I'm sorry you feel this way. I feel that Australia has done very well in creating a diverse and creative society in which people from different backgrounds live and work together. My interest is not so much in appearance but in language, so my question tends to be about where that form of speech comes from, though I have certainly asked the question you dislike. Sometimes I have been to where the person comes from, and we talk about that. And, in closing, I usually say 'Welcome!', unless the person has been here for forty years or so. As far as I can tell, all of these encounters have been friendly and supportive of the Other.

I attended a Citizenship Ceremony yesterday and felt the same — eighty of so people from thirty or so countries became Australian citizens. Everyone was happy in their new status, and I was happy for them.

There is a bright side to this encounter. I feel sorry that you haven't experienced it.

I get ask if I am Australian and I don't feel offended.

Asking a person about themselves is a way of starting conversations plus also gain information about that person.

"Do you have children?"
"Where do you live/work?"
"What is your occupation?"

etc etc.

I love hearing about peoples experiences from other countries/cultures.

There is another form of discrimination where for example a person from one culture is not allowed to have a relationship with a different culture.

I get the impression that the bulk of the passive racism in these encounters is the authors negative assumptions of the motives behind what is more likely people trying to be friendly.

There may be good reasons for the authors sensitivity on the issue, perhaps its one of those questions thats past its use by date but I was left with the impression that the encounters the author describes have been attempts by others to reach out which have been met with a response derived from the authors own sensitivities rather than any sense of community. I've been guilty of the same myself at times when something is weighing on my mind.

Perhaps the more culturally sensitive and enlightened person will know when its better to avoid such questions and have the skills to reach out without the risk of giving offence but its probably safer to assume that such a query is well meant rather than some kind of racist power play.

R0bert

I can understand someone less forgiving than I am provoked into saying to this newcomer who is exploiting the advantages of living in Australia, "go back where you came from".Leslie

This is ridiculous. You choose to make assumptions about the reasons for certain questions, and then blame others for having made those assumptions. Grow up.

Everyone in Australia comes from somewhere else originally. Even aborigines were from somewhere else if you go back far enough.

Get over it and start thinking like a normal person

...The author of this article is more evidence that Multiculturalism breeds an inferiority complex, with a design towards victimhood; outcomes of which are used against the balance of society to achieve unfair and disproportional recognition from Politicians.

Yes siree! I can emphasize with Ramesh on this one. I have had a run of such encounters my self in the last week or two.

Two days ago I was walking through the Sydney suburb of Lakemba,when three men in thawbs stopped me & asked: “Where are you from kafir, and what are you doing here?
Two days prior to that I had occasion to visit a friend in the Sydney suburb of Redfern, when two darker skinned individuals called out: “What are you doing in The Block, whitey?”
And, just four days prior when I called into a shop in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, the shopkeeper commented: “We don’t get many guilos here, where are you from?”

I asked myself, why were they so enthusiastic to ascertain my identity, where I come from?

If I was of any other colour I might have called it racism …but no, hadn’t the great social theorists (and every anti-racism campaign from Gough to Gillard) *educated* us that racism was endemic to Europeans –so it couldn’t be that!

Still it puzzled …could our betters have gotten it wrong … for days I felt like Winston in 1984 slinking away avoiding friends & foes.

Then Eureka! The answer struck me … under our multicultural ground rules these people were perfectly entitled to interrogate any whitey who entered their homelands, and turf me out if they saw fit. It was ME who was showing my white shoganism by taking offence to it!

So the great social theories remain inviolable – only Europeans can be racist --and all our high-minded activists can continue trotting out each day in the sure and certain knowledge that in exposing every morsel of European self preference (real or imagined) they will rid the world of racism once and for all.

Where are you from?

That question could be asked for a variety of reasons.
Something as simple as being fascinated by someone's
accent and trying to place it. I would not assume that
people were being deliberately divisive. It could
simply be curiousity. However, having said that I do
recall a funny incident that my husband had a few years
ago. He was waiting for his turn to have some tests done
at one of the largest hospitals in Melbourne when an
older nurse came up to him with her list of names and
glancing at my husband's long European surname asked him
in a loud voice:

"Do you need an interpreter?"

My husband looked at her, smiled, and answered in his
perfect English accent:

"Why doesn't the doctor speak English?"

SPQR:

And not too many words...Love it!

Thanks for your article. I totally agree. I’m white but lived overseas for a number of years as a child and an adult and hence have “an accent”. I resent being asked every day “where are you from?”. The effect is to make me feel that I don’t belong even though I am Australian born. I lived in Canada for a number of years. I was never asked this questions by strangers. After getting to know me people gradually asked about my background. The effect was that I felt as if I belonged in Canada. Indeed I felt more Canadian and at home than I ever did in Australia. Strangers in Canada didn’t ask me “where are you from” so it felt they assumed “I belonged here”. David L and Don, you need to think about what it feels like to be asked this question day in, day out. It isn’t the person’s intentions that matters, it’s the effect of having to tell the same story day in, day out what does.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Where do I come from? Why planet Earth of course. My ethnicity? Why human being of course!
This Author is clearly one of those over sensitive recent Asian arrivals, completely at odds with Australia and Australians, and just looking for any excuse whatsoever, to justify his very own reverse perverse form of anti white anti Christian bigotry/racism?
If you don't like us and or our social mores? Then feel perfectly free to return to where you came from!
People/Australians have only two real motives for taking an interest in, or talking about you?
They are either interested or jealous.
Moreover, they will rag/tease/sledge you incessantly, if you act a little to precious or pretentious.
We really are, in the main, an egalitarian lot. And often seeming invective, if uttered with an accompanying smile, is really a term of endearment.
Giovanni was right, when he described us as a weird lot.
But hey, if you have a fair dinkum Aussie for a mate, you have a friend for life. Who would likely give you the shirt off of his/her back, if he/she believed your needs were greater? We are inherently, a very decent freedom loving People and the reason I love this land and her peoples so very much.
Count the number of war graves in parts of Europe and elsewhere, if only to understand, we have sacrificed the very cream of our young manhood, fighting as volunteers, for the rights and freedoms of others, in righteous European wars, we simply did not ever have to be involved in!
Look, we have very little control over what happens to us or our future. The only thing we have absolute control over, is our thought processes and through them, our attitudes!
One would commend the Author to study the life and teachings of Gandhi, who basically set a nation free, with people power and passive resistance, and a welcoming smile for absolutely everyone.
Rhrosty.

I think, with this article, multiculturalism has 'jumped the shark' and perhaps helps explain why the Europeans have quit multiculturalism, America continues to be mired in it and the rest of the World have always seen it as colonialism, i.e. the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory.

Yeah, kinda sorta.
Anyone watch Dumb, Drunk & Racist?
The whole premise is laughable Anti Racist drivel.
The idea of White Australians being able to organise themselves to actually do anything about their alleged "Racist' beliefs is beyond a joke, even the people from the Australian Protectionist Party in the Villawood protest segment are led and directed by foreigners and ally themselves with the pro Israel lobby.
White people are right to be ashamed of the Cronulla incident, I'm ashamed that my people are so gutless and broken down after decades of oppression that the only way they can now react to outside pressure is like a mob of Third World deadheads.
Most people gloss over the fact that the first Lebanese response was to run and defend their mosques from what they supposed would be an imminent attack by a White mob.
Any White person who is racially aware would have been laughing out loud at the idea of such a raid, after nearly seven decades of a total war on White ethnic identity and group interests we are no longer capable of the kinds of actions which may have occurred in years past. All but a few very elderly people have even lived in a White society and soon that living memory will pass into history, the author of this article has nothing to worry about, at it's worst it's sticks and stones but there's no grunt, no backbone behind the arm that slings them.

When I was a kid, in the days when we still had a "baker" with a horse & cart deliver our bread, it took my mother at least 5 minutes to figure out where our baker came from. You see he was from one of those counties of the UK with to us thick accents, which provided less migrants to Oz, particularly country Oz. His accent, although he was supposedly speaking English, was too much for her.

I know Ramesh would not approved, but she wanted to know where our baker was from, & was interested in his reasons for emigrating.

His son & I played football together in the school team, & the families later became great friends, even going on holidays together.

Perhaps if Ramesh were a little less full of his own importance, he too could have found a friend, rather than have given insult.

He & his organisation sound like just what we can do without in Oz.

I have mates who are blackfellas (they say), I'm a whitefella. I'm not ashamed of that, and neither are they. It's a description, nothing more.
I agree with Don Aitkin; I'm also fascinated by accents, and the extraordinary variations even in English/American/Australian. 'Strine' sounds relatively homogeneous (to my ear) compared to the local variations in England or America, yet there are subtle differences. Decades ago, it was easy to pick northern Qlders, ending every sentence with “Eh?” Tasmanians use the word 'cordial' to describe soft drink, and insist that 'au' be pronounce 'Oh' (as in “loncestan”). Since I haven't been everywhere it is inevitable that there are local accents I can't recognise. Is it permissible to ask white Anglo Australians where they're from, on the basis of their accent, or is that culturally insensitive? (Assuming the questioner is also AA, of course.)
I would strongly suggest the author grow a thicker skin.
Or “a pair”.
“Where ya from, mate” is just an ice breaker. Unless you're ashamed of your heritage, why should you care?
Incidentally, my sister is fascinated by our Irish/English/Portuguese/,/,/... roots.
I'm stuffed if I know why.

I have to say that I do often ask people where they've come from, not to put them down, but because I'm genuinely interested to learn about other countries and cultures.

My son-in-law is American - guess what was one of the first questions I asked him? "Oh really so you're from Missouri. And you've also spent part of your life in California. Wow, did you really have that experience near the Ozarks?"

During a lengthy train journey recently I sat next to a woman originally from England. Born in London, I learned after asking her. She was only to pleased to tell me of her life in London and Kent. Same with a family my child befriended from Bosnia - and the young girl from school we used to talk to at the bus-stop from Iraq or the fellow years ago that I chatted to who was a Vietnamese refugee.

Usually the interest is genuine and the intentions are honourable.

I find it pretty offensive that someone would call me a racist simply for showing an interest in someone else's origins. In fact I would call it a pretty racist thing to do. I know when holidaying in Turkish Cyprus and various south east Asian places I am frequently asked where I am from as my white skin sets me apart from the majority population. However, in my experience the only reason these people ask is because they are trying to be friendly and start a conversation and perhaps even have a genuine interest. I have never considered such enquiries to be racist. Perhaps I was wrong and these people were actually getting at me because I'm white. Perhaps Ramesh could enlighten me as to whether such enquires are racist when made by people with brown skins or only it the enquirer is white.

Upon first reading the article, I for some reason was put in mind of a clockwork orange.

In what I now know to be my subliminally passive racist way, I checked the main page to see under what category the article had been contributed, half expecting to find it had been submitted under 'satire'. Imagine my confusion when instead I found 'society', but at least in the process I had revealed to myself the connection with the clockwork orange: the article had to be a wind-up, didn't it!

Otherwise, just where was this guy coming from?

I found myself wondering whether perhaps he had come from the Society Islands, but didn't think the Indo-Hispanic sound of the name to quite fit in that putative connection. Was there perhaps, analogously to Juan Fernandez Island off Chile, a Ramesh Fernandez Island out there somewhere in the oceanic vastness of the Pacific, and was I Robinson Crusoe in wondering that, I wondered. I mean, look at when the article was posted, man. Friday!

More to the point, I wondered that if this were to be so, what were the author's chances of returning to it? You know, of going back to where he came from. It just isn't fair that anyone with skin so thin should be exposed to the relentlessly abrasive blizzards of passive racism that so characterises the Australian climate, and yet to which so many of the native-born seem so immune.

It is said no man is an island, but Juan Fernandez is. Perhaps there is hope for a Ramesh Fernandez? After all, we are an insular lot here in Gert-by-Sea, and time cures all eels.

Passivity to all.

There should be a law against that sort of thing!!

Fernandez's arrogance and ignorance have been fully exposed.Magnamously, Australia accepted him as a refugee from Sri Lanka and awarded him citizenship, and now as CEO of a fund raising organisation he exploits the democratic freedoms in Australia to issue "media releases" and propaganda articles to attack Australian values.And another important principle is at stake:providing refugee status should not presume citizenship.
As he has been here since 2001 and has had time to become an Aussie, I think that this is a legitimate case of saying, as you reject our values " go back where you came from." Leslie

One of the most interesting places to meet people from different cultures and backgrounds is in a taxi. Over the years I have had many pleasurable conversations with interesting taxi drivers, often starting the discussion with "Where you from mate?". Sometimes they say "Cronulla" or whatever, but mostly they are happy to talk. I guess from their viewpoint, it is better to have a friendly talkative passenger than one who sits silently the whole journey.

So I think, Ramesh, that most of the commenters on your post are saying that you are misreading friendliness as rascism. Nothing surer than if you see the world that way, that is the world you will get.

Actually, you couldn't live in a friendlier place than Australia, unless of course you include New Zealand. And yes, many of the taxi drivers are interested to know that I come from there. Many years ago.

Well I applaud Ramesh Fernandez for speaking up. I think Aussies are by and large a parochial lot, especially further north and inland.
I'd have to disagree, Forrestm that "so many of the native-born seem so immune". I doubt they get half so much respect as Fernandez, but they're not nearly so capable of resentment or speaking up for themselves, and far from immune they seem to me to show all the signs of an ethnic group dying of its own self-loathing--taking its cue from us of course.

But it's good to see you posting again.

I dunno perhaps I'm getting too old for this touchy feely stuff we all seem to go on with these days...

Look Ramesh, more than likely this bloke was only trying to be friendly with you. You were both buying coffee at the time (I think?)and he was simply trying to engage you in conversation while passing the time waiting for his coffee. I really don't know.

But I must say to you my friend, if you choose to reside in this country permanently, you've got to learn to 'loosen up' more and simply go with the flow. Sure, he may've been a bit of a dill, but what does it really matter !

Australian's tend to be very gregarious and convivial with our speech.
And I'll admit it does take a little getting use to in the beginning. But generally, nothing nasty or sinister is meant by it.

Before I retired, you should have heard some of the epithets and profanities levelled towards me and my colleagues. You just let it roll off you back. Nine times out of ten, it's just the p...and bad manners talking, so what !

Ramesh my friend, a little advice if I may - as I said at the outset, you've got to learn to let these hurtful little remarks to just dissipate into thin air, and NOT take them to heart.

You know we Aussies are pretty good people by and large, so try not to be overly sensitive to any peceived slight that may (seemingly) come you way. Initially, not that easy but it'll come, believe me.

Perhaps too, you may well find it useful to mix a little more with Aussies, by doing so you'll pick up our quirky, unusual levels of humour together with the nuances and absurdities that accompany that humour.

Hang in the Ramesh, and wellcome to Aussieland !

Interestingly, Squeers, I was awoken at 2am about three weeks back by a knock on the door. It was pouring rain and there lo and behold was an Aboriginal lady who I'd never seen before asking me to please ring her a taxi. I rang but the taxi service refused to come as they said they'd already been to the address (down the road) and that the prospective passengers weren't in any condition to be picked up. The upshot was that two Aboriginal women sat on my front porch out of the rain for an hour while we chatted and I rang around to various kin of theirs for someone to take them in. No luck there. But I made them both a coffee and we chatted about where they came from and who they felt connected with. They were both broke but sober and in the end they left with one of my old umbrellas and wandered off into the night.

Surreal for sure, but I think all three of us were richer for having met and shared the experience. I think that's what people here are saying - that if you meet someone, it's rewarding to share histories.

I was asked by a Sri Lankan (attendent at a petrol station) which country I came from and I replied, I am from this country! He persisted and asked me again, "no I mean which country did you oome from?" to which I responded. I came from this country, so did my parents and my great great great great great grandparents". He was obviously puzzled with my response. Clearly he had no understanding that I was Indigenous/Aboriginal. From my many encounters of this nature it appears that so many new Australians that come here from ex colonial /British empire countries know nothing about this country's history or its first people.

I agree with the comment by o sung wu - if new Aussies don't engage with longer-term Aussies it is likely to take them a very long time to really 'settle in'. Still, it is understandable if some are reluctant to do so, perhaps because of difficulty with the language (as a second and very new language for some, or for many), and perhaps because their overseas experience (land of origin or of transition) has caused them to be wary of strangers or of any of a different ethnicity, culture, religion or even mode of dress.

Perhaps also, some may have formed a detrimental view of Aussies and of Australia from their experience in detention - and may in consequence harbour ingrained feelings of dislike and distrust, more's the pity. Would that detention were not necessary, or could be much shorter for all, and a lot more amenable - but Oz has a duty of care in relevant screening processes, and this may unfortunately take considerable time, is not a perfect process, and may be hindered by lack of papers or lack of means to verify claims.

Oz is not just an open door to a brand new life for all comers, or we would soon be overrun, and with the danger of inheriting many of the problems from which people seeking asylum have fled in the first place.

Unfortunately I also get the impression that some new Aussies may not wish to 'settle in' to our way of life, but want to hold strenuously to their native culture, language and habits at the exclusion of all else - and so seek, and hold on to, enclaves of similar interest.

Not all Aussies are garrulous of course, but the great majority seem to be a very fine bunch, with nary a hint of racism or prejudice among them. Seek and you will find the 'heart' of this country and its people, and that we're not such a 'weird mob' after all.

Let me rephrase my original post.
The answer to "Passive Racism", whatever that is lies not with political correctness or liberties and prohibitions doled out by the state, understanding will only come from...hold on to your hats...understanding each other.
Ramesh and other newly minted Anti Racists like him can't have it both ways, they can't accuse White people of being ignorant bigots and at the same time demand that they as non Whites should at no time be required to give an account of themselves lest they be inconvenienced or embarrassed.
Unhindered free speech is a custom of all ordinary folk, out in the real world people just get along or avoid each other, you learn, through common sense and experience the tastes , preferences and habits of different ethnic and racial groups. I can only conclude that Ramesh is angling for a spot in the segregated, somewhat surreal world of the PC Managerial and Academic caste, where adherence to dogma and repeating certain words matter more than things like congeniality and pride in one's heritage.

BTW Squeers don't you think you're being just a teensy bit patronising toward Aboriginals in saying that they are unable to speak up on their own behalf?
The worst case scenario fro a multi-racial society would be to have a breakdown in communication with only the PC managerial and academic caste as go betweens and interpreters. And who are the Aboriginals supposed to be talking to anyway, the state, which is their main benefactor and protector?

The OP seems to have settled in nicely to the new age Oz way of life.
Far more lucrative to cry foul than to have a go.
If this experience was the most upsetting that you encounter, you're gonna be all right mate.

I suspect you're a rare beast, Poirot.
It occurs to me that it's be perfectly legitimate to say to any true blue, "Where are you from?" And when he retorts indignant, "I'm Australian!" One could ask, "No, I mean originally?"
Aboriginal Australians are really the only ones who have the right to ask the question with that proprietorial air. The rest of us are immigrants.

Squeers,
No we're not Immigrants, my last overseas born relative came here in the 1880's and the reality is that due to assimilation most, if not all Aboriginal people alive today are blood relatives of White and in some cases Asian Australians, there is no longer a cut and dried definition of a Native.
This is the world as it is, not the PC fantasy world, "Nation of immigrants" is dogma, ecclesiastical language from the religion of the PC Managerial and academic caste.
If Aboriginals have the right to call themselves legitimate Australians then so do I and any other person born on this continent regardless of their race.
What is the point of denigrating legitimate native born Australians as nothing but immigrants?
You statement serves no constructive purpose, so why persist with a notion that is unhelpful and offensive?
Your attitude sends us down the road of having to define people on the basis of genetics and we all know that DNA and identity are two separate issues, do you want to start DNA testing people like they do in Israel?

Ramesh Fernandez
"Who is he, and why is he so enthusiastic to ascertain my identity where I come from?
Did I find him racist and condescending? Yes."

You're assigning motive where no motive has been established. Thinking 'racism' and 'condescension" as your initial instinct could be either a reflection on your own insecurity issues regarding your identity, or a willingness to think the worst of, what seems to be, an innocent inquirer.


"Was there a power dynamic inherent to this question? Yes there was."

This is a Marxist-Foucaudian interpretation of phenomena. It is a paradigm that insinuates oppressive power relations. We now know you're schooled in leftist thought. You see victims everywhere, even where no oppressor-oppressed relation exists.

"Do I answer this, or tell him what I think, that he is just another racist trying to judge people by where they come from or what they look like?"

Again, you're assigning motive where no clear motive has been established. This false assigning is due to your Marxist-Foucaudian education.

"I found myself in a similar situation two months later. I was in an elevator with a friend and colleague, a fellow Melbournian who was born in West Papua. A lady entered, looked at us, and, with no hesitation, she straight away asked "where do you blokes come from"? I replied with "I’m from North Melbourne and my friend’s from Thornbury". She responded with "no, I mean where you are originally come from". I told her that I found it condescending to be asked where I came from, and she said she was just trying to be nice. Is she?"

She was being nice. Again, your Marxist-Foucaudian thought processes have interpreted this situation to be an oppressive one.

"Then why is she labeling me?"

Labelling is an essential part of human life. We cannot function in a society without applying labels to designate things.

cont.

Ramesh Fernandez
"Do you realise that the question "where do you come from?" immediately sets in place a structure that excludes people, rejecting them with a form of passive racism?"

No it doesn't. You've just interpreted it to be so. The question could have been, and highly probably was, genuine interest.

"I don’t blame the individual: I blame the society which, led by politicians, enables passive racism to be acceptable. In a friendly conversation, let alone a political one, a person of colour whether they are born in Australia or not is obliged to automatically go through this process of questioning. It is demeaning and makes you feel that you don’t belong here."

No. If there is any blame to be assigned, it is to be from yourself. You chose, through your Marxist-Foucaudian thinking processes, to take offence.

"Australia has a way of segregating cultures, looking down on people, giving them labels, putting them in boxes. Day to day this manifests through questions and comments like "Where are you from?""

This is the reality of multiculturalism. The policy of multiculturalism is all about segregation. Labels are the natural way to describe each of these cultures. Denying the existence of individual cultures could be interpreted as racist. Do you deny other cultures their existence, their right to describe or 'label' themselves?

cont.

Ramesh Fernandez
"In Australia there is a pattern of racism and it pervades all aspects of society: the non-profit sector, the private sector, governments, hospitals, schools and elsewhere. A perfect example is the treatment of Indigenous peoples as second-class citizens; not to mention the locking up of asylum seekers and refugees who arrive to Australia by boat while there are thousands of backpackers in this country without valid visas. Some call it cold punishment and it is a dishonourable treatment of people."

Please supply evidence that Aboriginals are second-class citizens. That's a mighty statement and you ought to back it up. They are given every opportunity a non-Aboriginal person is in Australia. There is no discrimination based on race here. (In fact, there are many jobs who can only be filled by Aboriginals; sounds like racism, doesn't it?).

If 'refugees' or 'asylum seekers' enter our waters without documentation, then we have every right to detain them until their identity is identified. Maybe thousands of whites could rock up to Zambia or Tunisia unannounced and demand residency, and make the tax-payers of that country pay for their food, shelter, and clothing as well? Let me guess, you would think that's racist?

"One should not forget this land was stolen, and not in the past only; a modern day indigenous land grab is happening around the country so don’t tell me to stop living in the past."

This sentence (as well as your previous paragraph) is not connected in anyway to the central argument. You go from personal experiences of (supposed) racism to general statements on Aboriginals and 'refugees'.
When writing an essay or article, each point must be connected to the thesis statement (even though one was lacking, I inferred it was about your personal experiences of alleged racism). Adding unrelated subject matter confuses the reader

“Aboriginal Australians are really the only ones who have the right to ask the question with that proprietorial air. The rest of us are immigrants.”
I'm sorry Squeers, but I really must take exception to this statement, as it is clearly technically, literally and simply untrue.
I'm 'originally' from Murrumburrah (buggar of a thing to fit onto forms). My ancestors may have come from Ireland, but it would be ridiculous for me to make that claim when I have never even visited the place.
I submit that my place of birth is as legitimate as any Aboriginal's, since none of us had any say in the matter.
Frankly, I believe one of the most obscene words in the English language must be 'birthright'.
This single concept has caused more wars, more inequality, more dissension, more social problems than any other, religion included.
I accept that Aboriginals have land rights, simply because when the English came here they brought their Laws with them, including the right to inherit land.
Clearly, if whitefellas have that right, then so must blackfellas.
But to claim that blackfellas or whitefellas should have more rights on the basis of their ancestry is as bizarre to my mind as Charles 1st's claim of the divine right of kings.
In fact, if we accept the justice of a real meritocracy (which must also be largely be the product of birthright), then we would have to say that immigrants, and most particularly boat people, should have more right to be here than we native born.
They earned the right to be here, by risking life and limb. My being Australian is pure happenstance.

Jay of Melbourne and Grim, if you don't mind I'll respond to the points you raise generally.

I could argue the point you object to, since 200 hundred years of colonisation is nothing to the aborigine’s 50k years plus, but that’s a red herring and you both make my real point much better than I could; that the whole issue is not really about where you’re from, but what you look like.
Australia “is” a nation of immigrants, a cultural tossed salad with new ingredients being added all the time, and this has been the case since, dare I say, “Invasion Day,” which established the Anglo-Saxon template. Since then Australian identity has always been paranoiacally white and romanticised as innocent (of European decadence/aristocracy), reborn, rebellious, laconic and free of pretension—you’ve got to laugh! The reality is a long history of racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Australia
First, second or third generation whites can embrace their Australian “heritage” because they don’t obviously contradict it, but those of an “other” extraction, however many generations Australian they may be, often have to put up with passive racism. It doesn’t matter if you are third generation white Australian, it’s denialism and hypocritical to treat the latest arrivals as somehow incongruous.
But the aboriginal experience interests me most. It doesn’t matter, Jay, that aboriginals today are a cultural mix, or that “there is no longer a cut and dried definition of a Native”. We don’t need to split hairs. There is a cut and dried “perceptual” definition of Australian, and Aboriginals, Asians, Africans and “Middle-Easterns” is not it: http://griffithreview.com/edition-15-divided-nation/of-middle-eastern-appearance
TBC

CONT..

The archetypal Aussie has a white skin and the rest are in the best position to be sensitive to the passive racism that entails. Actually it’s often also aggressive.
How do we explain the “Aboriginal problem”? If we no longer subscribe to supremacist notions of racial inferiority, how do we explain that our native pariahs are in such a comparatively appalling state?
I believe they are direct victims of their ethnicity, both discriminated against and, more importantly, tormented within by an inherited stigmatism associated with appearances. Of course we who are white can be culturally anonymous, or assume an Australian identity if we like, or take pride in our cultural extraction—since the colour white brims with confidence the world over. But this leaves us devoid of empathy. Ramesh Fernandez is also obviously a proud man and feels an insult we can’t or we complacently refuse to relate to. Indeed we resent his resentment—pride on all sides.
It seems to me aborigines lack that cultural-pride we and Ramesh take for granted. They were invaded, dispossessed, exploited, denigrated, despised and discombobulated. Their cultural heritage is all but extinct, “primitive” in any case by comparison with Western enlightened Man. Yet their features insist that that’s who they are and their pride, where it tries to assert itself, is disingenuous or conflicted. Or understandably only resentment, aggression and self-loathing persist, whether conscious or unconscious.
I think we could try a whole lot harder to empathise. Better still we should abandon Australian identity based on appearances.

Truly, this racist tag is bandied around like so many sporting cards on a primary school playground. Yes there are racists as there are feral Collingwood supporters, thugs, thieves and people with any and every distasteful trait. What of it?

The predominant culture of global business does not abide racism. The predominant belief system within our culture does not accept racism. If we truly believe all races are equal we should not be taking offense when we are confronted by the village idiot.

Intelligent people are genuinely interested in other cultures, some even jealous of the richness of foreigners. Others maybe ignorant of their own intent or merely baiting you - toughen up. The world is full of all sorts.

This is not apartheid S.A. or Colonial white Australia. The world is an entirely different place let alone Australia.

It is insulting to those who in the past and to this day suffer life threatening and economic racism with real consequences for us to be taking offense to verbal slurs and or imaginary slights - tell them to stick it.

Squeers,

I think most of us posting here would have to walk a mile in an Aboriginal's skin to understand.

I spoke to that cab driver on the two-way, who at that time of night was taking direct phone calls. He intimated that these women were "not in the right condition" to be picked up - ie, that they were drunk. But they weren't drunk. I spoke to them for an hour and they were as sober as I was.

Maybe his idea of "the right condition" was based on other criteria.

poirot
The indigenous issue is a world away from the type of racism or perceived racism experienced by immigrants from foreign shores. I am not really sure there is any value in discussing the two simultaneously.

The overwhelming majority of Australians rarely come across anyone who appears to be indigenous. The way Australia has and continues to deal with indigenous people is a subject of far greater complexity then that raised by this article.

Mixing it up is wrong headed and one of the reasons why we are so infantile about both issues.

YEBIGA,

You may be right. I do think it's instinctual behaviour in man upon meeting someone who has different traits to ask from whence they hail.

Your comment: "The overwhelming majority of Australians rarely come across anyone who appears to be indigenous..." seems a little odd, but put's me in mind of an observation made by Clive James - that Australians, by and large, view Aboriginals as "something between a sideshow and embarrassment."

Another example of the "Only White People are Racist " hypocrisy. When I've been overseas, were those non-Europeans who asked where I came from, racist? Of course not, they couldn't possibly be racist, could they? Or those locals who point at and stare at blondes?

As to stolen land, the history of humanity is record of invasions and land theft, Europeans certainly don't have a monopoly there. There aren't many nation-states that aren't founded on land theft at some time in history.

The author should nominate some nations that are models of harmonious race relations or haven't suffered murderous "ethnic tensions"---India? LOL, Sri Lanka? LOL, Cambodia? China?, Latin America? Racism is on the rise in Europe.

I've encountered so many non-"Europeans" who readily express racial prejudice, but who will deny that it's the mirror image of "White" racism.

Of course there's racism in Australia, there's a lot of room for improvement. That said, I don't think anyone would want to trade places with the "Tribals" in India, the San in South africa or the indigenous inhabitants of Latin America.

Australians, including Clive James, who lives in the UK, don't view Aboriginals at all. The vast majority of us live in big urban cities. The indigenous people we see with any regularity are the professional footballers who appear on our TV or from a distance in a stadium. Not sure why anyone considers a simple statement of fact as being odd.

Nevertheless, there is no denying that the general welfare of Aboriginals in Australia is and has been unacceptable. Attempts to improve this state of affairs by bludgeoning Australians with racism and white guilt have failed to produce measurable improvements in their quality of life.

The possibilities of improvement in the present are supplanted by this pseudo-christian self flagellation; trapping us to a past, we can do nothing about; making ourselves feel good because we hold the most indigenously sensitive opinion; lauding our superiority with tears against the callous heathen. What indescribable and near divine ecstatic experiences we can manufacture!

Squeers, I feel sorry for you, I really do.

It must be really horrible to hate ones self, & ones fellow countrymen as much as you do. Hate is a corrosive influence, damaging all it touches.

Our aboriginals were doing fine, until Whitlam, & the bleeding heart brigade gave them so much it took their independence & pride from them. The hand out mentality destroyed a whole host of successful, independent communities, where initial help from missions, or station owners had established working communities. Sit down money destroyed all this, & much else along with it.

I won't bother saying more, trying to talk to people like you is like trying to pee into the wind. I do hope you find something to like however.

We are indeed a land of immigrants. The very first of the first Australians, Tasmanian Aboriginals, arrived here by sea some 40-60,000 years ago? They lived in apparent peace as fisher folk, enjoying much of the native bush tucker.
Oral history tells us that around 14-12,000 years ago, during a minor ice age, others came! And with hunting dogs and fire sticks, took what they wanted?
Killed the men and took and brutalised Tasmanian, [first Australian,] women folk and children?
Exploited their knowledge of bush tucker and medicinal plants etc.
And in their relentless murderous pursuit, drove the remaining "very first Australians" all the way to Tasmania.
There are very few indigenous Tasmanians left!
White settlement and the wars that followed, saw their numbers decimated to just a few dozen?
And those that can claim a Tasmanian heritage today, are so-called mixed blood, be they coal black brown eyes, or milky white blue eyed blondes!
This being so, I believe we will reach a time and place, where we will become a meld of all those races we supposedly sprang from, and it will no longer be important where our ancestors came from?
We simply cannot go back and change the past or punish the land grabbing transgressors, for their various crimes!
It's time we realized that and simply stopped the blame game or seeking to visit the crimes of the past, on entirely innocent descendants.
We are never ever assisted by hostile urban activists, seeking to wedge native born, indigenous or New Australians against each other, for patent political purposes?
In the final analysis, we are just human beings, who gain something valuable from all our ancestral roots!
Rhrosty.

With all due respect, Squeers, I don't think you addressed my issues at all.
The accepted definition of the word 'immigrant' is someone who comes to a country after having been born in a different country.
I was born in this country, ergo I am not an immigrant.
Whether or not my parents, grandparents or great grandparents were immigrants is immaterial.
Since I didn't (to the best of my recollection) choose to be born an Australian, or earn the right to be born white, any more than anyone I know chose or earned the right to be black, I see no reason why I should feel pride or shame, nor do I see any reason why ownership or a sense of belonging should be in any way generational.
It's all just happenstance.
Really, isn't worrying about your genetic inheritance the very essence of racism? Of discrimination?
If you want to prove you're not a racist, how about starting with:
“Humans” have lived on this continent for at least 40,000, possibly as much as 120,000 years (instead of “Aborigines”).
Then, just a couple of hundred years ago, another group of Humans came to this land, and brought their concept of Law with them.
Sadly, the new Humans only applied their laws to each other, and not to the Humans who were already here.
In fact, most of the new Humans, including those in charge, denied the first Humans were Human at all, and therefore had no Human rights.
Which was, some might suggest, a bit inhuman.
In truth and sadly, it was very Human, as is evidenced by the way we are still treating Humans who try to get here today.
Having one set of rules for some people, and different rules for other people has never been a successful strategy for social harmony.

Squeers, that's a lot of text but no rebuttal beyond, "What I say goes just because", you can't use the view of other anti Racists as "evidence" of the truthfulness of your beliefs, it's like asking a Priest for to help you in an argument over the existence of god.
So you've stated categorically that merely being White is "passive racism", good to know where you stand, you say you are anti Racist, what you are is Anti White, anti Racism is a code word for anti White.
All I can say is that it must be lonely out on that shaking limb because more or less everyone else is on that two way street of congeniality and mutual respect and tolerance of other people's differences, including White Australians

Surely we can have a test to ensure that immigrants that come here don't have a chip on their shoulder like the author of this article. We have enough people with victim mentalities who feed from the Government trough and still complain about every thing they imagine in their mind. Thankfully I have met many white, middle and black Africans and Asians who are thankful to be in such a free and blessed land.

I'd reached my post limit till now.
Why all this defensiveness? Surely the author's allowed to report his experience and egister his feelings on the matter? Why must they be resented? How about a little empathy?
Thanks for the potted history, Rhrosty, can you give us a few references?
Hasbeen, I was brought up never to hate; I just try to see things from the other's point of view, it's much more interesting and makes me reflective and self-critical. Don't you get sick of reading the world according to that same jaundiced, beady-eyed perspective of yours? Maybe try stepping out of yourself?
Grim, I thought I did address it, as a "red herring"? We can split hairs over the meaning of immigrant if you like, I was just more interested in Australian identity, which is just as much a crock of shyte as racial integrity. I agree, "worrying about your genetic inheritance [is] the very essence of racism". I don't. I dismiss it as a joke. Australian identity is founded in ideology, which doesn't stand up to scrutiny either. It has no substance at all, yet stinks to high heaven in its exclusionary elitism.
It amazes me that Aussies can be so judgemental yet can't endure so much as the suggestion of a criticism.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone else have an explanation for the "aboriginal problem".

Squeers, I don't really have a problem with non Whites having a go at White people, Ramesh may have a point, it's a very subjective and ramshackle article but he may genuinely feel that way and not be merely practicing his PC catechism in the hope of landing a grant or two.
No dear heart, I take issue with a White person backing and even expanding upon his conclusions and pushing the discussion onto a whole other level, do you seriously think that Ramesh, or any other refugee would validate any negative commentary on his own people, like fun he would!
According to Anti Racists like you "Racist" White Australian identity (not the other race based,blood and soil identity of Aboriginality) is tied to ideology, you tie everything to ideology because an ideology is a set of beliefs and beliefs cannot be challenged or scrutinised.
Pray tell, which ideology formed the White Australian identity?
White Nationalism? Nationalists of all persuasions have probably numbered in the tens or at most dozens throughout Australian history, you might as well blame Anarchists or Socialists, there were always far more of them on the ground.
Are you perhaps thinking of the populist Anglo Saxon identity politics of yore, which did exist but as the name suggests viewed Australian identity as very much beneath it's society of, as Fisher put it, "Independent Britons".
Liberalism perhaps? Judeo Christianity? I'm pretty sure most reformers come from those traditions so they're off the hook.
Please, enlighten us as to how a bevy of foreign identity cults and benevolent European institutions managed to conjure into being such a uniquely abhorrent creature as the White Australian?

Squeers—“ Just out of curiosity, does anyone else have an explanation for the "aboriginal problem?

The Whites settled in Australia nearly 240years ago. Yes, the aboriginals were faced with a more advanced civilization who didn’t treat them as equals. There were atrocities and injustice.

But that is history and the Aboriginals have every freedom and opportunity today to get an education and make something of themselves as indeed some of them have done, and just recently I saw an article on how many are enrolling in university currently.
However, there is a hardcore of them that wants to play the victim and have a huge chip on their shoulder about what the whites owe them.

Most white people in Australia apart from some of the early elite settlers were never given land.
They had to get an education, work and pay for whatever they got.
My husband and I had $1.00 in the bank when we got married, nobody gave us land or a house
We worked and paid for everything we own. As did most people. The white government never gave us free land after the early settlements a couple of centuries ago.

As to Anglo Saxon History,(my grandfather was English)
England was overrun many times in it’s history by William the Conqueror, the Vikings, the Normans, the Romans. At one time the warlords divided England up into 7Kingdoms under different Kings(warlords), but eventually with different disputes and quarrels between them England ended up under one King.

The English couldn’t just sit under a tree for 240years moaning about getting their land back because the King would have excuted them for treason against his majesty. I think that most whites feel that it is time for the aboriginals to stand up and have a go and make something of themselves by the sweat of their brow the way most white and other races in Australia have to do. They would have lost this land to the Japanese anyway, the mostly white army paid for this land with the blood of their sons,husband and fathers. Hence we have Anzac day.

Squeeers asks, in his post:

"Just out of curiosity, does anyone else have
an explanation for the "aboriginal problem"[?]"

.

Squeers, it is really so simple. They couldn't stop the boats! That was the "aboriginal problem".

Of course, that is probably a vast over-simplification of the situation, and an unrealistic crystallization of it as if it occurred at a single point in time. It wasn't the boats per se that were the cause of the problem, it wasn't even the whitefellas the boats carried, so much as it was the bags. Bags of flour, bags of sugar, bags of salt. Whitefella tucker. And then there were the jumbuks! Whitefella tucker on the hoof: tucker easy to catch, kill, and eat, but carrying in their fleeces the seeds of conflict.

Life, compared to the unbelievably finely balanced and disciplined co-existence with the natural environment that had had to be maintained up until the arrival of the boats, was early-on seen as just so much easier when oriented more to the fringes of whitefella settlement and its seemingly more dependable and more easily obtained food supply. A further problem being that few enough of the whitefellas, let alone the blackfellas, understood the complexities and implicit social contracts necessary to the maintenance of this supply chain.

And then of course there was the grog. Nearly always the grog. The grog, to which it almost seemed as if most of the whitefellas had almost a genetic tolerance, measure for measure, compared to most of the blackfellas.

All of this, to start with, carried in the boats. Not just any boats, but those of the Empire of the Sea, little more than a generation out from having, against all odds, decisively won the first 'world war', the Seven Years War, 1756-1763.

Britannia ruled the waves, and it had come to do so in part by standing on the shoulders of those earlier masters of the sea, the Portuguese, from whom, serendipitously, if I am not mistaken, the author of the article is descended and as much to blame!

Squeers,

"...Australian identity is founded in ideology, which doesn't stand up to scrutiny either. It has no substance at all..."

Interesting point. I've spent years in the hope of finally grasping what is meant by Australian "culture" and "identity". Other than a generic Western egotism and disdain for anything that doesn't bow to it, what is there?

Forrest Gumpp....the shadow boxers of life. What I think with the grog and all, these are by facts...stone-age people. JayB and the insights, has by all means, hit the nail right by the point of which" : Where are you from?....I guess religion has nothing to say either:)...hunters and gatherers as it was in the real beginning...

This is NO-MANS land....and it comes down to this once again.."your dammed if you do, and your dammed if you dont.

Let it go.

Real men stand up, weak men just die. Its always been just this way....and who am I to say....over 5 million years of us:)

This planet is a hard place to live.

Its always been this way...and it always will.

These are the true facts of life......

cc

See!...:)....at 3.08am....Iam still an idiot:)...see! that beer stuff, it will turn any man or woman for that matter, into a cocktailed moron:)

Sometimes...I think theres NO hope for us:)

See.ya....later;)

cc

Poirot,
Western Egoism? There was no "West" until the 1940's and from that bloc sprang all the liberation movements of the "civil rights" era. Sorry but that won't do.
Maybe blood and soil is the only explanation for White Australian identity, we most definitely are not an ideological people, historically it's been very difficult to politicise national feeling among native born Whites, nowadays it's impossible, Nationaist groups still number in the tens of members and have no visible presence in the community.
If you walked up to an Indian on the streets of Mumbai and asked him "Can you define what it is that makes you a Maharashtran?" he's probably going to look at you like you're an idiot in the first instance, then start talking about, history, unique cultural traits and customs, regional dialects and vernacular, architecture,and so on.
White Australians have a lot of unique characteristics and even if our culture did boil down to a bunch of negatives it's still ours and can belong to nobody else, more to the point, if we're so horrible why would anyone want to be part of our nation?.
As I said to Squeers, White guilt is in itself a racial trait and I tend to think the more Anglo Saxon blood you have the more pronounced it is, to the point of being a pathology, like the Aboriginal relationship with alchohol once it takes hold of a person it can be hard to break.
In the age of free access to information White guilt and political correctness are the symptoms of a very narrow minded person, if there's one identifiable trait of the White Australian it'd be that he's a free thinker and a free spirit.

Where are you from?
I guess the question where're you going & what are you doing would be way more appropriate. I'd be less academic & more pragmatic.
I came here from Europe in 1970 because I always wanted to see the nature of Australia. This admiration hasn't faded at all. The 1960's european society was merely the catalyst for my leaving but it only took 20 years to follow me. Now I have nowhere to go. I guess I just have to sit it out. When I arrived here I was amazed at the pragmatic mentality of Australians.
Unfortunately, it only lasted a very short while before that big Goaf & his mindless followers ruined it all.

JoM,

"...if there's one identifiable trait of the White Australian it'd be that he's a free thinker and a free spirit."

Whaaaat?!

Our society encourages and sanctions exactly the opposite behaviour!

(I'll have to get back to this later when I'm more awake)

@Poirot,

<<"...if there's one identifiable trait of the White Australian it'd be that he's a free thinker and a free spirit."
Whaaaat?!
Our society encourages and sanctions exactly the opposite behaviour!>>

Perhaps that is more a reflection of the circles YOU move in, Poirot!

Squeers, a reference for an oral history? Surely you jest or simply refuse to acknowledge your abysmal lack of knowledge of Aboriginal culture; and or, the nature of oral history?
I learned what I know of Aboriginal culture at the knee of a now long deceased Grandmother.
If you are really interested, try linking with Tasmanian history, heritage and culture. Not sure that will help you though; given your real purpose?
BTW, most non urban mainland Aborigines, will acknowledge that they were not the very first, first Australians; given, they also have an oral history that, at least in part, affirms my potted history lesson?

Sorry Squeers, I don't think it's a red herring at all.
If we can't agree on a standard definition of a common word like “immigrant” on a thread of this nature, what chance do we have of any useful dialogue?
Your statement that “the rest of us are immigrants” would literally suggest the 'white invasion' occurred only one generation ago. Once we deny the validity of birthright or generational inheritance, all people born here are the same, regardless of their ancestry.
Should I be thrown out of this country simply because I happened to be born the wrong colour?
Or should I be ashamed of being born the wrong colour in this country?
I have no idea whether any of my ancestors wronged any blackfella, nor do I care. Since -not having been born- there is nothing I could do to prevent it, how can I share guilt?
There is more than enough guilt about what is happening today to go around, without having to feel guilty about being born the wrong colour in the wrong country.
Concerning the “Aboriginal Problem”, as morally reprehensible as the “stolen generation” policy might have been, as a social experiment the results were interesting to say the least.
That stolen generation proved quite conclusively that when blackfellas are raised as whitefellas, they are to all intents and purposes white.
I reckon just about every country redneck I ever met has told me he/she knew at least “one good blackfella. A classic redneck response would be “if ya just closed your eyes, you'd swear he was white!”
As much as I hate to admit it, but I have to agree with Hasbeen:
“The hand out mentality destroyed a whole host of successful, independent communities...”
this again, is not a racial problem, but a cultural one, which applies to everyone. We now have a frightening number of families who are third and even fourth generation dole recipients.
And they most certainly aren't all black.
It's all about how children are raised, and what values are impressed upon them.

Poirot's post about being woken up at 2 am is a classic example of cultural difference. I would suggest very few whitefellas (at least a generation or 2 ago) would be inclined to knock on a stranger's door in the middle of the night to ask for help in anything less than a life or death emergency.
But in a tribal culture, that would be perfectly acceptable.
This is one area where it might be nice for whitefellas to learn from blackfellas. I have always envied this extended family attitude, and the fact that the word “orphan” can have no real meaning in a tribal culture.
Unfortunately, it puts an intolerable strain on (white) traditional values of personal, private, individual ownership.
When an old -stolen generation- blackfella mate of mine bought a new chainsaw he said I could borrow it any time, -so long as I promised to lock it up. “Otherwise those B@#$% B@#$%s will help themselves, sure as sh@#, and I'll never see it again.”
I think this difference in attitude, between individual and tribal ownership is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest stumbling block to amiable relationships between our cultures.

Grim,

You're right about that difference being the biggest stumbling block. Non-indigenous people simply don't understand that kin is not something "separate" to indigenous people an nor are possessions something that "belong" only to one person. I was very aware of that when these people came to my door. I rang someone they referred to as "Uncle Dougy". I was slightly reticent to do the talking, but was told that Uncle Dougy was a fine man, a friend to everyone. Unfortunately, Uncle Dougy has his phone on the answering service. Put me in mind of Uncle Tadpole from Bran Nue Dae.

SPQR, I try very hard not to move in "circles". Which is more than can be said for the ambition of most Aussies to follow the arrows around the likes of IKEA and be conveyor-belted into the parking lot having exercised their cultural duty.

JoM,

In any culture, free thinking and freedom of spirit are rare attributes. To describe "White" Australian society as definitively possessing these traits is almost laughable. The principle freedoms bestowed on the majority of white Australians in the 21st century are the freedom to toe the line, to go into debt - and to shop till they drop.

to knock on a stranger's door in the middle of the night to ask for help in anything less than a life or death emergency.
But in a tribal culture, that would be perfectly acceptable.
This is one area where it might be nice for whitefellas to learn from blackfellas.
Grim,
In this country they don't need to knock on anyone's door. All the help imaginable is being thrown at them in wheel barrow loads without them even asking. No asking if the rest of us agree or not. That's democracy the australian way.

Poirot,

You are right, kin or the onetalk system in New Guinea, was a cultural asset in tribal days, but in todays society they become destructive. In PNG it is almost impossible for a local to run his own trade store. He can not refuse a onetalk anything he needs, regardless of the ability of them to pay.

I have also seen an aboriginal/european mix race personally expand in PNG, when his ability as a mechanic earned him much greater respect there, than it had in Oz. Respect earned is the greatest reward of all.

As far as restrictions on freedom is concerned, these are personally chosen, by those who feel more secure in being part of the herd.

Do you remember that add for Carnation milk, "the milk from contented cows"? I often see those cows in our suburban population. This is unfair of me really, as most folk have a more pleasant satisfying life as part of the herd.

There is nothing stopping them from becoming a fighter pilot, a racing car driver, or a cruising yachty bum, as I did, except the fact that they don't really want to do those things. It is only for a few minutes on a cold wet Sunday afternoon that they even dream of them.

One has to give up so much, & strive so hard to achieve big dreams, that for most people they are not worth the candle. That new carpet for the lounge room, that looks nice, & feels great under your feet is probably a better dream for most than a Bathurst checkered flag, or a veggie patch at Nimbin.

Jay Of Melbourne,
<Pray tell, which ideology formed the White Australian identity?>
There's no "which ideology" to me. Ideology is the common logic/sense we all construe within. The evidence suggests the Australian stereotype came to prominence after white Australia's early history and with the stirrings of cultural independence, abeyance to a harsh landscape and Federation, all nicely timed around the Fin de siècle. I don't care whether Fernadez or anyone esle "would validate any negative commentary on his own people". I do when it's valid.
<So you've stated categorically that merely being White is "passive racism", good to know where you stand, you say you are anti Racist, what you are is Anti White, anti Racism is a code word for anti White.>
I've said no such thing and please don't try to implicate me in your antagonistic propaganda.

Forrest Gumpp,
thanks for your entertaining response but I wasn't enquiring as to the aboriginal problem "then", but now. I asked above, "If we no longer subscribe to supremacist notions of racial inferiority, how do we explain that our native pariahs are in such a comparatively appalling state?"
I've been saying it's not "about where you’re from, but what you look like", and that it's not just about how you're treated based on appearance, but how you "learn to perceive yourself".
Rhrosty,
yep we are a land of immigrants, in degrees of separation.

Grim,
fine, immigrant means new arrival, yet I stand by my cultural tossed salad analogy, nor does the cultural influence of the respective mother country cease upon the demise of the first generation. Les Murray continues to celebrate his Scottish ancestry. Australia is hardly "Australia" as anything distinctive; it's an outlying wealthy suburb of Europe and America. Despite the endless patronage of politicians, being Australian doesn't mean a damn thing. As for "guilt", I'm not asking anyone to feel guilty about the past. Nor about the present. I don't. As I keep saying, I'm talking about the influence and victims of prejudice based on appearances, including the self-harming behaviour of aboriginal "identity" (since it's being argued they barely exist anymore). But the enclaves of "Australian" (ie second, third generation) Vietnamese, Lebanese, Indian, African etc. are maintained, in my opinion, much more by the bigotry and provincialism of "real Australians", based on appearance, than their own sectarianism. Much of the disharmony between the Australian mainstream and ethnic groups is set-up and exacerbated by reciprocal perceptions. Some ethnic groups, say middle eastern, react aggressively to the negative perceptions they register, and some, like many aboriginals, seem utterly defeated in their abject social status and are destructive generally.
Such anyway is my rudimentary thesis. I don't tell anybody else what to think.

Since 'we' have such a problem working out what it is to be 'Australian', it is no wonder recent arrivals would have great difficulty trying to work us out, and how to 'fit in'. I see us as a very new and ever-evolving nation, a nation of Heinz '57 varieties' (or 53 beans in every cup), but also including an even more complex component - of this country's 'original people' (those who have not been assimilated and Westernized at least - and those who for political and self-interest purposes 'pretend' not to have been).

>Other than a generic Western egotism and disdain for anything that doesn't bow to it, what is there?<

Such a narrow appraisal is unlike you, Poirot. I think we all have an inward and an outward 'persona', both built from our experience, learning and upbringing, but in public only revealing the public face, the more PC, tolerant and understanding face. We must all carry misgivings, doubts, fancies and dreams, and with those who have been greatly hurt or let down being more likely to vent their real feelings of separatism, disenchantment and disapproval.

Aus is such a splendid country, both in its 'mountain ranges and sweeping plains' and in its Hodge-podge of life experience, memories, loves and pet hates. What a history, what freedom wrought from thin soils and golden minerals, from harsh battles at home and abroad. The sterner stuff wrought of droughts and flooding rains, and some who battle still. The soft wrought of easy times in cushy jobs, weaned on free or easily accessible higher education, job security and work and welfare rights.

The splendour that was once is disappearing, in concrete jungles and urban slums, in outsourcing and industrial decline, in burgeoning populations chasing fewer jobs with greater competition and less job security. The easy ride is over. We all have to come to terms with changing times, at home and abroad, and none are immune.

Integration and assimilation happens to us all, creeping, seeping, osmotic. The 'new' Aussies mould us, as we them, adapting and growing. But, the memories endure.

burgeoning populations chasing fewer jobs with greater competition and less job security
Saltpetre,
Yes, and to think that there are people in our midst who push for more & more people to come here instead of going out into the world & helping to educate people on birth control etc.
The mind simply boggles.

Poirot--<The principle freedoms bestowed on the majority of white Australians in the 21st century are the freedom to toe the line, to go into debt - and to shop till they drop.>

And what does the Aboriginal tribal culture bestow on people. The right to sit under a tree all day and do not much of anything? If they want to live that way then they must give up access to white man's hospitals and medication, libraries, coffee shops, bookstores etc.
Because if we whites,Asians and all, go and sit under a tree all day then we would have none of those things because everybody would be too busy sitting under a tree to keep these places open and running.

Western civilization is built on the work ethic and everybody pulling their weight and white people have a lot of respect for people who work hard. If the Aboriginals want respect then they should be seen to be pulling their weight in society.
They can’t put their hands out fast enough for our medical care, shops, cars, TV’s,food. But they want all this for nothing.

I exclude those who have gone or are going to University or are employed, they realize that the old tribal ways are gone and if you want to live with all the advantages of Western society you have to be educated and employed.
And from what I've seen, they do love the Western goods and services.

I have to say that the indigenous population certainly do need access to the existing medical care, seeing as they seem to be unduly affected by our decadent junk-food/alcohol soaked society...does it ever occur to anyone that they might see the Protestant Work Ethic as something incoherent and diabolical...all that self-pride and accumulation for its own sake is a very white European trait which possibly presents no particular attraction for indigenous people. I know that is difficult, if not impossible, to get your head around, but most people never think outside the box.

I'll possibly get back to this thread later, Cherful, but for now I'm going to friends for dinner. Hopefully I might get to sit under a tree and not do much of anything.

seem to be unduly affected by our decadent junk-food/alcohol soaked society.
Poirot,
I know of people who are actually forced to eat junk food because it's cheaper. So it is unduly but not limited to the indigenous. Alcohol is totally up to each individual to either take in or not.

Squeers, Poirot,
This White Australian past you regard with such shame was the same as the White Australian present, there has never been a universally accepted definition of who can be a White Australian, the argument has probably raged since the first White child was born here and there have always been people like you and people like me.
The "Convict stain" has just been replaced by the "Invader stain", people like you have always thought yourselves the betters of people like me, the derogatory term "Larrikin" was replaced by "Ocker", then "Bogan" and now the American slang "Redneck".

Yet here we are, on your side ashamed White people running from their identity, where my side is proud and comfortable with our past, now is a person who can't reconcile himself with his own past and who backs and even amplifies every real or imagined criticism of his people in the hope of atonement a fit and proper person to be engaged in reconciliation or engagement with other groups? Most sane people would say no.
This discussion is tapped out so let's change tack.
Do Squeers and Poirot regard White Australians as being part of multicultural Australia?
Instead of constantly bagging and denigrating White people shouldn't you really be trying to integrate us into your propositional Rainbow Nation as a distinct ethnic group?
Maybe the growing pains of Multiculturalism might have been dulled if the people running the show had displayed just an ounce of respect for the Native born White Australian?
As it is most of us regard your social experiments as something that's being done to us to punish us for being born White and to wipe us away so that you don't have to feel guilty or embarrassed anymore.

I am guilty of asking the question, while also being aware of the sensitivities which are at stake in asking it.
I generally take a punt as to whether the recipient of the question will be able to take it in the way it is intended - as a means of conversing about culture and history. The results range from the banal to the spectacular. Ultimately I benefit from a better understanding of the cultural weave of this place which we call Australia.
The thing is because of my 'paler' complexion I receive the question less frequently than someone would whose origins are in the subcontinent or even East Asia. Never mind the fact that their ancestral history may in fact have longer roots in the region or in Australia in particular.
Then again, when people hear my name then I often get the quiz.
I cannot resist asking the asker where they come from them.
Generally it is a healthy negotiation of status and terms, ideally reaching a level playing field in our shared imaginations.

Ramesh,

It is disappointing that you find such a question offensive.

Australians also ask this of Europeans, British and Americans, especially if the accent is unfamiliar.

When traveling I have found such a question from others an 'ice-breaker. Indeed, when a person doesn't ask it, it could be seen as utter disinterest.

Language/accent/dialect/patois more than ethnicity identifies us - at least as a starting point. I'm sure that others have found that one is more conscious of accent, than ethnicity. Accent indicates that the speaker has a different social history and experience, which can be fascinating,to the hearer.

I have Asian and Middle Eastern friends who were born here; they speak with an identical accent to myself. When with them, I am not at all conscious of any differing 'ethnicity'. I am sure many Aussies also experience this.

We see the same occurring with Australian-born children of Greek and Italian migrants. Home-grown Aussies - we are not conscious of difference. Their parents who retain accents are immediately recognised as having a different history.

Ramesh,

Have you never been interested in the origins of another?

I sympathize with Ranesh. His skin colour and facial features are probably not yet normalised in the mindscape of some Aussies. The Chinese are largely okay on that score now, though not with the more recent arrivals who do not measure up on speaking the lingo. Still, Chinese Australians are expected to know their place, not to speak up against any aspect of our society or polity however acculturated one might be. The online comments in the main dailies which censured Charlie Teo's critique of the remains of our racist heritage were a telling sign of that.
Ranesh could be a little over sensitive. In my experience most questioners, particularly the better educated ones, would have been prompted by curiosity or wanting to engage with me. In the first decade or two questioners used to respond, oh, you speak English so well! That has not happened in the last 30 years. But one can get sick of that same question, particularly if one has been sensitised to social-political upheavals like the “We decide who comes into this country, …” political opportunism of 2001, and the history/cultural wars which seemed to have been waged to morph, with nostalgia, “White Australia” into an “Anglo-acculturated nation”. Remember how John Howard set up an Inquiry to get the National Museum to tell the story of our nation, properly? Well the Chinese is still shown as grateful minions and cultural curiosities in its Landmarks gallery.
It will take a generation before the remains of White Australia would be worn off in our national psyche. Had we admitted that White Australia was a bad idea, and gave it a proper burial and a decent wake, before we launched into multiculturalism, we might have achieved a lot more in weaning ourselves from the need to feel superior to the “other” or to fear the pestilence that the other would bring - the Yellow Peril pre-federation, the Vietnamese refugees with their cooking smells that Geoffrey Blainey told us all about in 1984, the boat people with all those values offensive to our Anglo heritage

I don't really mind the question, but I can appreciate Ramesh's point. Sometimes our differences are irrelevant. In an ideal world it shouldn't matter where we come from.

An example can be seen last weekend, where the Australian Football League declared it to be 'Multicultural Round'. Most people ignored it or were just scratching their heads thinking what is all this about? We thought we'd come to watch the football, not take part in some exercise in social engineering. We don't care you come from. We care about marks and tackles and kicking the ball through the sticks.

The AFL trotted out statements from some of their stars such Harry O'Brian who has a South American background, or Dermott Brereton with his Irish background. But what was the point? It was looking for a problem when there isn't one.

Ramesh's article has left me flummoxed as I was under the impression that we were meant to be celebrating ethnic differences under multiculturalism. Yet, now I read that recognising those differences makes one a racist!

Many seem to forget that large-scale non-European immigration into Australia is still only a relatively recent phenomenon. From the beginning of British settlement in 1788 until the end of the so-called "White Australia" policy in the early 1970s, Australia drew its migrants almost exclusively from Britain and Europe. Thus, it is understandable why people of non-European background may stand out as recent arrivals in what is still (for now) a mainly Anglo-European society.

Although Ramesh tries to present himself as a voice of reason, he betrays his true feelings toward the end of his article with this howler:

"One should not forget this land was stolen, and not in the past only; a modern day indigenous land grab is happening around the country so don’t tell me to stop living in the past."

If so, that would make Ramesh the receiver of stolen goods.

Given that Ramesh has benefited from the European 'theft' of Australia, perhaps he should move back to his ancestral homeland of Sri Lanka as soon as possible if he feels so strongly about the matter.

Leaving aside the issue of Ramesh's foul hypocrisy, let's look at his argument for a second. We are constantly told that this nation was settled atop indigenous land, so the modern-day descendants of those land-grabbing Anglo invaders have no right to whine about being gradually displaced themselves by darker-skinned newcomers.

Multiculturalism is promoted with a tremendous propaganda effort meant to convince white Australians that their cultural and demographic displacement at the hands of non-European immigrants is either inevitable or is appropriate punishment for their ancestors' sins.

Yet, two wrongs don't make a right. If colonialism was an evil back then, it's still an evil now. Multiculturalism is merely colonialism with a nicer name. It's not a celebration of all cultures. Rather, it is an attempt to de-legitimize and ultimately displace Australia's historic majority and founding population.

Chek: "It will take a generation before the remains of White Australia would be worn off in our national psyche. Had we admitted that White Australia was a bad idea, and gave it a proper burial and a decent wake, before we launched into multiculturalism, we might have achieved a lot more in weaning ourselves from the need to feel superior to the “other” or to fear the pestilence that the other would bring."

Once the remnants of White Australia have been utterly and totally cleansed, we will be able to turn our attention elsewhere and agitate for the end of Yellow China, Brown Saudi Arabia and Black Nigeria.

These countries, too, must be liberated from the need to feel superior to the “other” or to fear the pestilence that the other could bring. Come, let us multiculturalise the world!