didaksrightfoot
Premiership Player
- Sep 12, 2013
- 4,902
- 5,555
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
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- SA Spurs, Juventus
Interesting.
I grew up in Australia as the child of Turkish imigrants.
Despite Turks not being the most liked race (for good reason, I don't like them much myself either) I've always found Australians on the most part to be very accepting, inclusive and tolerant.
Personally I reckon this guy is seeing things that aren't there. Don't like the way he, in my opinion, slurs Australia unjustifiably.
Yes, Australia in the past wronged the Aboriginals and yes we still have a long way to go to correct those wrongs, but current day Australia is nothing like what he is making out.
Ok, this is about to get "real", and Mods, feel free to move/delete it if it's not really for this board.
(As a footnote, or rather TL/DR: I am not saying that "Australians are racist", I am saying for too long our society has accepted behaviours that we need to grow out of, and we need to become better at addressing and changing these, rather than becoming defensive and oppositional every time the topic is raised)
I'm an aussie of Middle Eastern origins who's been here since I was 2. (>30 years). For much of my life, I've believed that Australia I lived in was "tolerant" and multicultural, but as I've gotten older the more I've realised that isn't really the true story. I've not faced much trouble because I present myself as an "Aussie". For most of my life I hated my background culture (and some parts of it I still do) and I try as much as possible to not present it in day to day life. I haven't changed my name, but I changed its pronunciation whilst at high school to stop people struggling with it, whilst plenty of others have taken on anglicised names. (I saw a movie (?) recently that had a mother saying to their child: "If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Schwarzenegger, they can learn your name as well" - that really hit home). I don't drink (though often feel like I have to apologise for it) but the rest of my life would be culturally "normal".
And even then, I have faced more than my share of racism. All the stuff I passed off at school as "friendly banter" was ******* racist. My Y12 leaver's shirt was covered in comments of "terrorist", "bomber" and s**t like that (this is pre- Sep 11). I've had racist slurs hurled at me, most memorably on multiple "Australia Day's", and unironically, by a group of Aussies when I was in the UK with mates (We had already spoken to them earlier that night). I often hear the same from patients, and get the casual racist comments, like: "I'm glad you speak like an Aussie - not like those other guys".
And I'm someone who has tried to shed most of my cultural heritage. I cannot imagine what is experienced by those who are more attached to their background, who still want to display parts of their cultural, or religious, identity in public, or who arrive here at a later age and speak with an accent or struggle with aussie vernacular.
My current impression is that for far too long, we have tolerated behaviours and attitudes, that are prejudiced in their origins, and nothing but divisive in their expression.
This is all the more manifested when you see any current social discourses on topics such as australia day (the amount of online rhetoric that is basically "they should just go back and live in huts" is just saddening), immigration (FYI - "Illegal Immigrant" is a misnomer. It is not illegal to seek Asylum, and it is a human right to have an asylum claim properly assessed. If we want to talk about actual "Illegal Immigrants", which is those arriving/staying with the wrong/no/expired Visa's, then the discussion would be about UK and European arrivals by plane, who are the vast majority, when I last saw the figures - is it any surprise that this is never the story?) or media reporting of crime (An african must be in a gang, a middle eastern must be a terrorist, a white guy is just misunderstood or mentally unwell).
As a society we need to be able to properly identify and address these things, and all other challenges, in a mature and inclusive way.
(And this applies to both sides of the coin - there is no benefit, when raising these issues, to doing so in an argumentative, or divisive, "me vs them" way).
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