"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

White Australia, One Australia, My Australia.

Well, gee, this is something they forgot to mention in their endless sermons on Australian history. It was always convicts and settlers, convicts and settlers, convicts and settlers and exploreres and goldrush.

What they failed to mention was that Australian history is rampant with blatant rascism, discrimination and ethnic cleansing.

We know all about how the white guys treated the Aboriginals badly, because I guess that's such a huge part of our history that it couldn't be avoided. But they failed to mention that at various points in history White Australians have pretty much discriminated against pretty much every other race group who have ever set foot in this Land Down Under. When we did our goldrush research in year six, which is basically when it started, they forgot to tell us the horrific abuse against the Chinese gold prospectors - and to be honest, they weren't too happy when I found that out myself.

White Australia was a policy created soon after Federation with the aim of making Australia a utopic haven for the 'White Australian working-class man'. It was a time when Australia feared what was referred to as the 'Yellow Peril' - that the extremely populous and reasonably powerful nations of Japan, China, India and Korea would swoop in and invade the white civilization, contaminating it with yellow barbarianism and suppress the superior white race.

After the war, however, the Western World were being extremely cautious against pissing off the Eastern countries, in particular Japan, who were trying, unsuccessfully, to push a multicultural equality act to become international law. Britain and America disagreed, but they were trying to be diplomatic - after all, the war that had just passed was supposed to be 'The War to End All Wars'. So Australia invented an immigration policy wherein a prospective immigrant had to write down a fifty-word dictation read out to them, often with complicated and confusing grammar and spelling. Sure, it didn't say they were trying to keep the Asians out, but it sure did, anyway. This idea has morphed into what we have today - the test to see if one had 'True Australian Values' or, what we should call it, the Test To Keep The Muslims Out, because that is what it is.

If you couldn't pass this dictation test then you couldn't enter the country. If you did pass it and you weren't sufficiently white enough, no problem. They would give you the test in Italian or French or any of the other 'white languages', as if all of the 'True Australians' of the 'superior white races' knew all these languages from birth. It was effective ethnic cleansing, even if it wasn't labeled so.

And from then you hear horrible stories - the natives of neighbouring islands who were shipped to Australia and forced to labour in the sugar cane industry were forcibly deported, some having to leave Australian wives and children behind, forever. Chinese families, split in two - a father in Australia, and a mother and children in war-torn China, which was at that point in time being invaded by Japan, who also tried to invade Australia because Australia seriously pissed off the Japanese diplomats at Versailles.

We all know that the Aboriginals are treated badly, then and today - what my darling teachers failed to show us was that it wasn't just out of fear or whatever, but because the whites believed that the Aboriginals - or all black people, for that matter - were less evolved, that they were a link between monkeys and humans, and therefore not really human and so didn't have to be treated as such. These easily adaptable creationists believed that the Aboriginals were a remnant of the past, and were a race - or a species - that was dying out.

This attitude continued well into the latter half of the previous century, with John Howard's 'One Australia' policies, that refused to acknowledge and apologise to the Aboriginals and opposed multiculturalism. Quote: 'I certainly believe that at the moment we need...to reduce the number of Asians'. Oh, yes, and dear Pauline Hanson:

"Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country. A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. The world is full of failed and tragic examples, ranging from Ireland to Bosnia to Africa and, closer to home, Papua New Guinea. America and Great Britain are currently paying the price. Arthur Calwell was a great Australian and Labor leader, and it is a pity that there are not men of his stature sitting on the opposition benches today. Arthur Calwell said: Japan, India, Burma, Ceylon and every new African nation are fiercely anti-white and anti one another. Do we want or need any of these people here? I am one red-blooded Australian who says no and who speaks for 90% of Australians. I have no hesitation in echoing the words of Arthur Calwell."

Get farked.

We invaded Aboriginal territory. We barely have the right to call ourselves Australian. These so-called 'True Australians' are not Australian at all, they are just people barging over what is not rightfully there's, claiming it for their own, and then let nobody else follow in their footsteps because we would overrun them, even though that's what they've done to the Aboriginals.

There is a common saying amongst political conservatives: 'If it ain't broke, then don't fix it'. Normally they're referring to the constitutional monarchy, which the republicans of Australia is trying to abolish, but I think it can apply here. Australia, with all it's faults, inconsistencies, hypocricy and bloody history, is now functioning as a reasonably happy, healthy, wholesome community. Why must we break it up by forcing all the Asians and blacks out? It's not whole, but it's not broke, so don't fix it.

Rascism, and, indeed, discrimination in general, is rampant in Australian society, even today - no matter how they try to deny it. It is not purely fear that drives them - fear would be forgiveable, if not justifiable. But it is a belief that whites are superior, that men are superior, that heterosexualism is superior, which is the grounds for most of the discrimination today. 

I don't see why white people are so offended when I put it to them - as a race, in general, with few and far between noteworthy exceptions, they have been extremely derogatory and discriminative against the other races. I have history on my side, and personal experience.

1 comment:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Great coverage of the issues in Immigration Nation's first episode and of course more widely.

Yes, the White Australia Policy [1905] was roughly contemporaneous with Billy Hughes and his actions at the League of Nations [1919].

(And I wondered: "Was Gaelic an European language"?).

Calwell, Calwell, Calwell.

(I do give him credit for his remark about indigenous Australians: "They are the only non-European people we owe any debt to. May justice be done").

His book is called Be just and fear not.

And thank you for bringing up what happened to the Chinese prospectors.

As for "Worker's Paradise" ... how were they going to do it with such a homogenous population? It did not work well with many of the Western Australian farms where many British immigrant children were sent, and not to do the sort of farming that they expected. And many of the children involved were urban. Australia is one of the most urbanised societies in the world.

Fear at least can be changed. Systemic discrimination ...

Yes, I can see the line from Hughes to Hanson. Hanson was a small business owner as well.

Remember that everyone wants to be good as others and not considered inferior, at least within their society and community.

At that point in time? 1936 and Manchuria? (I do remember that at least from Wild Swans). Yes, it was diabolical to separate the families.