“Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” The chanting sounded like the din of a sporting event. With Australian flags draped over them, the crowd could have been on its way to a rugby match. But, the shouts continued, “Lebs go home!” they roared.
Last December, just two months before I arrived in Australia, riots broke out on Sydney’s beaches after a group of Middle Eastern men, dubbed “Lebs” in Aussie slang, beat up a Cronulla Beach lifeguard. Over 5,000 fair-skinned Australians gathered on the beach after receiving word of the gathering through text messages. They wore shirts that proclaimed, “We grew here, you flew here” and waved terrifying signs declaring “Ethnic Cleansing Zone.”
The crowd chased a man who looked Middle Eastern into a hotel; they beat up several others. That night, packs of Middle Eastern teens drove around the city staging revenge attacks. The riots spread from Cronulla, the southernmost beach, all the way up Sydney’s coast. People states away received text messages urging them to join in the rioting. A friend of mine, a Norwegian exchange sudent, read the first text message, calling him to join the violence and “show them that this is our beach.”
I chose to study in Sydney because I had heard it called one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world; I was shocked when Australians told me about the recent riots. I hadn’t known that many white Australians, at least the outspoken ones, seem to hate those of different ethnicities. After only one week though, when friends showed me pictures or told me about the chaos, I was no longer surprised.
It is not advertised, but it is clear. Seemingly liberal college students bark bitter remarks about immigrants being unwilling to adapt. They would say to me loudly and slowly, as if I was mildly retarded, “If you go to a country, you respect their culture; you don’t cover your head.” Interesting concept, considering Australia’s history of blatantly disregarding Aboriginal culture and traditions.
Somehow, the Indigenous people who the English colonists had massacred, were not considered Australians. If asked why not, the usual answer was that they had happened to be there, but it was the whites who built Australia. The whites “did them a favor.”
We learned in Australian Studies classes that Aboriginals were not even granted suffrage until 1963. Europeans wiped out the Island of Tasmania; the last full blooded Tasmanian aborigine died in 1867. A policy which removed Aboriginal children from their parents and taught them to work as maids for white families persisted until 1969. It was an attempt to breed out Aboriginality, to save the natives from themselves.
By the time I arrived in Australia, the riots had stopped. The beaches had all been closed, a strong weapon in a city whose people lounge even in the middle of winter. The underlying issues, however, remained unresolved. Women remained frightened to wear their head scarves in public. People poked a tattoo of my name in Arabic across my ribs, angry and suspicious. A boy leaving a night club ran up to two of my Asian friends, winked at me, and then dipped his fingers in the sour cream that came with our fries, and shoved his fingers up their noses, smearing the sour cream across their faces, giving one a bloody nose. Looking at some of my pictures of friends back home, an Australian houseguest commented, “All black people look the same to me, like 50 Cent.”
Many white Australian friends said I was hypocritical to come from America and criticize Australia’s racism. Sure, there is a huge racist undercurrent in the U.S., some loud and violent, some unspoken and subconscious. Eventually, though, I realized that making comparisons was useless.
The blatant racism in Australia made me feel less guilty about being an American, but racism exists here too. Some would say that at least Australians admit it, at least they aren’t insincere. Americans would reply that where we come from, open hostility it is frowned upon. Neither of these excuses absolve us. There is merit in admitting there is a problem because then the problem can be fixed. No one seemed to take that step in Australia. Here, we seem to shout diversity, but if we don’t recognize the many ways that racism exists in our culture, how can we do anything about it? It is obviously not something that goes away on its own and I, after seeing how out of hand things became in Australia, can only hope we actually address our problems here and do something about them.
