As I flip through channels, words like violence break the silence, they come crashing in, in to my little world via an Australian reporter being phone-interviewed on FOX news:
What we’ve seen here is that these locals are attacking anyone with a different color skin.
Shudder
Since FOX news helpfully changed the subject right after that incendiary quote, I am left to frantically type “Australia” and “race” in my Google toolbar. I’m dismayed by what I find; tensions between “local” Australians and those who are of Lebanese descent have exploded. Apparently a few of the Lebanese-Australians attacked innocent lifeguards on the beach and “locals” retaliated, much to the delight of Aussie Neo-Nazi retards.
Hordes of vigilantes who had marinated in sun and alcohol sought vengeance against the “Lebs” for this and other, more disturbing offences. No good can come of this revenge race. I cringe at the way “Middle Eastern appearance” is being tossed around, because I am just waiting for some brown person to get caught up in this tragic mix, since we look more “Middle Eastern” than, well, Middle Eastern people do.
Another thought strikes me– sure enough, you tipsters are on it. Mutineer Ananthan points me towards the following, massively disturbing words in the Sydney Morning Herald:
A BARE-CHESTED youth in Quiksilver boardshorts tore the headscarf off the girl’s head as she slithered down the Cronulla dune seeking safety on the beach from a thousand-strong baying mob.
Up on the road, Marcus “Carcass” Butcher, 28, a builder from Penrith, wearing workboots, war-camouflage shorts and black singlet bearing the words “Mahommid was a camel f—ing faggot” raised both arms to the sky. “F— off, Leb,” he cried victoriously.
Indeed, victory is yours, you idiot.Cronulla is a suburb which is south of Sydney (and incidentally, the birthplace of Elle Macpherson):
A crowd of at least 5000 – overwhelmingly under 25 – took over Cronulla’s foreshore and beachside streets. Police were powerless as 200-odd ringleaders, many clutching bottles or cans of beer and smoking marijuana, led assaults on individuals and small groups of Lebanese Australians who risked an appearance during the six-hour protest…
After a local man, “Steely”, had led a chant of “F— off, Lebs”, a young man demanded the megaphone and told the crowd it was “racist”. A bottle arced in from the audience and shattered on his forehead. He fled “like a bleeding rabbit”, someone yelled after him.
Here, have some perspective with regards to how significant this is:
Cronulla was possibly Australia’s biggest racist protest since vigilante miners killed two Chinese at Lambing Flat in 1860.
An eye for an eye and the whole world can’t see a damned thing:
Yesterday’s violence had been brewing for months. It came to a head last weekend when some Lebanese Australian men attacked members of the North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club after they asked the visitors to stop playing soccer because it was disturbing other beach users.
Because ignorance is as noble as serving your country in the military:
“Steely” – who did not want to identify himself “for fear the Lebs will come and shoot up my joint during the week” – said his children had been scared by Lebanese Australians coming in from the western suburbs.
“I’ve got a four-year-old girl and a boy who’s 11, and they see these bastards come here and stand around the sea baths ‘cos their women have got to swim in clothes and stuff, or they see them saying filthy things to our girls,” he said. “That’s not Australian. My granddad fought the Japs to see Australia safe from this sort of shit, and that’s what I’m doing today.”
yes, it is your Australia which we are discussing. now which cursed place are YOU going on about? what’s hilarious to me is how the only crude stereotypes here are the ones you brought. i’m the first person to say that there is racism in America. there’s racism and shit everywhere. them’s the breaks, frothy. the rest of us are having a constructive and necessary dialogue in this space about that, care to join us?
siddhartha, I’m flattered beyond words blushes, doesn’t know where to look I’m also relieved to see I haven’t been entirely incoherent…
Multiculturalism debate? What multiculturalism debate?! It’s been all but stifled! As I said before , for John Howard, “multicultutralism” is a dirty, dirty word. We are not multicultural, no. We are all Australian and we live together in harmony with a common dream: ANZACS, meat pies, blue white and read flag. We are not accepting, but we are tolerant. I haven’t time right to link you to more relevant info, but some recent analysis in the broadsheets is indicative of the conservative view of multiculturalism here. Janet Albrechtsen flames it in her article here (I am seriously going to call her out on that one), Peter Ryan says we should all apologise to Geoffrey Blainey, as he predicted that this would happen. Marilyn Lake counters this in her article, as does Mike Steketee. What is most telling, though, is Howard’s refusal to call this a race riot and his insistence that it is a law and order issue. Apart from Labor MP Harry Baird (see above) and Shadow Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, no minister of any political persuasion has spoken out about it.
Sorry, the link to Janet Albrechtsen’s article is here. Under Hawke/Keating (and possibly Fraser) leadership, however,multiculturalism was a cornerstone of the concept of Australian. Hansonism was a reaction to the Hawke and particularly Keating years, where big picture politics, which included multiculturalism, recognition of native title, past atrocities to Aboriginals, republicanism and a drive to change the flag in addition to radical economic policies were perceived as arrogant and self serving, far removed from “ordinary” Australians.
Ikram, I seem to be having this debate anyway.
i think the point melbournemalu (amongst all the sarcasm and exaggerating) is that what we think we know about oz may not be true and until we live there we wont know what the vibe of the country is. but i can understand australians on this forum getting on the defensive, there are not exactly nice things that are being said about australia
‘….there are not exactly nice things that are being said about australia.’
Welcome to being an American for a day 🙂
*Joke, joke, joke! A little levity folks, after all, we can discuss these things without insulting each other, can’t we?
**Yeah, I hate it when someone tries to moralize on a thread, too. Flame away!
***I’d still love to visit Australia, some day, dear aussie friends! My favorite old-timey, tried to pass as white Anglo-Indian actress, Merle Oberon (c’mon, she was fabulous in the divorce of Lady X even if she was creepily invested in her fake history for far too long), used to claim she was Tasmanian. Just FYI….
Alot of this debate has prompted me to investigate further into these notions of identity etc. So if you’re Australian, I’m keen to hear your thoughts: your experiences and how it shapes your view of Australia, whether you feel Australian or not and why. What is your concept of a real Australian? Click on my name to email me.
Anyway, for the other Mutineers : I just stumbled upon a potentially useful resource for Australiana: Imagining Australia is a blog with politcal commentary, attitudes and current affairs, “Ideas for our Future.” Hope it helps.
Flygirl,
This sounds a lot like the situation in France…..Where, coicidentally, there have recently been some race-related riots too…..
Jai Singh:
So we can blame JH! After the Constitutional Convention and referendum for a Republic (1998), most debate about identity diminished. As siddhata says, it’s a sign of the times.
Cow tse tung: no, your drunken racist bogan will not distinguish between a samosa and a felafel. I get asked where I come from, or whether I was I born here, over time it’s reduced and people began to ask where my parents came from. It’s..not really out of the ordinary. It’ll take a few generations for that to go, we’re barely two generations out of the White Australia Policy. I don’t follow your line of thinking: people asking your nationality is not equivalent to race recognition. Yes, the issue has spread way beyond Sydney to Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. Currently trouble is expected all along the Central Coast. We were just considering how likely it was to actually occur elsewhere and why/why not.
melbourneMALU: LOL @ “johnno mate,” has anyone actually called him that? You forgot “strewth” and that we only got electricity in the 60s.
Canadian migrant, Professor Andrew Fraser, who taught at prestigious Sydney uni, Macquarie, came up with this gem of a line in July of this year: “Look at the annual HSC results – the consequence of which is that Oz is creating a new heavily Asian managerial-professional, ruling class that will feel no hesitation Â… in promoting the narrow interests of their co-ethnics at the expense of white Australians.”
Also, “an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems”.
Melbourne Malu, good to see some patriotism.
Anyway, heard something about Mullalloo beach today – colored folk must avoid it over the weekend. Sad to hear the plague’s spreading, Flygirl.
cow (tse tung): trepidation Then again, that laid back ockerism sometimes just can’t discriminate between dumb and illegal.
Fight dem back does a good coverage of the Andrew “Drew” Fraser issue. It’s pretty stock standard stuff that emerges every now and then. He pedalled all sorts of crap and touted the supposed racial (and therefore pseudo-genetic) basis for apparent sub-saharan stupidity. He was practically hounded out of office, though. D*** straight.
Ugh, I mean the laid back ockerism referred to this.
jai singh (comment #207) makes a good point. in flygirl’s account, which seems to be confirmed by the australian news and opinion pieces we’re seeing, the australian approach to managing plural origins in the evolving conception of nationhood is one based on assimilation. which is true as well of the french approach. the french approach has had its successes, but has now seemingly run out of ways to frame nationhood that everyone can accept. it sounds a lot like a similar process is underway in australia: a generally accepted concept of nationhood that worked well, for a long time, and delivered benefits for new arrivals as well as the long-established (with the glaring exception of the aboriginals), but that now has run out of steam.
apprehending this fact, different people are asking different questions. some are asking, why can’t some groups no longer accept the model? what is leading them to opt out of the model (in self isolating or socially harmful ways)? and, what right to they have to do so, and mess it all up for the rest of us?
while others are asking, why can’t the model be made more flexible, to account not only for demographic change but for the changes in culture (including global culture) that it reflects and transmits?
in france, those are the questions that are floating out there, more or less bluntly stated. sounds like the same is true of australia.
and in france, the last people to ask questions are the politicians. the whole political class in france — from right to left — didn’t know what to make of the riots last month (except the racist far right which said “i told you so”). from what we’re learning here, sounds like the same is true in australia.
peace
siddharta: It’s interesting that you point out that assimilation as the way of managing plurality. I got the impression fromconservative commentators that they beleived that assimilation and integration were effectively discarded as policy when non-white migration began in Australia. They suggest that it’s this lack of assimiliation that’s led to isolation, disenchantment (on boths sides), violence etc and the “imposition” of cultures and traditions incompatible with Australian/Western ones. Then again, they are conservative commentators. Female genital mutilation is incompatible with “civilised society,” but I don’t see the hijjab and burka as being a huge cultural imposition and they tend to imply. Anyway, these seem to be the most often quoted issues..
flygirl,
that makes sense. under an assimilation model, you’re going to get four different kinds of argument:
conservative [and i use these tags loosely, for convenience]: new arrivals must adapt in order to assimilate
liberal: the system needs to reach out and find ways (economic, political, cultural) to help new arrivals assimilate
reactionary: there are certain groups of people who are inherently incapable of assimilating
multicultural: before demanding that new arrivals assimilate, we should change what we mean by assimilation into something less rigid and more allowing of differences in the way people live day to day.
of course there’s the rub: assimilation is more a normative than a positive concept; in the hijab debate, for instance, some might say that a girl who goes to public school wearing a hijab is unassimilated, because of her dress; others might say she’s assimilated, because she’s going to public schools with everyone else. so two people arguing about assimilation might have rather different concepts in mind, which makes public policy difficult to construct. in fact perhaps the single best merit of what i’ve called the “multiculturalist” argument is that it exposes the limits of the term.
in france (and although i don’t know australia i do know a lot about france, so i’m comfortable making these statements), all four of those arguments are floating around; they map respectively onto the gaullists (chirac’s crew), the social-democrats (socialist party), the national front, and a cluster of minor parties and civic associations. the non-gaullist right basically has the same view as the gaullist right but without a lesser degree of bombast about The Republic. that leaves only the communists and far left, and they are in a quandary: they see discontent in economic terms and are uncomfortable with framing it in cultural terms.
bottom line: basically the whole political class is still wedded, in one way or another, to the assimilation model. and the multiculturalist model is not fully articulated; rather, it expresses itself issue-by-issue through groups dedicated to each issue (racism, immigration, religious plurality, whatever). it’s the usual splintering into identity politics.
so there’s no fresh model out there for people to engage with, either in support or in disagreement.
if you look at the response of the french political parties, across the spectrum, to the recent wave of violence, it’s amazing how helpless they all seem, how little imagination they show in framing the problem. sounds like the parties in australia aren’t going to do much better.
peace
Flygirl:
Why is FGM necessarily “incompatible with ‘civilised society'” when labiaplasty is legal? There are forms of FGM less severe than what some western women do to themselves via labiaplasty. Is the difference one of consent? After all, sadly, many women consent to FGM out of peer pressure. Or is it simply that plastic surgeons plastic a form of FGM on white women that we tolerate b/c it’s not tied to Islam.
I’m not trying to defend FGM, I just think that we ignore its varied forms and focus just one the one type practiced by some immigrants.
The incident that sparked the event was just a minor scuffle:
Sexual harassment goes on by both sides:
Some non-lebanese were scared:
Xplicit,
I won’t answer that here because it’s very OT 🙂
siddhartha:
Absolutely! Exactly what’s happening right now. How, how do we buck the trend…
Ennis; one report on the lead up to events. Rather rich feminist sentiments coming from yobbos?…
but also, the NY Times article you linked Ennis had a comment from the Sudanese/Spanish (I believe) woman who said she did not take Australia as a racist country. so its a mixed bag regarding the ideas put out on SM and the sentiments in the article.
on that day i’d probably be nervous of getting beat up, but i don’t think i’d worry in aus in general
(btw, I’ve given up the name Raju for anyone who cares. Sahej means something like “calm” in gurumuhki)
Siddhartha: cheers for the vote of confidence, yeah the Fishburne thing was a joke I was referring to from a movie like flygirl pointed out. In Aus, when people say anything with ‘the vibe’ in it, its just a running joke from that movie, apologies to people who thought I was being offensive and to Mr. Fishburne.
Siddhartha, I’ve actually done some research on the demographics of Sydney and class conflict etc. will be happy to pass it on to you/flygirl when I am able to compile it all in a coherent fashion.
Flygirl/Siddhartha:
What about a Gross National Happiness Indicator?:). Jokes aside, yes, you’re both quite right, multicultural seems to be a dirty word here, it seems to carry with it connotations of invasion and job-stealing. There needs to be a greater promotion of the advantages of multiculturalism as a WHOLE instead of a focus on individual cultures as and when the situation calls for it. I have noticed that people here feel disconnected when, in an aim to promote the views of one particular nation/culture/religion, you overlook others. For example, in Sydney, since 9/11, there has been a strong focus on bringing an understanding of Islam to the wider Australian public. As a result, many Islamic youth groups were formed to educate people of the peaceful nature of Islam but failed as they refused to accept the views of non-Muslims(I dont want to discredit these organisations by mentioning their names). On the other hand, at the same time, organisations such as Affinity ( http://www.affinity.org.au )have emerged and have achieved enormous success in forming a cultural connection with the wider Australian community. Affinity is one of the few examples of such groups that are very much active in the process of forming ties with other religious organisations to promote the similarities between these belief systems. For example, I was invited to attend an Affinity barbeque, being Hindu, they were very kind in cooking a vegetarian meal for me as well as ommitting beef from their meals!
Similarly, a bridge of understanding is much needed today between Caucasian Australians and the Middle Eastern youths. Organisations as proactive as Affinity but with a greater cultural focus would do wonders to prevent any future riots and to create the much needed community cohesion that is very much lacking in Australia and other parts of the world today.
On a side note, thanks ANNA for keeping this riveting info session going and the other SM peeps. I’ve gained a lot from it as I’m sure the other serious posters have too.
Siddhartha:
an article similar to what I was talking about earlier with regards to the geography/demographics of Sydney:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-tale-of-two-sydneys-affluent-versus-aspiring/2005/12/16/1134703611525.html
Flygirl – the NYT quotes a lifeguard on duty, the Australian article you linked to quotes nobody, their account of the lifeguard beatings sounds like second-hand news (although the primary source portions of the article are fascinating).
Ennis: interesting point. In any case, the reports here about that particular incident are highly variable. None have suggested so far that it might have been relatively minor. Who expects a Murdoch rag to be thorough? 😉
Major police alerts this weekend, all over Oz but particularly NSW. We’re all observing closely. Hope the folks organising the Harmony in the Park day in Sydney get a good turnout. Reconciliation marches, four years ago, drew 250,000.
I’d also like to shoutout to ANNA: thanks for facilitating this discussion. It’s been awesome. Keep challenging, Mutineers.
“My Japanese ex-girlfriend now lives in Australia. She reports that she can’t go out on Pearl Harbor day – December 7, even though, as I recall, Australia was not attacked on that day. “
“What’s with Australia?”
Firstly I have lived in Australia 23 years and never heard of Pearl Harbour Day, though I do know about the event.
I do believe there is some racism (if that is the right word) towards Japanese in Australia but this only comes from the older generations. There is a reason for this which comes from how the Australian prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during WW2. How the Aussie POWs were treated is shocking beyond belief, and almost turned an entire generation against the Japanese. I have lived for many years nextdoor to an Australian WW2 vet who fought against the Japanese. In every way he was a great man but he could never forgive the Japanese for what they did to his mates all those years ago.
On the other hand I think the younger generations have no malice towards the Japanese, in fact I think that in general they like the Japanese and are very interested in their culture.
Think it was a GOOD idea getting the Auburn Turks reved Up, i think the mistake was made by the media saying all muslims intead of using the word lebenese, Know that there on there feet again, will affect a lot will be double the strenghth and morale, Turks are born to be soldiers its compulsary. anyways just stombelled across this enjoy; The Notorious Auburn Boys oldest Turkish/Lebenese Gang.
i think the media should fix this, seen as dough they made the mess. thanx steve.