Joe.
When I drive past Brunswick Secondary on my way home I see groups of brown kids divided by ethnicity horsing around and a few solitary White kids trudging home with their headphones on and their eyes downcast.
When I drive past Preston Girls High I see locked gates, the school closed down after it became unsustainable because of a lack of students.
Why did it lack students in a booming area? Because no White parent would send their girls into the toxic environment created when the school population became majority Lebanese Muslim.
When I drive past Peter Lalor College I see gangs of Pacific Islanders in their twenties loitering outside and I hear from my kids about the lockdowns, the fights, the sexual assaults, the gay bashings etc at their school.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

I couldn't agree with you more.
Beautifully said.

However, sadly,
despite the enormous amount of diversity in Australia
there are still some people who like to perpetuate
a very limited construction of our nation's identity.

However, I agree with you that this will change with
time as the younger generations
through inter-action and discussion,
will learn to sort out their problems.

I guess it's a human trait that
some people are very good at demanding every one else
to be better, but they never seem to demand it of themselves.
Their answer to any kind of question of culture has always
been the obstinate "If you don't like it, leave."
(Hence my facetious, tongue-in-cheek post to Chris).

However, I too am positive about this country's future.
I have to be, for the sake of my children, and grandchildren.

Again, Thank You for your words of wisdom.

Thanks Foxy, you always represent the spirit of generosity and forbearance that I think we should all cherish :) Love, always.

When I was growing up in Bankstown and Penrith in the fifties, there were a few 'Balts' around and a couple of Aboriginal kids, but it was pretty much an Anglo world.

But from the late forties, non-Anglo immigrants, now citizens, must have felt that they had dropped into a multicultural world, and that it has been that way ever since. Every Italian, Greek, Latvian, Hungarian, Serb and Turk in the fifties and sixties must have had to negotiate working with people from all sorts of other backgrounds, all struggling with the crazy English language, all the while trying to understand this new world they had - usually irreversibly - dropped into. And in the process, in their own ways, they became Australians.

So multiculturalism is not new - that process has been going on, for non-Anglos, for more than two hundred years.

I wonder what those Australians think of the Indigenous/non-Indigenous kerfuffle ? After all, they mostly came out long after it had mostly occurred, and there was not a hell of a lot they could do about it, one way or the other. But as it happens, they now greatly out-number Indigenous people, and, apart from a relatively high proportion of marriages between non-Anglos and Indigenous people, most would not have had to give much thought to Indigenous issues.

So, yes, being Australian has become a many-sided phenomenon. And whatever it is, it will keep evolving, with input from a multitude of experiences.

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Jay,

Once again our observations and knowledge of the
various Melbourne schools seem to differ vastly.
My personal experience with the following:

Blackburn High School
Box Hill High School
Doncaster Secondary College
Hawthorn Secondary College
Kew High School
Mt Waverley Secondary College
Nunawading High School
St Albans Secondary College

Have all been very positive - with a wide mix of
students from various cultures and religions
all getting along admirably. And these are public
schools. Of course we've all read about the violence
in some private schools like Xavier. Interesting though
what you've managed to glean from the schools you
mentioned mainly - just by driving past.

Loudmouth "that process has been going on, for non-Anglos, for more than two hundred years."

The difference is, the non-Anglos were primarily European, from culltures similar to and related to ours.

They were also only a fraction of the total, with most immigrants coming from the British Isles.

This allowed a level of stablility and continuity that could tolerate a little "stretching".

Now, 80% of immigrants come from non-European backgrounds.

And in large enough numbers that they need never leave "their" community and be part of the larger picture.

"I only wish I could be around in a hundred years"

Be glad you're spared the horror.

Banjo "The best time in Aus was between 1950 and 1970"

Not surprisingly, that was when native-born Australians peaked as a proportion of the population.

And when we really started manifesting our own culture/identity, rather than simply being pseudo-Brits.

Now that's all being demolished as we become a Disneyland ride of "diversity".

Foxy "Our society today no longer views homogeneity as mandatory."

Except in politics. Progressivism is compulsory.

Foxy,
Wrong again, read my posts, I don't belong to any ethnic group, my ethnic group and the nation into which I was born no longer exist, I and the ones like me aren't "constructing" any identity, that's another straw man.
New graffiti outside the Anarchist club down on St George's Rd Northcote this morning "Death To Aussie Pride!", they needn't have worried so, it's been dead for at least 30 years.