My story begins with what has become a classic Australian stereotype – the wog. ‘Worthy Oriental Gentleman’, ‘Golliwog’ or the more historically substantiated ‘Working On Government Service’ have all been used to explain the acronym, cum insult, cum term of endearment for non-white migrants to Australia, who descend from anywhere between Portugal to Pakistan. The particular brand of wog in my genetic code happens to be Italian, and at the time I became aware of it, I was also introduced to the complex phenomena of racism and stereotype construction.
Initially it was difficult for me to understand the othering that took place between myself and children from anglo-saxon families. After all, my grandfather, the irretrievable head of my family, was Catholic, a small business owner, a liberal voter and was equal parts angry at and afraid of asylum seekers. (The irony of course being that when my grandparents emigrated to Australia in the 50s, they and everyone they knew had arrived by boat.) The only difference I could tell between him and the patriarchs of my ‘Australian’ friends’ families was a little less Alan Jones on the radio and a little more food in the fridge.
When I have considered how stereotypes are formed, I have recurrently found an argument for their function to delineate a point of mutual understanding – some common cultural aspect with which we associate otherwise disparate entities. Stereotypes can allow us to become familiar with something foreign, gradually transforming our fear of difference into an acceptance of exceptions (my mother was often told by her Anglo school friends that she was ‘a good wog’) and eventually, hopefully arriving at a conscious decision to reject notions of alterity, in other words, to consider multiculturalism an exciting, enriching and ultimately beneficial experience for all who participate in it.
But Australia, although a highly multicultural nation, can’t help itself when it comes to electing politicians with explicitly racist motivations or who are otherwise thoughtless in their use of racist language. A picture of empathy itself, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has recently made it a requirement for public servants to refer to asylum seekers as ‘illegals’, openly ignoring the Australian laws, which protect a refugee’s right to seek asylum. Although Morrison was heavily criticised for his attempt at systematically dehumanising refugees, language is a powerful tool, often as difficult to deconstruct and rebuild as the perceptions it creates.
The authorisation of racist language into popular vernacular presents a chicken and egg scenario: Are our populations being bullied into fearing a swarthy other by politicians keen on fostering relationships only with those who dangle juicy free trade agreements while demonising everyone else? Or perhaps we give them too much credit, and the Morrisons of Australian politics are simply holding a mirror to the cloudy resentment that brews in the belly of the Australian populace.
Cultural stereotyping is a phenomena that Australians have practiced since white settlement, and although our attitudes regarding cultural diversity and social equality are more progressive than ever, 33% of Australians still believe that refugees who arrive in Australia by boat present a real threat to the Australian way of life, whatever that may be.
While Sydney’s inner city is dissected into Chinatown, Thaitown, Koreatown etc. integration into local areas and the establishment of flourishing enterprise has not necessarily equated to the respectful treatment of migrants. Approximately 40% of Asian (Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, China and Indonesia) emigrants to Australia have reported a consistently high level of discrimination.
For those of us flexible enough to wrap our minds around the rather simple concept of treating all people with the dignified status of being human, we may feel at a loss for what to do when ethically vacant politicians are the mouthpieces of hateful voters. One hope we might console ourselves with is that politicians will always be ethically vacant. They will always be bought and sold, and which way they swing depends only on the interests of the voting majority.
So in addition to publicly humiliating the next person you hear say something horrible about an Asian motorist or a woman in a hijab, I suggest that we all keep voting for whichever exhausted senator (probably Greens) is striving to improve our understanding of what it means to be a refugee and working to build community relationships not in spite of, but as a celebration of cultural difference.
