bel, mate.

You don't need to be able to trace your ancestors back to the cave to work out the origins of your surname. How many people do you know that have absolutely no idea of their racial origins?

In interpreting my views on overseas born Australians, don't add two and two and come up with five.

You mention enjoying our culture. Culture and multiculture are two entirely different things.

PART ONE
The discussion here has been symptomatic of the problems I lay out in my first paragraph. Half the commentators here applaud me for apparently condemning Australian racism. The other half condemn me for doing so. There are the usual expressions of different prejudices that fizzle out into some weird exchanges between apparent intimates.

As all so often, the issues raised by the writer are not dealt with directly or they are misread. I made a number of points. The first was the imbalance of most media commentators in their coverage of the pogrom. The narrative strategies of the commentariat placed the blame at the feet of the Australian-Lebanese, thereby avoiding this uncomfortable question: what was the source of the EXCESS apparent on December 11? For what we saw then was NOT an understandable reaction to provocation by SPECIFIC groups of Australian-Lebanese youths. It was an indiscriminate lashing out against ANYONE with so-called Wog and Leb looks. I’ve not seen an attempted explanation for this feature of the pogrom.

It is true that neo-Nazis were mentioned, but they were immediately isolated as a harmless rump (‘pasty faced nerds’) of no consequence. The real Nazis are the Lebs, we are bidden to believe. It’s important for this kind of manipulation to be exposed, and it was my intention to do so in the article.

Calling the riot a pogrom does not equate it to Nazi German, as one observer incorrectly thinks. The analogy is with Imperial Russia, I clearly wrote. Making this analogy does not condemn all Anglo-Australians as racists, but it does raise the issue of the origin of the categorised differences in our population. Where does this vocabulary of belonging come from? I ventured Smith’s argument about the ethnic origin of nations IN GENERAL but no-one seems interested in taking it up. To make it clear: even if you play by the rules, you are still not really a proper Australian. You are a hyphenated Australian at best, a recognition that can be withdrawn by members of the core group if they feel you have not conformed sufficiently

PART TWO
Further: why the attack on ‘wogs’, too, after all? Who were they hurting? Without the Croats, we would not be in the soccer world cup!

To point out – and prove with quotations – that Arabs and Muslims have been vilified is not to paint them as victims. As I wrote, the issue is complex, and this vilification is PART of the answer. Certainly, I did not deny the objectionable behaviour of Australian youths of Lebanese descent, but let’s be real. We are talking about a few hundreds blokes, and yet their actions are taken as a pretext to demonise entire communities and bang on about mutliculturalism. And to launch a pogrom. What is going on here? It’s a police problem, not a social crisis. And who are we to lecture the cops? I think they know what they are doing. What do the commentariat know about policing issues? Nothing!

Boaz_David appears to endorse the provocation thesis. There is not doubt that he feels provoked, judging by the expletive in his posting and his nasty email to me. You have an unhealthy obsession with Jews, sir. I encounter this sort of thing often in teaching the Holocaust. But before you cut yourself shaving about the supposed power of the Jews, ask yourself whether a Jewish family would call their son ‘Dirk’. Du musst tiefer Denken, Junge!

There is a lot of almost wilful anti-intellectualism in our society, a rage against critical reflection, as our truckie friend Keith exhibits: we who do real mens’ work, doing it tough in the real world know better than you smarty-pants, pansy academics. But consider this: academics live in communities, too. They have plenty of real life experience. I’ve actually been to Lebanon (and survived to tell!). We don’t just teach Middle Eastern and European history, for instance, we negotiate it every day in our relationships with those who are different from each of us individually. Making a nation of equals out of a multi-ethnic population is a challenge that does not admit easy answers. There is a lot of hatred out there.

Little wonder that cultural ghettos develop in Australia.

Our country has consistently encouraged immigration to provide the work force needed for National Development which could not have been achieved otherwise.

Pioneering development focused on Gold Mining and Agriculture as the Gold Rushes of the mid 19th Century lured people with an adventurous spirit and changed the migration from a penal colony to a promising new Nation.

My Ancestors came for both reasons and ethnic communities grew in towns throughout Australia founded by ethnic minorities who relied on the diverse skills available within their community. With necessity being the mother of invention, Australian communities made incredible contributions to innovative inventions.

But migration in the last half century has concentrated new families in urban fringes that are fast becoming ghettos.
In this situation it is small wonder that ethnic clashes occur
Australian Culture is a work in progress. We are not 'old' enough to be able to honestly say there IS such thing as an Australian Culture which will only be created by the evolution of Multiculturism.

This means there has to be respect for each others beliefs whether it is the modest covering up of moslem women or the sun worship of beach goers.

We would do well to recognise that Australia is fast becoming a land of White Racists who still cannot accept that this land belongs to an Ethnic Minority of Black, Australian Aborigines who are still being treated as squatters in their own land.....

Dirk

I have not responded to your article yet. I have been busy in my business. Nothing to do with trucks. My family business comes into contact with many truckies and I deal with them...much to critical for inexperienced people. I cannot undertake physical work any longer and work in development of new machinery and ad-bloody-ministration. I do one good and the other badly but we're not doing it too tough.
I am not anti-intellectualism I am anti much that is dressed up to be intellectual but fails. I, like most, rant against uncritical or eroneous assessment and it's presentation.

My son and his mates are studying fields such as Pharmacy, Applied Science (Various), Mathematics, Engineering, Law, education etc. I am especially proud when they borrow my books and occassionally include me in their informal discussions on a whole gamut of subjects from the ancient Greeks to Freud. No-one dares talk Marx or post modernism to me :-) (Yep in my home I censor some topics.)

I don't think you smarty pants or pansy...far from it.

I went to a pub in West End Wednesday. My youngsters went to the Ballet. We all survived those experiences. Mine was richest by a long way.

There is also a lot of hatred in articles published on this site. But that really is best dealt with self examination and not finger pointing. I, just like you, don't think we are equal and I don't think that can realistically be expected to occur. The best we could hope for is our offspring to apply attitudes our grandparents would never tolerate.

Bozzie, you ask an important question: namely, how many people have no idea of their racial origins. The answer is ‘how many people are confident of their racial purity’. I might add ‘how many people want to maintain their racial purity’. Apparently, Bozzie will be the first in the queue. It is interesting that you say you are concerned by cultural integrity but you express that concern in terms of race. Whether it is race or culture I am afraid that if you scratch you will find that the cultural integrity that you believe Australia had prior to multiculturalism is simply a myth. There are no ‘origins’ and there is no ‘integrity’. I know my own Irish ancestors who came to Australia early in the nineteenth century never felt any sense of cultural security. And I know that as late as the 1950s my Anglo-Scottish ancestors did not get on with them (an understatement). The Australia about which you dream never existed. It was invented in the post-50s fear of the new outsiders.
I wonder what place my own children should have in the nation that you imagine. Their mother is an Arab (arghh! - one of those terrible French ones that we hear about on this site) Should I tell that them that they are half-ozzies?
Bel