Now the funny thing is here that the Greeks in the class (who would identify them selves as Greeks) were actually born in Australia to parents of Greek origin. The other funny thing is that these boys would say things like "Skippies are fun to play with, you can fukk em but but you only get serious with Greek girls". Presumably these "greeks" would in reality be Australians who were simply of Greek ethnic background. Skippies are of course the non-Greek Australians.
I never thought too much about it back then, cos well ... if they felt that way then hey ... but now I feel "shit, that's quite a racist thing to say".
Especially after all the recent stuff about "Australians being Racist" (and I cop a little shit about this being an Australian and being overseas and traveling through India) I think that it might be time to put some facts on the table, you know, before things get out of hand.
I for one, would love to see it reported what ethnic background are people from who are "curry bashers" in Melbourne.
For instance, today I read this in the Australian:
A survey or more than 500 international students found those reporting violence frequently identified the perpetrators as "groups of alienated young men".
interesting ... and ... there seems to be a few reports from others in the media that it would seem that other than multi-generational Australians are the culprits for some of the attacks.
I think it would be very informative if we actually had data from the Police to see if there is any basis to seeing if there was perhaps an ethnic group or another is involved in this. If this was the case then why should I cop shit as an Australian because some dickhead who calls himself an "elbownian" or whatever be allowed to take out their race hate and I get the blame?
If someone has racial or cultural baggage from "the old country" I don't want that to become our baggage as Australians now thanks all the same.
Further if we have such a situation, we really need to understand it and address why people from this or that ethnic group are feeling alienated.
Personally I think that from such an analysis we could look more carefully at what our problems are internally as a country and attempt to address them (or at least look honestly at them).
Living as a foreigner in a foreign country (I live now in Finland) I can understand the desire for groups to prefer mix socially together, however I've very clear on one thing: this is Finland and I do things the way Finns think they should be done.
This by the way has nothing to do with racism, while I believe that I in my small way do things which enrich Finland; at the end of the day if I don't like it here I need to go home. Even though I have residency.
The same should be true in Australia, and having 3rd generation kids of Immigrants still identifying themselves as Greek or Italian or whatever is just odd. Ask youselves why you're in Australia? If your parents left their homeland (and do not underestimate how hard this is) they did so for a reason. NB Life was likely to be better in Australia.
A Russian fellow I met in my work once said to me that he does not want his children to pretend about Russia. We came to Australia because things do not work properly in Russia, we don't want to bring that with us to Australia.
I have a number of Korean friends in Australia, and I totally love their influence on Australia. But you know what ... they're not wanting to make Australia into Little Korea. Sure they still eat Korean style food (heck, so do I), but they want to live a different life.
I see that it is all too easy for the children of immigrants to hear fantasy tales about "life back home" and try hard to remember the old country. Well that's great, but remember why you're here, because despite its flaws its actually better in Australia.
Australians are far too afraid to speak honestly and in truth we seem to be culturally unable to have meaningful debate (looking around I'm not sure which cultures do support this). To have a working multicultural society I believe we need to:
- embrace dialog, have discussion
- be able to accept that things are not absolute; X may be better at home, but maybe Y and Z are better in Australia. If you think they are not balanced in favour of Australia, then maybe you should go home.
- respect changes and embrace the interesting things of another culture
This last point is something I think Australians do much better than other cultures. For instance I was working at a workplace with some Indians, they were so disappointed that Australians can't tolerate hot curry ... I said that I love hot Curry and I showed them what I was eating. It was a nice Tandoori I'd made myself. So we started eating together. A few weeks later I suggested we try "Japanese" (as I've lived in Japan and love the food). Well not only were they unwilling to try it when they did they just dismissed it as tasting horrible.
So much for that.
Racism does not mean Australians have to accept others, and by not doing so somehow makes us racist.
However just as we should (at least try to) understand the peoples who come to Australia, I believe that that immigrants need to accept our values, and the values of other immigrants too.
By looking carefully at ourselves and seeing what our internal problems are I think we can all move forward to a better future.
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