Hi AC,

I'm right there next to you. I am a proud Aussie.
But I don't look upon others in any derogatory
way. I take people as I find them. Today we're
all of mixed ancestry. So calling people who consider
themselves Aussies as "foreigners" is a bit rude.
It's what you feel in your heart - that I think
matters. And "foreigners" have been coming to this
country for centuries and making it their own.

We pride ourselves on giving people a "fair-go".
We should practice it more often for it to have
any meaning.

'Nuff said.

Hi AC,

I forgot to add - why can't we just take people
on how they behave without factoring in their race or
ancestry?

Why should certain people be considered superior or
more acceptable than others? Aren't we all a mixture?

In my family - there's a variety of ancestries. As I'm
sure there are in most of us.

why can't we just take people
on how they behave without factoring in their race or
ancestry?

Foxy,
That's exactly & precisely what 99% of Australians do & get accused of racism for !

"So calling people who consider themselves Aussies as 'foreigners' is a bit rude."
- Lol.

It's not like I'm down at the shops and see people...
'who clearly look like they have come from overseas'
... And I greet them with 'Hello there foreigner.'
- I'm not going to talk to people that way.

The word 'foreigners' need not have any racial aspect to it to still be valid.
Even if all the people in the world were the same race, if 'foreigners' come to a place where people already were, too many at once for example and this has a negative impact on the existing populace, then you can understand them saying 'I'm sick of all these foreigners', regardless of whether they looked different or not.

"And 'foreigners' have been coming to this country for centuries and making it their own."
- I'm not disputing that, nor am I saying I'm opposed to 'foreigners'.
The whiteness in me is essentially foreign on this continent, 12 generations back.

"We pride ourselves on giving people a 'fair-go'.
We should practice it more often for it to have any meaning."

- Ideally, yes - but we don't have much to be proud about anymore.
And we don't have huge untapped potential, or great opportunities like existed in the past.
I wonder if 'fair-go' means different things to different people.

"I forgot to add - why can't we just take people on how they behave without factoring in their race or ancestry?"
"Why should certain people be considered superior or more acceptable than others? Aren't we all a mixture?"
- I'm trying to think about it in the way I see it in relation to my age, then and now...
Growing up as a kid on the Gold Coast in the last 70's and 80's.
Paul Hogan, Peter Brock, Dick Johnson, Americas cup.
That era, I'm sure many here are a lot older so you memory might be different to mine.

I'm not entirely sure that era can simply be defined as a 'racist' era.
Or that the 'Australian way' of those days should be remembered as 'racism oriented' and vilified in that way.
It wasn't even about race, it was about something else, something more, something 'ours'.
Our own unique 'flavor'.
And you can't have an 'ours' unless you set yourself apart from the others.
You think when Australia played the West Indies in the 80's in the cricket (in a so-called racist era) that we disliked them because they were black.
- The answer is no, it wasn't that way, we didn't even dislike them at all.

We had our own thing, everyone had their own thing.
Now no-ones allowed to have their own thing.

It was the end of a nationalist era towards a more globalised era.