts we got were worn out by the time the kids down the road got theirs. And so, in the early days we felt ‘different’ but as time went on, schooling, mum’s Aussie cooking classes, dad’s improved employment all made us fit in, even to the extent of enjoying AFL and cricket.
So we were different, but gradually fitted in: we did not stand out, the colour of our skins did not mark us, the clothes we wore fitted into the accepted standards and our accents softened.
We were made to feel welcomed.
European immigrants will tell of similar stories, but only if they easily slipped into being or at least able to pass as an almost true-blue Aussie.
I worked in transport for the last sixteen years of my working life, and among the various crews were a disparate bunch, workmates from all corners of the globe, covering many cultures. The uniform, the corporate identification, in part papered over the differences but for many there were some uncomfortable times. The first aid room was used as a prayer room for Muslims, head scarves were tolerated, and it all seemed very harmonious.
Some people could not hide behind the corporate image. Skin was too different.
The Kiwi contingent did not have too many problems, there were quite a few of them, but the African and Asians did stand out a bit and were often sidelined, were bullied in subtle ways, snide remarks, noises, name calling (always in jest of course, not meaning anything by it).
To the white majority there was no sense of racism: we were not sidelined, bullied, harried, made aware of not fitting in because we set the rules, we set the standards, look like us, talk like us, be like us and all is good unless they were gay, or otherwise different. There was a ‘flat earther’ who copped a bit of flack.
And so we come to Laura Tingle’s comments about Australia being a racist nation.
Dammit, she is right!
But for most of us true-blue white Aussies we cannot see it, those privileged white people in exalted positions of power cannot see it, they fit in, they set the standard of how to look, how to sound, how to think. They cannot see the marginalisation of First Nations people, except to look down their noses, complaining about all we have done for them, the buckets of money we have grown at them, what is your problem, can’t you just be like us?
They cannot see that the ‘people of colour’ arriving from war torn homelands or intolerant religious leaders or desertification of arable lands where life has become impossible to live are human beings wanting to live a peaceful existence away from the fears of their homelands.
And the problems lie deep inside us.
We are racist. We are inherently racist.
We are bigoted. We are inherently bigoted.
We are biased. We are inherently biased.
We ALL are. And until we recognise that within ourselves we cannot address those inherent racist, bigoted, biases we have.
As an immigrant kid growing up in Australia I was told all the good things about the Dutch. They were THE BEST! Strangely, two school mates, one Russian and the other Latvian were told that they were the best. The Aussies of British descent knew they were the best. They after all were the dominant culture.
So we had this challenge, to fit in, to learn to play cricket and AFL, although we were pretty good at soccer too.
Each of us had our little bits of ‘home’ to keep us in touch with our roots, mostly church, Calvinist, Lutheran, Russian Orthodox as well as ethnic clubs, sporting groups and music, food. Saturday schools were interesting too, keeping language and learning more about traditions. So we learned of our ethnic and racial roots which set us apart and yet allowed us to fit into what was at that time essentially a nation which welcomed immigrants, so long as they were not too different. The White Australian Policy was still there to filter out undesirable inferiors.
We grew up in a white society, First Nations people were not counted as part of us, we considered them more like fauna. Pushed to the fringes of the towns and cities, looked down on, waiting for them to quietly disappear. Even after the referendum where we finally recognised them as part of the Australian population, as people, they remained at the fringes, unable to ‘integrate’ into mainstream Australia.
The Colombo Plan did allow people from Asian and Pacific Island nations to study in Australia, but those numbers were very much limited.
Our inherent racism gave us a sense of identity, that we were perhaps a little bit different than those around us, but we felt we were pretty good so we fitted in, so much so that outside of home we almost became hyper Aussies, almost more Australian than our Aussie mates. We followed our favourite footy teams and urged the Aussies on playing any other nation’s cricket teams.
Those we did encounter with darker skin than us were seen as inferior, they lived on the fringes, were a dirty bunch, unwashed, unkempt and often drunk. Very easy to judge and dismiss.
And this attitude is still evident today. The coroner’s inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker uncovered many instances of racism directed at the First Nations peoples. Police in NSW used stop and search tactics in the most disadvantaged area of their jurisdictions, the imprisonment rate of Aboriginal people is a national disgrace, the treatment of Aboriginal boys in Youth Detention Centres has been cruel, an institutional form of torture.
Discrimination is evident even in traffic offences, the rate of Aboriginal drivers getting traffic fines through camera sourced infringements is lower than their proportion of population but traffic stop infringements are far higher. A work colleague found he was not stopped anymore after he removed the Aboriginal flag sticker from his car.
Recent waves of immigration, especially on humanitarian grounds has seen African immigrants come into the country. They can be truly scary. Just ask the former home affairs minister, now leader of the opposition. And we have all those Indians arriving, taking over the transport industry and tech stuff. You never know what weapons they carry beneath those turbans.
Yes, we all can submit to the fear of different races of humans suddenly appearing in our neighbourhoods… and then you meet them and hear their stories, listen to what has forced them to leave their homelands, just as my parents left theirs so many years ago. And we find they are not all that different after all.
Bigotry lies close beneath the surface in each of us. We really do not like it much when we witness a difference which kind of raises heckles. Men and women flaunting their homosexuality, people who we cannot clearly define as we would like them to be defined. men and women, not something else which does not fit in the narrowness of our thoughts.
Again, how different is it when we can meet those people and listen to their stories, the difficulties they have faced and continue to face at school or work, the fighting for acceptance of who they really are instead of who we think they should be.
The biases we carry, whether political, religious or just expectations which have been placed on us we carry through life. Today I had lunch with a friend who has always had her hair tied back but today it was loose and look great. From childhood she had been told her hair was too straight, too fine to have loose. The only other alternative was a perm. She is in her sixties and is still shedding the bias her parents had so deeply ingrained in her. Yes, she has worn her hair loose, but never confidently. I think the accolades she got at lunch – there were a few of us agreeing – may dispel that bias.
So how do we deal with our racism, bigotry and biases?
Some people never do, preferring to see the world as they idealise it, that the society they live in must be like them, look like them, be like them, conform to what they perceive as being ‘right’. Any difference is cause for fear, that things may not be precisely as they should be. That we will be inundated by different religions, imposing different standards, upsetting the comfortable applecart they live in.
Insisting on language, speak English ‘so I can eavesdrop, listen in to your conversations, you could be saying nasty things about me, plotting some nefarious scheme to dominate my world’, giving rise to fear and hatred.
Be a man or a woman, nothing else; otherwise, I will feel intimidated when I go to the rest room, you never know what may happen… That was the gist of a conversation with a Christian lady about trans people using the women’s rest room. When asked how many times that had happened or how many trans people she had encountered, she admitted ‘none’. She feared a threat that may or may not ever happen.
By acknowledging our inherent prejudices, or racism, our ingrained bigotry and biases we can deal with them. We can see that we are actually not like others either, that we are in fact different, and learn to celebrate the difference we see, feel and live alongside, to embrace the great diversity, colour and vibrancy that difference gives us.
And yes, there will be those who do not much like it, yet we see them feasting on the diverse cultures with culinary delights, the smells and sounds of difference, spices, music, art.
Yes, Laura Tingle was right.
And it is up to each one of us to prover her wrong.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
