The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Australia

As many of you know, I grew up in Adelaide. Adelaide is probably the whitest city in Australia. Take a walk down Rundle Mall and you won’t see a brown or yellow face. If you are Chinese, then you are required to stay in your designated ethnic enclave known as “Chinatown”. Even the Sri Lankan cab drivers cum engineering honours students have English accents. Ok that may have been a little bit racist – I can’t help where I grew up. But really, I think deep down everyone is a little bit racist and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Which is why it really annoys me that there is such a general sense of anger, shock and indignation from the community and media that Australia has been labelled as a racist country of late.

Firstly the former CEO of Telstra, in an interview with the BBC, labelled Australia as ‘racist’ and that living in Australia was ‘in many ways going back 20 years’ (Sol obviously never visited Adelaide as he would have revised up that number). Let me say that I think Sol is being a little precious here. When K-Rudd said “Adios” on hearing of his departure I think that he was just trying to be a little too clever. It wouldn’t surprise me if the line was written for him. Anyway all this lead to a round of Sol-bashing and outrage that he had the temerity to label us as a racist country, especially after the way he left everyone’s favourite Telco taking all of our money with him.

But for a moment, let’s look at it from Sol’s point of view. From the second he arrived, he and his Seppo (whoops!) mates he brought with him were mockingly referred to, and drawn as, the sombrero wearing ‘Three Amigos’ even though the other two were just normal white boys. Having lived in America, calling someone of Hispanic extraction a ‘Mexican’ can be construed as pejorative. Kinda like calling an Asian a ‘boatie’. Or calling anyone ‘Tasmanian’. So for Sol, the on-going references to his ethnic background may well have been construed as racist (but nevertheless still pretty funny for the rest of us).

Secondly, to the recent (or not so recent it seems) spate of Indian students being bashed and robbed in Melbourne. Debate is out as to whether or not these are racially motivated, or that it’s just plain dangerous in the outer suburbs of Melbourne at night. Due to the perception of our authorities doing nothing about these so-called ‘curry-bashings’, the Indian media have created a poppadom storm (whoops, again) about the racist nature of Australian culture. Again, this lead to our venerable political leaders (and other commentators) defending Australia’s gloriously tolerant multicultural society (and by extension our multi-billion dollar education industry).

Yes – we are indeed a multicultural society, and yes it’s a wonderful thing. But are we a tolerant society? I would say yes – we tolerate other cultures – I don’t think we necessarily embrace them.

I think it’s really hard and maybe a little presumptuous for those in the white majority to make a call in this respect. Just because you like a good Green Curry, or have been to Bali a few times doesn’t mean you understand what it’s like to be a minority in this country. I can tell you first hand that there are racists out there – I experienced plenty of it when I was growing up, and still see plenty of it going on now. It doesn’t make it right, but to be honest that’s life. In fact for me it’s largely innocuous and can be pretty funny stuff.

The point is, it cuts both ways – it’s almost certainly the same in every other country. Rightly or wrongly, people basically don’t like things which are unfamiliar to them. I mean the Chinese word for Caucasian roughly translates as “white devil”.

Why then do we need to pretend that we love every other culture and that there isn’t a little racist, intolerant person deep down in all of us? What makes us Aussies so special compared to others in this respect? Think for a moment how you would feel if say Afghan refugees moved in next door. Or what you do when you see an Aboriginal on your bus or train. Where do you think those kids in the Shire and the Northern Beaches got their “Fuck-Off We’re Full” Aussie flag wearing attitudes from?

In the end I think this whole debate is neatly encapsulated up by the Chk-Chk Boom chick. Sure, what she said was a little bit racist, but at the same time it was pretty funny in our own unique take the piss kinda way.

Or to sum us up in two words - mostly harmless.