Back from travel and still owing people one wrap up blog from my trip, the recent turn of events in the Australian political landscape has meant that blog will have to wait until I've ranted at length on something else.
For those of you living overseas or in a cave, back in December over 30 refugees died while trying to reach Australia and the right wing of the media and politics exploded when the government funded the funerals of the refugees and the transport of their family members of the identifiable victims from where they were housed at Christmas Island Immigration detention centre- the funerals were held last week. Aside from the issues that this raises with regards to Australia's immigration policy and the lack of compassion of some individuals in the politics and the media, it has lead to discussion of the "negatives" of multiculturalism and, more terrifying, the re-emergence of the One Nation Party. For those unfamiliar with this debate or just wanting a catch-up on its current status, check out the February 21 2011 episode of ABC's Q&A while it is still available online on iView (www.abc.net.au/iview - it'll be available there until March 7 2011- sadly it is geolocked but if you are overseas maybe you can find it on YouTube). Last night as I watched it, I felt the urge to add my thoughts to the multiculturalism debate and oddly today a lot of people I've spoken to have raised the issue again so clearly it has edged its way back into the collective consciousness.
I feel the urge first to say that multiculturalism is a misnomer. When most people says "multiculturalism", what they mean is not just being made up of many cultures but also being made up of either many races or many faiths so technically they are also speaking about multiracialism (I don't think that is a word but it should be) and mutlifaithism (again not a word but it should be). "Culture" is a word so misused that people have almost forgotten its root definition- it is about having a shared identity and experience so when you talk about multiculturalism you could just as easily mean the difference between different generations within the same racial and faith community. Semantics I know but still it slightly annoys me.
Australia as a country has always had a difficult relationship with the idea of being a society composed of many cultures, races and faiths. Australians have a reputation (and in some ways a deserved one) of being at least mildly racist. As most primary school aged children know, the one of the first policies passed at the Federation of the Australian Parliament in 1901 was not a resounding "All men are created equal", it was the White Australia Policy (not to applaud the US as "all men" didn't include women or African American men who were counted as 1/8 of a white men at the time). The White Australia Policy is the profoundly racist immigration policy that was part of Australian politics which officially still on the books until 1973 (though it was progressively watered down following World War II). It favoured the immigration of white immigrants from Western Europe especially the British Isles. Not surprisingly in persecution of breaching of current immigration policy, refugees from the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia who arrive by boat are placed in detention while Western Europeans and Americans who overstay visas but arrive by planes are usually not. While Australia was one of the first countries to give women the vote, Indigenous Australians were not allowed their democratic right to vote until 1966. We may have a better record than South Africa but compared to most other Western countries we are way behind and that's even without factoring in hideous events like the Cronulla riots. In America, race division in society may have been part of law until 1960s but racial divisions in terms of voting rights were abolished in 1870 by the 15th Amendment (almost 30 years before we even had a parliament independent from the English one). Canada and New Zealand both have much more progressive and solid multiculturalism policies than we do- both like us with the combo of a distinct indigenous culture/s and an immigrant community from all around the world to incorporate in their policies. We need to better on this issue...in fact I'd go as far as to say we must.
The irony of the myriad issues some Australians have with multiculturalism is that Australia has for most of its 70000 year history between multicultural by the strictest definition and also to a certain extent multi-faith. The Australian Indigenous community- like many indigenous communities- was and is divided into small grouping of individuals which formed their own distinct and geographical distant cultures with slight different interpretations of faith or belief, and their own languages. This is something the white community often completely fails to understand or respect but in recent years people have been slowing opening their eyes to this. With European invasion, not only did we became multirace but also we added several more cultures to the mix (the culture of a Irish convict is very different to the culture of an English soldier). Before the introduction of White Australia, we also had waves of immigration from various countries adding to the mix such as Chinese immigration in the late 19th century during the Gold Rush and middle Eastern and Indian immigration especially in the Northern Territory as part of the camel trade starting in the late 19th century. There are many Australians of non-Anglo Saxon descent who have been in Australia for many more generations than the three generations that the paternal side of my mother's family have been but to those who decry the notion of multiculturalism my white skin would give me a right to be Australian while Australians of Chinese or Middle Eastern descent who are four or five generation Australian on both sides of the family they would not. The oddity of it boggles the mind.
Getting slowly to my main point, if you are of British descent, Christian (nominally or actually practising) and you speak English by your blood, by your religion and by your language you are more multicultural and multiracial than you think! You are probably more multicultural than the individual from the Middle East, Africa or Asia that you sit next to on your morning bus or train.
To start why if your ancestors are form the British are you multicultural? Well to quote Alf Stewart from Home and Away, we are "flaming mongrels" and I'm proud of it. Most racial, cultural and religious groups in many parts of the worlds, especially in Africa and parts of Asia, were for many generations very self contained- people lived their entire live within the cultural group and very rare did outsiders join this cultural group. On the other hand, Western Europe and especially the British Isles were less self contained. The indigenous communities of the British Isles- the Picts or Woads, the Celts, etc- were first invaded by the Romans many of whom, after initial wars, stayed and intermarried as they had across Europe. Later they were invaded by Vikings and the Normans and the Saxons who also often stayed and intermarried after a fight. So at this point, the "British" blood line contained not only that of the indigenous community but also that of people from Italy, Scandinavia, France and Germany, and that hundreds of years before anyone thought of sending prison ships to a giant island far across the sea. Also this means that all people of British descent are the great (multiplied by hundreds) grandchildren of illegal immigrants who overstayed there welcome...think about it!
What about Christianity? What is multicultural about it? Firstly it is a religion from the Middle East so that any Anglosaxon people practice it at all means that there has been multiculturalism in action to get to that point. Secondly if you read the bible you will see that nowhere are Christians told to lock themselves within their own community. In fact they are told the opposite, Christ tells his disciples to "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation" (Mark 16:10 NIV translation- bold text my addition). Before the first major public address by one of Christ's followers following his death, resurrection and ascension (Peter in Acts 2), the followers of Christ are heard to be talking myriad languages by visitors to Jerusalem. Christianity as spoken of in the New Testament does not speak of walling the Christian community off nor does it speak of the abandoning of cultural specific languages in order to worship God, it speaks of being a religion for the world regardless of language. If you are going into all the world, by extension you are meeting, mixing with, trying to understand and reasonably debating with people of all cultures, races and faiths.
Finally the English language, what is multicultural about it? Well like the people of the British Isles it is a bit of mongrel. To paraphrase a confused former US president, "The English have no word for entrepreneur". We don't it's a French word. We also don't have words for doppelganger (that is German), vice versa (Latin) or kamikaze (Japanese). There are thousands of words in common use in English which are not Anglosaxon words. It is a language that steals from so many others. If you look at other languages you will see minor theft from English (e.g. the t-shirt in German is "das t-shirt") but overwhelmingly it is in the case of very recent additions to the lexicon. English is great master multicultural thief of language!
So if you are a white Australian who thinks of themselves as Christian, you are the king or queen of multiculturalism in your neighbourhood so give the other cultures, races and religions a fair go and stop listening to One Nation and the pundits of right wing talk back radio! Like "white" light coming through a prism, we Anglosaxons can be spilt into many colours. Still not sold on the idea, well think about this. We are all genetically human and, regardless of your views of the creation and evolution of the human race (whether you believed that there was an Adam and an Eve or whether you believe in the Out of Africa theory that links us all back to six common mothers or a combo of both), we originally come from a very small pool of genetic stock. This may not be a happy thought on the dating scene but when thinking of multiculturalism just try thinking about everyone as your distant cousin and think about whether you really want to treat your family member that way. Also remember that genetics demonstrates that white skin can come from black without the original genetic markers for white skin being present but not vice versa. This means that the original humans were black not white so what right do white people have to declare that they are the "best" race?
So what do I think? If you want to live in Australia in my opinion, to quote the genius that was Michael Jackson, "It don't matter if you're black or white"- or Asian or Middle Eastern or any other race for that matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment