Howard and Costello have demonstrated some pretty poor leadership recently by accusing Muslim immigrants of being un-Australian, of not learning English, of not conforming, of not accepting Australian values (ah, those vague, undefined values) and of not treating women properly. Let’s forget that the Muslim population is a whole 2% (so its obviously a huge problem), that women still dont enjoy full equality here in any measureable way, that all populations have their good and bad students, and that integration takes several generations. They are just un-Australian.

The ways in which those comments are racist and inflamatory are pretty well documented out there on the web, but most people dont bother to research the arguments or check the logic. Your average Jo will just see the PM on telly or in the papers bagging Muslims for not being Australian, and assume its ok to do the same, assume its justified. Members of my family are already doing it. The PM says its a problem, so it must be. It was on telly, so it must be true.

Its so frustrating. When i was growing up, i thought Australia was a multicultural society. I was proud, even in high school, of how mixed our ancestries were, of the number of languages my school offered, of the fact that we were a new country of immigrants, that we could be Greek and Australian, or Austalian and Italian, or Vietnamese and Australian, one did not exclude the other. It wasnt all perfect by any means; I could see that we werent fully intergrated. I didnt really know that Aboriginal people existed. I can now see the gaps in my understanding, the papered-over divides and the subtle racism far better, but i cant believe the government is willing to stir things up and make them worse! Do they want to create angry and defensive communities? Do they want to give your average Jo another piece of racist stereotyping to believe? Do they want to stir up fights, widen divisions, create antagonism? Is this leadership?

I have a post about Community coming, but its too much like writing an essay, so i keep putting it off. And now Dad is here to take me to his place, and we are all off to the Royal Adelaide Show tomorrow, so here i go… seeya soon with pics of the Show!

• fontella said on 06/09/05 at 10:34 PM.....

  Over the weekend I was involved in a conversation defining the nature of Australian racisim compared to that of other cultures. The conclusion being reached that Australian racism was of a verbal nature and while something we should resist with all our might, it at least doesn’t have the historic ferocity and deep seated hatreds of Europe which has resulted in too many wars and holocausts.

  Having grown up surrounded by immigrants and with a childhood spent in the Northern Territory, I have always been aware of some degree of racism occuring in Australian society. For a nation of immigrants (I am talking of course of the non-indigenous peoples who have settled here) I find it a ludicrous situation.

  
  I don’t know if it can ever be eradicated but it certainly doesn’t help when our leaders send out the wrong messages. The fact is immigrants have contributed to modern Australia and will continue to do so.

  
  May we continue to fight racism in our society and pray that it never reaches the elements that have resulted in the Nazi holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the bloodletting of Bosnia, to name a few. The link between racism and war is too scary to contemplate.

   

   

• T said on 06/09/07 at 04:35 PM.....

  Fontella - I agree that the racism in Australia is usually verbal, however, if heard enough times this does influence the behaviour of certain people - ie young people who have not experienced much outside their current environment. So little ghettos of racist thought patterns emerge.

  I have seen this happen - fortunately the guys in question (some cousins of mine) managed to find new peer groups and started thinking for themselves and has turned into people that I can have a conversation with.

  
  Before that I would have fights with them regarding everything from Asian tourists at the Gold Coast (me=good for economy, them = Asian invasion) and Homophobia (me=who cares who somebody is sleeping with?, them=bash the poofs)

  
  Now that these guys have travelled overseas and have had their eyes open to the world past their front doorstep and have really grown into fine and interesting and tolerant people. It is an amazing transformation.  However, there are so many guys like this who never have their horizon’s broadened and so stay in their little racist bubble where this racism festers into sometime violence.  This is why the PM is so scary as he is validating some already festering racism in the suburbs. For another example - The Pauline Hansen phenomenon..  that was a very ugly time in Qld’s history and brought on by this very reason…