Tue 20 Dec 2005
Listening To: Herzeleid : Rammstein
Current Horn Factor :
Quote of The Day
tom_0369 man
tom_0369 im never moving to seatle washington
tom_0369 i flew over it and it was raining and gray as fuck
tom_0369 it was depressing
sammich when was this?
tom_0369 flight simluator 2004
Sorry I haven’t had much to report of late, kids. ‘Tis officially the silly season, so in between attending various office Xmas parties (more on those later, perhaps) and being flat-out at work, I haven’t had much time or inclination left to post.
However given that I live a stones throw from Bondi Beach (one of last weekends officially designated ‘no-go zones’), and given the depressing events of two weekends ago in Cronulla … I thought it was about time I gave you my two cents worth on Sydney’s current ongoing beachside turf wars / race-riots. Strap yourselves in – this ain’t gonna be a ‘light and airy’ post ! First though, for those of you unfamiliar with the DB story, I should give you a bit of background so you’ll have to proper context to put my forthcoming rant in.
I was born in 1977 in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Both my parents are also Czech, and we emmigrated to Australia in 1984 after living in Pakistan for 6 years where my dad was a trade attache to the Czech embassy. ‘Emmigrated’ is not quiet the right word though of course, since back then the world was still in the grips of the tail-end of the ‘cold war’, and (then) Czechslovakia was one of the ‘iron curtain’ Communist countries. So in actual fact, my parents didn’t simply emmigrate with me, they ‘defected to the West’ – with all the attendant hush-hush secrecy that implies.
Since then, I’ve spent most of my life living in Australia – and indeed I feel ‘Aussie’ – as much as anyone born here. I have the citizenship and passport papers to prove it. I also happen to possess a Czech passport however, and I’m as equally proud of my Czech heritage as I am of being Australian. Personally, I never thought the two were mutually exclusive.
Unfortunately groovers, I’ve had people trying to tell me different virtually my whole life. In the current debate on ‘racism’, ‘national identity’ and similar themes stemming from the events at Cronulla two weeks ago and the ongoing beachside tension since, anyone who has publicly expressed dismay at the racist sympathies apparent in some sections of the Australian electorate is, in my opinion, either a naive fool or trying to manipulate the debate for their own sinister ends. Growing up a migrant kid in the 80′s and 90′s, from the get-go as a 7-year old I was made painfully aware of the fact that Anglo-Saxon ‘aussies’ weren’t entirely comfortable with people from different backgrounds.
Bullied, taunted and regularly beat-up at school for everything from my accent, to the lunches my mum would pack for me (never mind that in those early days my parents were often so poor they could barely afford to feed themselves, yet they would save the ‘best’ food for me), to my clothes and even my last name (which is Czech but might as well be Arabic for all the good that did me, and certainly sounds it) . My experience is far from unique – the European immigrant families of the 50′s & 60′s would have faced similar prejudice when they came out here after WWII, as have our waves of Asian immigrants (the so-called “boat people”) in the 70′s and 90′s. Coming into the new century and the new millennium, it seems like it’s the turn of migrants of ‘Middle-Eastern Appearance’ and background to be the targets of this undercurrent of racism.
Like any migrant who has come to this country in the last 20 years I can attest to the fact that a level of racism has always been inherent in the Australian mind-set and always will be. Being from a communist country in the 80′s certainly didn’t help either. Yet, trying to paint this country and its people with a racist brush is to do it a great dis-service. For every fat, freckle-skinned 7 year old of Irish stock trying to beat me up for being a “communist, wog, poofter” (never mind that a 7 year old doesn’t even know what a ‘communist’ or ‘poofter’ is), there was a kid from India who wanted to know what living in Pakistan was like. For every 6th-generation ‘Australian’ making fun of my name or stealing my raw-capsicum and my salami sandwiches in order to throw them over the playground fence, there was another 6th-generation kid whose uncle had married a woman from Yugoslavia and was thus curious about life in Eastern Europe. I think a quote I read the other day in the Herald sums it up best –
“Our society can be both warmly welcoming and capable of deep, dangerous racism”
As a matter of fact, I think in some respects it was easier for migrants in the 80′s & 90′s, when the successive Hawke and Keating governments were committed to a little social policy called “multiculturalism”. At its root, this policy and its attendant legislation were about building a homogenous national identity out of many disparate wholes. Somehow, it seemed to work too – more or less. Certainly as I’ve already stated, an element of racism has always prevailed; but at least under multiculturalism this was discouraged on a national level, and the government policies of the time were all about trying to combat the racial and cultural divisions in Australian society as a whole, not about trying to exploit them. Unfortunately, if one examines the policy agenda of the Howard government over the last 12 years (and indeed Howards’ personal political agenda over the last 20), it would appear that exploiting social divisions is precisely what this government is about.
All that aside, it has to be said that in this debate and this situation, the Lebanese (and to a lesser extent Muslims of other cultures) youth certainly aren’t helping themselves either. Naturally, it would be a gross generalisation to claim (as some commentators in the media have) that all Lebanese/Muslim men are ‘troublemakers’. Unfortunately, there is a small but very visible minority giving their wider community a ‘bad name’, and said community seems reluctant to reel these trouble-makers in. Partially of course this is precisely because of the perceived ‘racism’ they feel, as all migrant groups do at some point, from the wider ‘Australian’ community. They feel victimised, and in many cases are simply unwilling to entertain the belief that ‘their’ sons could be capable of the terrible things ‘we’ accuse them of.
The problem of course, is that some of the aforementioned minority; such as convicted gang rapist Bilal Skaff and his cohorts, the unidentified gang who attacked the volunteer lifesavers at Cronulla two weeks ago and others, have been up to some truly awful things. To give you an example which directly impacts on my own life, earlier this year my lovely fiancé IG went to Europe for a month. Whilst in Spain she too was attacked a gang of Middle-Eastern men, and only managed to escape thanks to a combination of kung-fu, quick thinking, and glassing her lead assailant in the face. Whilst it’s clear she managed to avoid gang rape, she’s naturally reluctant to talk about her ordeal, so I will probably never know for sure to what extent her first attacker managed to assault her before his friends got there and she managed to escape. Regardless of ‘how far’ this first cowardly arsehole actually got, the point is he attacked my fiancé and tried to force her into having non-consensual intercourse with him. For that, he deserves to rot in hell, as do all rapists and attempted rapists. It’s precisely this sort of behaviour which makes it so easy, and so tempting, for otherwise ‘tolerant’ people like you and me to start hating young men ‘of middle eastern appearance’ as a group.
The thing is though – I simply can’t do it kids. I can’t. I’m not a “hater”, to borrow a phrase from one of my favourite hip-hop bands, Australia’s own 1200 Techniques. Don’t get me wrong – I definitely hate the fucktards who attacked my baby in Spain, as surely as I hate the little (Slovak) shit who sexually abused me a few months after I first came to Australia with my parents. However I hate these people as individuals, and not as representatives of any particular “group”, save perhaps the group of “scumfuck sexual predators”. I don’t ‘do’ hate based on race, creed or other such generalisations – the only ‘hate’ I have is based on demonstrated, individual, abhorrent behaviour. In other words -
Just because some middle-eastern men are rapists, doesn’t mean all middle-eastern men are rapists. Just as some Anglo teenagers beating a pair of innocent Arab men to a bloody pulp on the train at Cronulla station doesn’t make all Anglo teenagers viscous, violent racists.
I know some people may see this attitude as naive. Perhaps I’m “backward” for trying to cling to the multi-cultural dream. Or perhaps only ‘ignorant migrants’ like myself and my generation of ‘wog kids’ actually fell for those great Aussie ‘myths’ like “a fair go” and “we come from different places, but we’re all Australian”. Nonetheless, I would hate to think this is actually the case. I would like to think that the Australia I grew up in, or at least thought I did, isn’t dead or never existed at all – it’s simply been forgotten in the heat of the moment, as tempers have flared on both sides of the current conflict, egged on by everyone from Alan Jones, to Stormfront, to various gang-leaders and the Prime Minister himself, and his governments’ 12 year reign of divisive public policy and public statements.
I have to believe that Australians of all ages and backgrounds can come together and work these issues through. That I’m not the only one who is prepared to stand up and say “this senseless violence isn’t what our great country is about”.
I want to, and have to believe what I always thought generations of Australians always knew – namely that ;
“The beach is for everyone”
For my own sake, and (clichéd as it may sound) for the sake of my future children.
I’m not Derryn Hinch, and that’s my view.
One thing that I’m finding a bit perplexing at the moment though is the thong situation …
