White Australia
I recently got some freelance work doing research for an upcoming documentary about the Tampa crisis (yieh! cash money). It involved going to the NSW state library and trawling through books and manuscripts in search of quotes that illustrated the racial attitudes of Australians from the early period of white settlement up until the 1970s. It was an enlightening experience to say the least.
I was born in Australia but my parents are both immigrants. My dad is Uruguayan and my mum is Spanish. As a result, I don’t really look like the stereotypical aussie. This is a fact people never let me forget, not in a bad way mind you, but people instantly know, just by looking at me, that I have a different background. Often when I meet people they ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ To which I inevitably answer ‘Sydney’, I secretly enjoy watching them squirm, as they try to find a pc way to re-ask the question.
Usually, once their curiosity is satisfied, people don’t treat me any differently. More often than not my Spanish background gives me some kind of cred, people think I’m exotic or something. I guess I’m lucky that I’m not Lebanese or Asian, maybe then my experience would be different. Some racial groups are more acceptable than others (to racist rednecks and or under the radar bigots), even if nobody will admit it to your face.
Perhaps, if I were belonged to either of the aforementioned ethnicities I would have had an experience more like what my parents, who came to Australia in the 1970s.
When my dad was at school kids teased him and called him a wog. That is, until he beat them up. Both my parents say they had to deal with racist attitudes upon arriving in Australia, but that things have definitely improved.
Thirty years on, Greeks, Italians and the Spanish have gained a level of acceptance in our society.
There have been times when I’ve experienced racism. The most memorable incident was when an old redneck guy on the train screamed out, ‘Fucking wog go home’, as I walked past him. It didn’t feel very nice. I handled it in a dignified manner…I gave him the finger and yelled obscenities.
But like I said, these people are rare. They exist and in their hearts of hearts they believe people like me aren’t ‘real’ Australians.
The thing is I really feel Australian. I feel a real love for this country, and I feel really tied to this land. I went overseas last year by myself and visited Spain. I was able to blend in there because my Spanish is quite good and I looked the part, but it didn’t feel like my home (also my family over there kept calling me la kangura, which basically means ‘the kangaroo’, so there wasn’t much chance of me forgetting where I was from).
There is a substantial group of people in this country, albeit a silent group (usually), that believe this isn’t my home. That my claim to Australia is less valid than theirs.
Sometimes I think that my claim is more valid, because I grew up with the option three different cultural identities and have still chosen to see myself as Australian.
Fortunately, I don’t much care what people think. I know I am Australian, I can feel it in my bones. But if I were to believe these people, I would be in quite a pickle.
If this isn’t my home? And Spain or Uruguay are not my homes? Then where do these rednecks expect me to live? Under the sea?
The Cronulla riots affected me quite deeply. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will always be ignorant people to contend with and that just because some toothless hick with a southern cross tattoo says I’m not Australian, doesn’t mean he’s right. I know the people involved were mainly drunk hooligans, but they were young people like me. People who have grown up in the same generation, who I assume have been exposed to learning (hmm?) about other cultures. Multiculturalism was a prominent feature of the curriculum when I went to school.
In light of the fact that the whole multiculturalism/ political correctness movement had it’s heyday in the 90s, which was exactly when we were growing up. How was it possible that this was happening? Suddenly, there was a part of Sydney I couldn’t go to, at least in that week, because a fellow countryman might decide to bash my head in.
The worst thing about it was that it made me wonder just how many people secretly thought like those people. The problem about the whole political correctness thing is that it alienates people who have racist attitudes. Instead of expressing their feelings and working through them, they bottle them up and a certain resentment builds. But then again, if it was acceptable to express those views would it help feed racism?
The research I did in the library made me realise that racism in Australia, really wasn’t new. While I knew that anecdotally, I didn’t realise the extent of it. Even Edmund Barton, the first prime minister of Australia, was a racist. Except back then the concept of racism didn’t really exist because all enlightened people believed in the doctrine of racial inequality. They believed in social Darwinism, in the evolutionary superiority of the white race and in the right and duty of whites to rule the world.
To illustrate my point, here are some of the best quotes I found:
“Shall we as men and British subjects stand tamely and allow the bread to be plucked from the mouths of ourselves, our wives, and children by those pig-tailed moonfaced barbarians? [the Chinese]” John Stewart, Miner, Bathurst Free Press, 2 Feb 1861)
“Despite all the humanitarian teachings of the age, the typical Chinese remains unclean. He doesn’t amalgamate, he doesn’t ameliorate, he doesn’t read the paper, he doesn’t wash, he neglects all the first duties of white humanity. Why should he enjoy its priviliges – why should he ride in its buses? That is the question of the present interest” (editorial, The Bulletin, 1 May 1886)
By the term Australian we mean not those who have been merely born in Australia. All white men who come to these shores – with a clean record – and who leave behind them a memory of the class distinctions and religious differences of the old world; all men who place the happiness, the prosperity, the advancement of their adopted country before the interests of Imperialism are Australian…No nigger, no Chinaman, no lascar, no kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured labour, is an Australian” (editorial, The Bulletin, 2 Jul 1887)
“At the federal election a resounding cry went up from one end of the continent to the other that the coloured races must go. The verdict all over the continent was for absolute exclusion” (Senator James Stewart, Queensland Labor, 15 Nov 1901)
“If you bring the white man in contact with the black you too often suspend the very process of natural selection on which the evolution of a higher type depends. You get superior and inferior races living on the same soil and that co-existence is demoralizing to both. They naturally sink into the position of master and servant, if not admittedly into that of slave-owner and slave” (Karl Pearson, 1901)
“We do not occupy these lands for ourselves alone, but for the great British people. We are just as proud of the Imperial connexion…one of the best ways we can show our loyalty to the Empire is to hold these lands for the British race, and save them from contamination” (Francis McLean 26 Sep 1901)
“I do not think that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is that basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races – I think no one wants convincing of this fact – unequal and inferior. The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman. There is a deep-set difference, and we see no prospect and no promise of it ever being effaced. Nothing in this world can put these two races upon an equality. Nothing we can do by cultivation, by refinement, or by anything else will make some races equal to others” (Sir Edmund Barton PM, 1901)
“Though united in the whole, [the Empire] is nevertheless divided broadly in two parts, one occupied wholly or mainly by a white ruling race, the other principally occupied by coloured races who are ruled. Australia and New Zealand are determined to keep their place in the first class” (Prime Minister Deakin 1906, The Morning Post, 28 May)
Over two hundred years later these views have largely been discredited. But traces live on. It is interesting that the Chinese immigrants have been coming to Australia since the early 1800s and yet they still cop a lot of racism i.e. Pauline Hanson.
In this pc world, a lot of people talk the talk of multiculturalism, but underneath they harbor racial stereotypes and assumptions, possibly without even realising it.
Will racism ever completely disappear? I’m not sure it will.
3 years ago