When my father left his mortal coil Good Friday last year, my head lay on his chest, I was bereft. I had been by his side 21 days in vigil. My mind raced with memories, many of them were of my childhood, with some of these memories of the racism we had felt from far too many around us. In fact, I would grow up to understand that we had lived in constant fear of racism. It is a corralling of people. Racism, is haunting, a shadow that follows you.
As a young child, my father said that the racism we endured would one day subside, that I would grow old into a more understanding society, where we would be many but one. He also said that someday I would discover that there were others on this continent whom were devastated by racism worse than anything that any migrants had endured. I remember thinking that these people he was referring to must be enduring something unimaginably cruel. He was referring to the First Peoples. He said that till we get the justice right for the First Peoples we will get it right for no-one.
Yesterday, Good Friday, I was at a vigil for Saeed Hassanloo, who is dying at Royal Perth Hospital. He is a 24 year old Iranian who along with his brother Majid has languished six years in Australian immigration detention. Saeed has had enough, his soul is hurting, the inhumanity around him burning. He has been on a 42 day hunger strike. He despairs so deeply that he is willing death. I stood there among a hundred people praying for him, thinking that this is not the Australia I expected that my father said I would grow up in – where our Government is okay with letting a young man die.
Racism cannot just be addressed by a set of laws, but by our example. Everything is about education. Example is everything, it is our only immortality. More than four decades later, some of the racism is being understood but other racism flourishes. Racism is not singular it has many veils and layers. It is not understood by everyone, and cannot be understood by those who have never experienced it. You cannot just watch racism from the sidelines and know it. Its pluralism means for the many who experience it, that many experience it differently. Of all that is psychosocial, racism is the worst, for both the perpetrator and the victim – it is an abuse and an ignorance that tears apart the core of an individual, it is devastating to the self-esteem and self-worth of both the perpetrator and the victim. Resilience is a steely resolve but it comes at a high price and with a mistrust and distrust of others, with an internal response system, a watchful eye – all this is exhaustive.
I have lived racism all my life. My father, my mother lived racism from whence they set foot on this beautiful continent. We lived in a state of constant alert to others – not to upset them, not to make them hate us more, not to cause them and us any grief – and in those days grief for us came in any number of ways much of which no longer occurs as extensively or as deeply today. I dedicated my life to working in ways forward from the racism, not just for myself but for the many. My academic work was spent on unveiling racism, yes in understanding but primarily in the cause for the ways forward, for all of us; not to keep anyone hostage to it. Two Masters and doctoral research in racism, four decades later and Australian made racism continues. There is still a long way to go.
People have the right to migrate to wherever they want to in this world, and nothing should impede transmigration. However, we live in more divided times than before despite statistical narratives telling us otherwise. But give it another century and much should change, these are transitional times in terms of addressing racism. It takes time, education, people engaging with each other and particularly through their children and through their children’s children. It takes relationship building to churn into myths the near eugenic like lies of ‘the other’ that keep us divided and rail us against each other. You can create all the racial vilification laws in the world, they still mean jack when we have to go into the heart of us.
I am surrounded by racial vilification laws, I am surrounded by anti-discrimination laws but they have never protected the majority of us. It is us ourselves in our own interactions coupled with time that will make the difference. We must differentiate the racism of today from the barbarous racism of Australia’s apartheid past, of South Africa’s former apartheid regime, of the United States’ evil slavery and era of segregation. That type of exploitative racism had to be fought by standoffs and blood on the streets where civil rights protesters stood solid, but today’s racism is of another nature – and it cannot be fought in such manners. It is about working towards the day we can all look each other in the eyes and just see ‘us’, not ‘them’.
You cannot understand racism unless you have endured it. The racism I was born into still manages a hefty say to this very day even if its ugliest forms are supposedly not as pronounced as they once were. Much of the overt racism that was the norm of my childhood is no longer acceptable but racism is still etched into so many people that still to this day it does its dirty business. That racism, well hidden but pernicious, steers through society, splitting hairs, working through every interaction. Racism does not just disappear because of a set of laws. If the racism rests in the recesses of the mind then it is part of the functions of the mind, doing the damage.
Racism must be understood as a nonlinear logarithmic apparatus. Its calculus can be measured but most people do not grasp its measure, and cannot see it other than as some haunting apparatus. All of us have the potential to understand the math to racism but unless we live the pain we cannot comprehend. There are some experiences that only those who have endured them and who have reflected upon them can speak to. Imagine the deepest well, and then imagine a haunting precipice to the darkness, as if an abyss of near blinding darkness, and then imagine that you cannot imagine further. That which you cannot imagine is not known to you. This is what racism feels like, but you cannot feel it, know it or understand because you have not lived it. The best academics cannot find the words. Let only those who know racism speak to it.
There is racism the world over – racialisation – and there are the cruelties of horrific brutalities – from Rwanda in ’94 to the horror upon the Rohingyas, to Tibetans setting themselves alight – but despite my travels the world over there is an Australian made racism that is unique. It is cruel but it is relatively quiet, it is very damaging. It is not a fast coming blow but a meticulously slow knifing. It has become uglier in recent times – we can see this with the cruelty to asylum seekers and refugees, by the land grabs and repulsive assimilation policies on First Peoples. But it is the marginalised and impoverished racialised underclasses of migrants – first and second generation – and of First Peoples throughout this continent that are concerning. More than a quarter of Australia’s homelessness is comprised of First Peoples. More than 30 per cent of Australia’s homelessness is comprised of people born overseas. Therefore homelessness has underlying racialisation drivers. Nearly a third of Australia’s prison population is comprised of First Peoples, but they are less than 3 per cent of the national population – this is racism. The nation’s suicide rates are racialised – with horrifically disproportionate rates for First Peoples and for Australians who were born overseas or who have parents born overseas. Australia is still a long way from being kind to all those who walk the land.
I engage with everyone, including the racists, including those who are repulsed by the colour of my skin or because of the cultural norms of my parents. It is the only way forward. There was a time I could not engage with many of them because it was too dangerous. Today I can respond to racists whereas in my childhood and adolescence this would have led to repercussions – not only ostracisation, persecution but physical attacks. We lived in a constant of fear. My father was a strong man, my mother a strong woman, they had their pride, they were hardworking, they were communitarians, they headed one social justice cause after another, but they also knew what to keep to themselves, what racial slurs they should not respond to, and at times effectively to dance to the White Man’s Song. My parents, all those of their generation who were from abroad, lived in fear of what to say and not to say, but in time – as a result of interactions through the children, some of their children partnering with the children of those who were racists, the racism became less, and people became more who they should be, themselves – freer.
Many of my colleagues – First Peoples, those born overseas and those with parents born overseas – do not engage with racist vitriol that is sent to them by email or social media. I respond to every single email or online comment to any article that I write. I was never able to or allowed to respond when I was a child. I remain as I always have, civil. I know I am a controversial and polarising person – often described as a radical – on so many issues but that is on issues, and my language can be colourful, but when it comes to engaging with people either face to face or one on one by email or through social media I remain civil and understanding. I choose to step into the shoes of those who are racist, trying to understand their lot. Some of these interactions for me today are the opportunity to vent the past, for my father, my mother, for that whole generation of migrants I grew up around, for my First People mates I grew up with, but it is also because I know that I have to treat others, whomever they are and whatever they do, as I had so desperately wanted them to treat my parents – with manners, courtesies, respect and decency. This is how I had wanted my parents and myself treated when I was a kid.
Australian made racism is still quite a commodity, and it is much bought. If anyone thinks a set of laws will down racism they are deluded. Australia is yet to have the conversation on racism it should have had long ago. However that conversation cannot be led by those who think they understand racism, only by those who know it, who have lived it.
Addressing racism is a cognitive experience.
In the meantime Australia’s racism will more than likely take the life of young Saeed. This is a tragedy. If we have the conversations that we should, engage with each other instead of pitchfork standoffs there will eventuate less racism, and fewer racists will finish up in our Parliaments.
Previous articles:
Forced to dance to the White Man’s Song – Australia steeped in racism
– “The White man articulated one justification after another; their Courts enabled law after law, to justify racism, to turn human beings into chattel. To this very day and long into the future, we feel the effects. Generations to come will still not be free of racism.”
– Australia is an oppressively White dominated society – White dominated economy, White dominated parliaments, White dominated media. For anyone Black, Brown, Yellow to score a gig in White dominated Australia, if I may write (and say), you have to do a lot of quickstepping, kowtowing, backslapping, and arse licking – you have to dance to the White man’s song, and you have to buy into their racism.”
– “Certain emotional experiences, certain situational traumas drown the psyche, crippling psychosocially the self.”
– “Please do not speak to me about racism as if you are an expert on racism if you have never endured racism, because when you do, you reduce racism to something that was never brutal, never oppressive. When you have not lived racism and you speak to racism as if you know it then you reduce racism to something that was surmountable. Racism is insurmountable. You cannot beat racism, you can only survive it. Many of us become resilient but we do not become free of it.”
Australia’s Federal Parliaments still reflect a White Australia
– “Australia’s conservatism and racism can be found not only in an examination of The White Australia Policy, in the first half a dozen decades of our Federal Parliaments, and in much of the media of the day, but it can also be seen in any examination of our Prime Ministers, Premiers, and legislation during the last several decades. Johannes Bjelke-Petersen who was Queensland’s Premier from 1968 to 1987 typified the dominant Anglosphere, working only its exclusive interests. He typified Australian racism even in the face of modernity.”
– “More than a quarter of Australia’s population was born overseas. More than an eighth of Australians were born in Asia. More than half of Australia has a parent who was born overseas. Australia does not reflect any of this in its Federal Parliaments. Therefore our Parliaments do not reflect Australia but instead of a particular section of Australia – and this layer remains the Anglosphere. Till Australia’s political parties and our Governments remedy this predicament our Parliaments in effect discriminate.”
Hi Gerry,
I realise that Mr Hassanloo believes sincerely, to the point of self destruction, that he is in danger of torture and death on return to Iran. I presume over the last 4 years he has been making that case as an asylum seeker under the Convention.
Can you direct me to information as to his grounds for claim, and why (official reasons) it has been rejected?
Thanks
Walter
Very informative.
Great words. Racism doesn’t have to be directed at you for you to know n understand it. The NSW Social justice Commissioner informed me that I did not have the right to make a complaint about racism when it was not directed at me. I argued that when immersed in an environment of racism my experience of it allows me to make an official complaint. In effect they argued that I did not experience racism when visiting Mutajula where none of the local First People were allowed to work at the numerous resorts on their sacred lands. As a non white South African who grew u on the apartheid area I continue to be offended by the idea that when I am immersed in a landscape of racism I my lived experience of the racism at Mutajula is not valid because I was not an aboriginal person from the community experiencing the exclusion from an opportunity to undertake localised pAid work. Also that as a consumer of local services I am prevented from meeting a local traditional owner. In a similar fashion I think your arguments about not understand racism unless you have endured is limiting.
Thank u for your vigil on justice
Really? As a “non-white South African” who lived through apartheid, you’re actually calling “racism” against traditional land owners? So let me understand this: you requested to meet the leader of the land owners mob, to lodge a complaint about “racism” because of not letting you apply for work there – despite the crippling poverty and jobless rates in their own communities – and THEN call it “racism” when he or she declines that scintillating opportunity?
You, sir, are delirious. Traditional land owners (who have been granted Land Rights by the Federal government) are, as the name suggests, the owners of the land. That means that it runs on local laws where those do not impinge on State/Federal jurisdiction. I’d say that if you ever got a peek at the Constitution of that community, there will be a line that says that all available jobs will be offered first to local (and “local” in this case might be quite extensive) residents. Not “no white people”, not “no black/brown people from other places”, but “locals first”.
That is NOT racism.
@EarleyDaysYet,
Please reread what Shahnaz wrote. Shahnaz’s point was that Aboriginal people were experiencing racism, not Shahnaz!
Upset that Indigenous people were not hired by local businesses or able to work on their traditional land Shahnaz tried to make a complaint against the racism that Indigenous people were facing, but was informed that only the victims of the racism -I.e. Indigenous people – could make a complaint.
Please reread the comment as I truly cannot understand how you misunderstood what Shahnaz was saying.
Thank you.
just a few points, Jo Bjelke -Petersen was born in New Zealand evidently of Scandinavian ethnicity by his surname and first name. This fact would preclude him from being an Anglosphere, whatever that is. Secondly, not all white Australians are of Anglo-Saxon origin, a common misperception. Thirdly, when this country was opened up to migration from any ethnicity in the nineteen fifties and onwards there were pluses and minuses in the experience both for the migrants and for long term residents of Australia. Too often the idea of Australians is only published from the migrants point of view. If Australians have the temerity to say what they may think about some aspects of the migration experience, they are immediately branded as racists. Whilst I agree that there are racists in Australia, I have heard just as much racism stemming from migrants as Anglos to use the terminology. Although many Australians are not technically Anglos but Celts or other European ethnicities. Moreover, I feel that to say that only migrants experience racism is to exclude the experiences of Australians who are snubbed or spoken about in their presence by migrants who think we don’t know what is being said about us when they speak in their own language. Or the migrants who only speak their own language when in a group when they all speak English and you don’t speak that language.Personally I believe the migration experience has been very successful considering the number of differing nationalities, cultures, languages and ethnicities involved. People can live where they want, go where they want even if it means certain suburbs end up predominantly settled by a given nationality. If people choose to live where they feel comfortable living amongst people of their own culture this is not stopped or regarded as strange. In fact, when my son was living in the south of England in a small town, he rang home because he felt homesick because all he ever heard was English and he missed hearing all the different languages spoken at home. As Australians we are all in transition and some cope with this experience better than others, some are xenophobic, others embrace multiculturalism wholeheartedly, others not so much, some from overseas are homesick, others travel extensively overseas to learn more of the world. We all have a common ground which is food, glorious food. We meet through our cuisines, we talk about food, we exchange recipes, we try things and we are developing our own cuisine consisting of an incredibly diverse range of foodstuffs. This is where we have a common ground, where we are all equal. If we concentrate on racism that is what you will find because that is all you are looking for. Perhaps it is better to concentrate on the fact that considering all the different people who live here it has been rather peaceful up until the Howard government started using ethnicity as a political weapon. Now we need to regain our peaceful country and stop regarding each other as potential enemies. Instead we need to concentrate of what is good here and who is happy to live together here. After all it is a great place.
You are in favour of a treaty with indigenous Australia then? Why hasnt it happened yet? Only country with none, and its chaos. I grew up in England and never experienced such terrible racism as Australians demonstrate. I know it happens in the UK but here its practically universal. I’ve met so many ppl who seemed nice, friendly, chatting awasy, then thay say something so frightful…like the registered nurse who looked after my neighbour Lorna – chatting away, then she says “Oh, but i think Aborigines should drink in a separate bar, they should look up to us! ” Thats the sort of thing which is “normal” for Aussies to say.