In a week when the Liberal party has sunk to new lows by politicising the funerals of asylum seekers drowned off Christmas Island (and, it’s becoming clearer, doing so at the behest of a One Nation campaign), and senior Liberals have been running an Islamophobic strategy, it’s refreshing to read the text of Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Bowen’s speech “The genius of Australian multiculturalism”, delivered last night.
Discussing recent speeches by Angela Merkel and David Cameron, Bowen says:
The genius of Australia’s multiculturalism is something we should recognise, embrace and proclaim.
A truly robust liberal society is a multicultural society.
Bowen argues that Australia has a citizenship-oriented multiculturalism policy, and indeed, that the policy and the social and political practices and dispositions which reflect and underpin it, are core to our identity and values as a nation.
Bowen also announced that Kate Lundy’s ministerial title will be changed to include the term “Multicultural Affairs”, and that the government will be embarking on the design of an anti-racism strategy.
Elsewhere: Richard Green at Troppo. And for those who want a sample of the Liberal anti-Muslim campaign (which shadow cabinet leaks say Scott Morrison proposed in a meeting in December, which he denied today), here’s just one instance.
Elsewhere: Jeff Sparrow.
At last.
Why was “Multicultural” removed from the Minister’s title in the first place?
What has changed since then that needs it brought back?
We just want to be Australians.
Yes, racism is bad, but it doesn’t need a campaign in Australia – we are one of the least racist countries in the World.
The laws that caused the noddy in Perth to be locked up last week for racism against Jews should be repealed.
There are laws against incitement to violence already.
If multiculturalism is working so well in Australia, why do we have immigrants being convicted of planing terrorist attacks against us?
(Chokes on lunch, shakes head and walks away.)
Good to see the ALP finally standing up for something. I thought they’d lost that when they tossed out Rudd.
And Razor. Really?
I dunno Razor. Why was the title removed?
Yep, a good speech by Bowen. Labor has to woman up more often and makes these strong statements. And follow them up by actions. Bowen also has to really, really get those people off Christmas Island asap.
Meanwhile, in Lib land, in seems that Hockey has been leaking again, dobbing in Morrison for wanting to discriminate against Muslims, on the basis of religion.
“If multiculturalism is working so well in Australia, why do we have immigrants being convicted of planing terrorist attacks against us?”
If education is so good, why do some kids turn out to be dumb under-achievers? Right razor?
Hey we can all play this game.
If Australia is such a great non-rascist country, how come we have so many dog-whistling bigots among us?
The word was removed *dishonestly* by the Howard govt, since they didnt have the courage to actually change the policy, merely the Ministry title, for high-frequency dog-alert purposes.
Good to see the ALP showing some spine on a wedge issue.
Front the Libs on these issues, and youll discover they scatter like a hapless rabble. Hockey & Turnbull in one direction; Phoney et al in the other.
Yep!
Yah, if having, like, laws and police n shit is so allegedly “good”, why are there still criminalzzzzz?
This is a blatant political effort by the ALP to stop leakage to the Greens.
Oooh, I’m shocked Razor! Shocked!
If you heard the speech (I heard some), Bowen also gave due credit to the Libs for also being the creators of multiculturalism.
“This is a blatant political effort by the ALP to stop leakage to the Greens.”
If [and unfortunately its pure speculation] that is so, that is excellent.
May there be more of it.
Much better than the race down to the right.
The link in the post goes to the full text of the speech.
Razor (LOL), have you ever eaten a curry? Or a falafel maybe? Or been out for a Thai meal? Or a Chinese takeaway? No? What, you only eat damper constantly do you? And snags and steak? But not chips eh? Cause eating chips would encourage the evils of multiculturalism? Since they came from, as far as we can tell, Belgium? Let’s ban chips altogether in glorious white Australia, otherwise little kiddies might want to start speaking in Flemish or some other strange tongue?
“Labor has really gone back to its values. They’re values I share.”
– Malcolm Fraser, in today’s Crikey.
Thank goodness a Labor politician has finally spoken out against mean spirited and nasty racism
Yes, yes, good on Chris Bowen, but the question is still worth asking: why this speech, now?
As for white bread Razor, LOL. Have a look around, mate. The Australia you see is the product of all the cultures that have come here. Even at the beginning of European settlement there was a heady mix of English and Irish cultures, and a few others besides. Cogitate on that as you drink your cappucino while you eat your Turkish bread sandwich and think about tonight’s take away pizza.
Multiculturalism is a con and was always so. It looked good for politicians and admittedly some bureaucrats that made a career out of it, but Australia’s policies never attempted to be multicultural in the real sense.
We had superficial ‘feel good’ stuff such as food and pretty dances as festival and we all congratulated ourselves that we were so multicultural. But when anyone tried to truly introduce any cultural factor that did not conform with the white Australian mainstream was slapped down very quickly.
Yeah, it was a good speech that hopefully signals a return of principle to the ALP. However, Bowen still sent a refugee kid who was orphaned in the recent shipwreck back into detention on Christmas Island, despite there being relatives in Sydney who were prepared to take him in and care for him.
Razor @ 11: What? The ALP is engaging in politics? I too am shocked!
PC @ 16: I just read that too. Much that I admire the latter day Malcolm, I don’t recall that he was all that enamoured with traditional Labor values back in the early 80s…
@ CJ – via Grogs Gamut – they sent him back to his Aunty who is his current carer and who is currently on Christmas Island. Hopefully they will process their visas soon so that they can all join family in Sydney.
Guido @ 19:
“But when anyone tried to truly introduce any cultural factor that did not conform with the white Australian mainstream was slapped down very quickly.”
I think this is getting slightly close to the point that Bowen was making as to why Australian multiculturalism works better than the efforts in other countries – he argues that encouraging immigrants to become Australian citizens, and requiring immigrants to respect Australian laws and values is part of the deal of successful multiculturalism. The fact that we don’t allow Sharia Law here doesn’t imply that multiculturalism has failed.
CJ, if you’re talking in terms of pillars of State multiculturalism, Fraser’s Government was a great deal more reforming and radical than any ALP Government, State or Federal, that’s ever been elected.
Guido, I’m sure you’ve read Andrew Jakubowicz?
@ Mindy – that’s good news. I must’ve read the wrong spin this morning!
@ Liam – yes, I concede that Fraser’s government was good at multicultural (and Aboriginal) policy and reforms.
State policies of multiculturalism reinvigorated and about bloody time too.
Didn’t see the word indigenous in the speech – maybe that’s not part of multicuralism.
Noted this: “As a nation, we pride ourselves on the way we have invested in the decent and fair treatment of new arrivals to our shore, to help them find their feet” and thought of the new Leonora detention centre.
Now is the time to get behind the ALP and support their push for multiculturalism – otherwise they will be reticent to move on these matters in the future. They get full marks for taking it to the coalition, I for one, applaud them.
@15 and @18 – where exactly have I said that I don’t like the things that you mention? I think the mixing of cultures is wonderful and Australia is one of the best places in the world to live because we have taken the best from so many cultures.
The word was removed *dishonestly* by the Howard govt, since they didnt have the courage to actually change the policy, merely the Ministry title, for high-frequency dog-alert purposes.
Well, actually it was removed from the Department title of what’s now the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which is Chris Bowen’s department not Kate Lundy’s. Personally I’m happy to leave the term out of departmental titles but only* because I think these titles should simply describe the relevant services or administrative functions provided by the named body, and not incorporate sloganeering. But if we did that consistently we’d have to rename the Department of Defence.
This is not because I have a problem with multiculturalism. I do have a problem with the notion that multiculturism is something the state needs to nurture. Multiculturism is the norm; monoculturism is what requires state (or church) intervention. So when a government claims to be in favour of multiculturism we can only hope it means they’ll be winding back the usual attempts to make everyone conform to some bullshit conception of the “national character” or “values”.
Sorry about that. (First para only should be italicised).
[Fixed ~mod]
@28 Careful, Weaver, or you will be tarred as a moncultural racist.
Except that nothing Weaver wrote could be construed as that. You’re looking desperate Razor.
Eric Sykes and Sam – yoohoo!! Care to answer my 27?
Elsewhere: Richard Green at Troppo. And for those who want a sample of the Liberal anti-Muslim campaign (which shadow cabinet leaks say Scott Morrison proposed in a meeting in December, which he denied today), here’s just one instance.
I would love to see many more of those beautiful, elegant, colorful Sudanese people.
Islamic people are a large portion of my customers but there is such a thing as culture shock and it’s time to ease up on them as part of the mix.
The Labour party’s stance on multiculturalism is nothing more than support for high population growth and opposition to the Liberal party. They are just as racist, or non-racist as the Liberal party.
Both major parties make me sick with their political playing with sustainability. We should be raising our humanitarian intake and and massively reducing our rate of immigration to just below replacement levels.
I see no problem with selective immigration to accomodate more refugees and a more productive, positive, balanced mix to our multicultural society.
Abbott overreached on the sleazebaggery sending his wind-up toy Morrison out with Xenophobic bile in the midst of a funeral prominently featuring a nine year old child.
The Libs found themselves over their heads in the sewer and inhaling deeply. Abbott quickly issued a customary ‘sorry lets move on’ through his sock puppet but meanwhile Labor identified the opportunity to speed up their movement back towards decency, hence moving the child out of detention and a re-embrace of multiculturalism. This is the harbinger of the death of mandatory detention, which will be put to sleep some time after the new, civilised Senate, cleansed of Lib/Nat obstructionist baboons, sits in July.
The timing of Bowen’s speech was made apposite by events but reflects Gillard’s desire to restore decent human values to the Immigration/Asylum seeker debate. Because these moves reflect Gillard’s values they are not mere opportunism to stop votes leaking to the Greens.
The Libs are left with their One Nation email correspondents driving their agenda and on the wrong side of an issue with the potential to drive a very senior Frontbencher (Hockey) out of the Cabinet.
Welcome to nowheresville Abbott.
Get used to it, because under the new Senate you will become irrelevant.
Salient Green, I don’t think refugee and immigration policy are or should be adjusted to your or anyone else’s aesthetic preferences or personal predilections about a “mix”.
The whole point of an anti-discriminatory policy is to avoid that.
I would note that your comment translates to the same sorts of statements as “there’s too many of…” made by luminaries such as John Howard, Pauline Hanson and Kevin Andrews.
Elsewhere: Andrew Elder.
I think the Libs are really at the “have you left no sense of decency, Sir?” stage.
Again.
Not for the first time, Andrew Elder gets to the heart of the matter. Well said indeed!
Bloody hell, Razor! I’m shocked to the core.
Elder’s right: the centre is there to be taken.
The ALP wants to think rumble in the jungle. How long are you going to stay against the ropes? Foreman’s looking pretty tired, making wild extremist air swings.
He only looks a winner cos you’re still ducking.
SG: Most of our Sudanese refugees are Christian from the soon to be separated south.
Lefty E, there are only about three people who regularly comment here, at least on the evidence oif the comments, who have the faintest idea even of what the centre is in Australia in 2011. Surprisingly enough I don’t include you in that number.
Any assertions made on LP about what the centre wants or doesn’t want I’m afraid appear in the circumstances as evidence-free desperation.
Sure Wozza-watch this space. I back those with some knowledge of Australian political history, and you certainly arent included in their number.
Incidentally, has anyone recently tried to find the ALP’s mulicultural policy, or even its immigration policy, on its website?
Because it doesn’t appear to be there.
But that’s all right, they’ve stuck the word in some junior Miniter’s title, of course no-one expects that to mean the Minister has policy to implement.
Jesus, talk about shadow not substance; can this Government get any shadowier?
I guess they haven’t yet managed to dust the policy off and put it up again. The ALP since 1996 got into the bad habit of small target thinking. (Thanks Beaser)
This could be the sign they’re gonna go for broke. And be a great party once more. Final gasp; dead cat bounce. Who knows.
“it doesn’t appear to be there”
Hopefully, that’s a sign it’s being rewritten.
Tell you what the centre isnt Wozza: scoring points of a funeral, following a tragedy aint the ‘centre’, its sick extremism.
Nor is the ‘centre’ three bat-crazy racists signing a petition.
Apparently the Liberal party is at risk of forgetting this. They’re out of touch, drifting off far to the right of the public, and now trawling near-defunct One Nation websites for ideas.
Howard was smart at dog whistles – these guys are clumsy buffoons.
My point is these tactics only look sane in the absence of visible opposition. Turnbull and Hockey couldn’t wait to disown this hateful nonsense – and they got half the parliamentary LNP votes as recently as 2010.
I also blame the ALP for letting these neo-Hansonite extremists pysch them out. Take the centre back.
I confidently predict immediate poll improvements for the ALP if they start going these turkeys hard.
Kim @ 37, my point is that we already have a discrimminatory policy. We take immigrants if they are refugees, have family here, are not crimminals or terrorists or have certain skills. There is a lot of discrimmination there. I say there is nothing wrong with also discrimminating based on race and culture, for the good of Australia and to avoid culture shock and social problems caused by large concentrations of one group or another.
Sadly this is now being perverted by dickheads trying to get political advantage out of it instead of a reasoned debate.
When I said ‘Islamic’ earlier I used the term to encompass Middle Eastern People from several defferent countries.
Razor @ 28
“we have taken the best from so many cultures” should read “so many cultures have given their best to us….”.
Hey, Razor, have you heard of the Eureka Stockade, that quintessentially Australian rebellion in the foldrush days? Now just off the top of my head, because I can’t be bothered getting Carboni (Italian, get it?) apart from native born Australians, there were English, Irish, Americans and one Italian involved in it. In fact, one might argue that if the Italian stockader, Raffaele Carboni hadn’t written about his experiences, we’d not know anywhere near as much about the Eureka Stockade as we do.
Multiculturalism in Australia goes back a long way, mate.
For instance, on the First Fleet apart from the Poms,there were a whole heap of Irish and Scots, a few Welsh, a whole bunch of whiteNorth Americans,1 Native American Indian, 12 black North Amercans or West Indians, several Jewish First Fleeters, I from Madagascar, 4 white Weest Indians, 1 Dutch, 1 German, 1 Portuguese, 2 Frenchmen,2 Swedes, 1 Indian (an Asian, shock-horror!), and 1 Scandinavian (country not specified, who drowned on the way out.
Like I said, multiculturalism goes back a long way, to 1788. Its as Australian as meat bloody pies.
Paul B @ 52 – nice one.
Paul B, quite. Poor old Governor Grey got a nasty shock when he arrived in Adelaide to take over running the joint in 1841 (as if its being bankrupt wasn’t bad enough):
In 1788 about 600 languages were spoken in Australia.
We have become much less multicultural since then.
It was amusing – well, in a LOLSOB kind of way – that the “strange, foreign” Afghan asylum seekers caused so much angst in the early 2000s while people seemed to be blissfully unaware of the fact that Afghans played a very important role in “opening up” the Outback areas (yes, yes, I know, that has a whole problematic meaning in itself but this is a blog comment not an essay), and that there is an entire population of Afghan-australians whose family may have been in Australia longer than them. Add to that the delicious irony that there is a pervasive myth that the “outback” is more “Australian” than the coastal/urban areas – something I don’t subscribe to myself, but – many of the same people who do subscribe to that myth would be people who didn’t recognise or know about our Afghan heritage.
Helen @ 56 – Right on.
There is a railway in Australia called the Ghan, (no doubt you know) named in honour of those Afghani and Pakistani (tho pakistan didn’t exist then) people who contributed so much to this countries development.
No doubt they were members of the first turrist sleeper cell or something. Ask S (for scumbag) Morrison.
But ‘multiculturalism’ as a government policy isn’t the same as having a country composed of people from many different places.
@52 Paul Burns – exactly where have I said that I am against immigration? It is the Politically Correct Multiculturalism that leads to things like Peadatricians even considering the idea of female circumcision or public pool being closed to males for periods because a certain culture thinks males are all sexual deviants.
As I have said before, we are a wonderful mix of many different cultures. If you come here bring the best of your culture with you and leave your cultural conflicts and backward social attitudes (such as telling your kids who they can marry and treating women like second class citizens) behind.
I don’t expect everyone to love AFL or change what they eat. But I do expect them to accept our culture, unless they can identify something wrong with it and win the argument against it, and laws.
There’s a mosque in the south-west corner of Adelaide that was built over 100 years ago. More early evidence of turrists in our midst (barbarians at the gate, etc).
Hey, Razor, do you have any actual evidence of paediatricians considering carrying out female genital mutilation? (As opposed to something you heard Bob Francis say on the radio, or read in that journal of record The Australian)
The point I’d make is this: 2nd and 3rd generation migrants often say “we just want to be Australians” etc, and I accept that. In fact, I consider that a sign that multiculturalism is working.
But for 1st generation migrants, many of which never did – and never will – master the language, or want to watch AFL, or give up their own cultures, multiculturalism is a welcome mat that says: give your kids a better life, they will grow up here as Australian as anyone else and be accepted, but in the meantime – so will YOU, as long as you abide my our laws and basic democratic values.
I think its a great policy, and it works.
@ 60 and @ 61 – and the Mosque in Northbridge is one of the Oldest buildings around, too. So what?
As for the FGM and Doctors discussion – I’m not going to do the searching and linking, but I generally don’t make shit up. I do recall that it was actively discussed in the US of A before being shit canned last year. The fact that Western Doctors who have signed up for the “do no harm” stufff even thought there were possible options fro FGM is just nuts and indicates the pervasive influence of cultural relativism, which goes hand in hand with so much PC multi culti bullshit.
Razor @ 59. (And everyone else.) Is there a peadatrician in the country who would even consider female circumcision? Is there a single lefty here that would support female circumcision in terms of ‘cultural sensitivity?’
As for pools being closed to males for certain periods. This has been going on for years. I remember certain periods at swimming centres when I was achild where all adults apart from teachers were barred from pool access. I’m sure this is still the case.
Closing off access to pools for one group or another (sometimes for women, sometimes for children, sometimes for the elderly) has happened for ages Razor. Of course some men, especially white men get upset with this and that’s understandable since the cultural expectation is in Australia all things should be available at all time to white men.
I know many non-Muslim women who avail themselves of women only periods at the gym, at the pool and in other spaces.
So, this speech – did everyone like it? It seems to me that the multicultural discourse it references only serves ameliorate the terror that racial and cultural alterity poses to the white social body. In the end it is an articulation of the no. of ways in which minority discourses are made to submit to the dominant one. Note how the nation state retains the power to discriminate against those cultural practices which would offend its core values. You might consider what it would mean to have multiculturalism, pluralism in its truest sense – a site where competing laws and discourses would be allowed to exist alongside white western ones. On the contrary, the underlying impulse in this speech is the impulse to integrate, which erases difference. See how this is located as the problem with german multiculturalism – a lack of integration. You might ask what happens to alterity with this impulse underlying the push for multiculturalism. Multiculturalism here is nothing more than a utopian fantasy. It is a discourse working for an on behalf of the dominant culture. It is seeking to delineate ways in which alterity may be corralled and ordered until, as Guido pointed out earlier, it is nothing more than a meaningless collection of clog festivals and food stalls which do nothing to trouble the hegemony of the white western imaginary. Result: nothing changes.
At it’s core this multicultural discourse is unsustainable. It falls apart every time some practice of alterity troubles it. Consider the recent burqa debate, Aboriginal law, sharia law, etc, etc. It’s a liberal fantasy, nothing more.
We should wake up to this fact – it will and does operate to shut down liberatory impulses which emanate from minorities.
I was at a seminar recently where I heard an interesting paper on Nino Cullotta’s “They’re a Wierd Mob” – written by John O’Grady in the 1950′s – an anglo celt. This text was in effect addressed to the white community at the beginning of the great waves of post ww2 migration to this country. The novel dealt with the plight of an Italian migrant who comes to Australia and is taught he must integrate. In the novel the unknowing migrant is treated parodically, an object of amused ridicule. I can assure you most Italian migrants did not read it and when they saw the movie, many did not think much of it. The message in and of that novel are no different to this speech. They integrate, they will speak english, and they will adopt our ways. They will be made safe. Or in Gassan Hage’s words, they will aspire to whiteness. In this way, whiteness moves beyond racial groupings and becomes a ‘way of life’ category.
Just cause it sounds left, does not mean it serves to deconstruct the power of the monocultural state. The power of the state is the power of the state. Whether it soothes you my minimising alterity or terrifies you by making alterity the bogeyman of the night, it is still doing the work of reinforcing a monocultural vision.
When you open a speech with the vision of people rescinding their otherness at Australian Day ceremonies, then you know what follows will be a comfort narrative for the frightened white social body and nothing more.
I think we need a new version of Godwin’s Law, which is not (as many think) an unwritten law against mentioning H*tl*r or the N*z*s in blog threads but rather a proposition about how the world works, as in ‘the law of gravity’. Godwin’s Law states that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
‘In other words,’, says Wikipedia, ‘Godwin put forth the hyperbolic observation that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope— someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.’
I propose a new Law, viz: ‘As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone invoking female circumcision (wrongly, as it is a cultural practice rather than a religious one) as an excuse for Islamophobia approaches 1, though it will take a bit longer than H*tl*r, and the person invoking it will always be a conservative man.’
Razor,
If you are aware of FGM being performed by pediatricians (or anyone else for that matter) in Australia then I suggest you contact the appropriate authorities as it is illegal in Australia.
I don’t think I agree with that: I don’t think the clog festivals and food stalls are meaningless, and I don’t think the ‘white’ imaginary has remained ‘untroubled’, at least not in Australia. (At what point did ‘white’ come to exclude Italians?) I don’t have any evidence except that of my own eyes over 50+ years, mind you.
Casey, you don’t say if you’ve read the book yourself, but I’d be inclined to call you on this interpretation, or that of whoever gave the paper. I think it’s more complex than that; the whole point of that book to my mind is that the hero Nino is dignifed and intelligent and teaches quite as much as he learns; he considerably broadens the minds of the Australians he makes friends with (and his English is much better than theirs), who are by no means represented idealistically or as a wholly desirable norm. And then there’s the sequel, which turns the tables and shows the Sydneysiders way out of their depth in Europe with Nino as their guide.
The movie is crap, and has very little to do with the book, as with most film adaptations by people who don’t understand what fiction is or how it works.
I liked Bowen’s speech because it at least brings the ideals of a non-monoculture back to the table. Even if it is a fantasy, and there I fear you might be right, I don’t think it’s a sop, much less a dishonest one, and it’s better than anything else we’ve had since Howard started white-anting it in the 90s.
“You might consider what it would mean to have multiculturalism, pluralism in its truest sense – a site where competing laws and discourses would be allowed to exist alongside white western ones.”
So which laws would apply to whom?
Plus ‘traditional’ Anglo-Australian culture is boring, derivative, with really shit food and no coffee.
Let’s not forget that!~
@67 – PC, I think you’re a little too quick to dismiss the movie as “crap”.
The portrayal of the Anglo-Aussies is one of ridicule and fairly unrelenting satire (albeit affectionately), and there are some memorable if unsubtle scenes, such as the drunken xenophobic Anglo falling into the harbour off the ferry, and the six o-clock swill scene in the pub. Chips Rafferty plays a very unforgiving yet delightfully comical caricature of the 1950s “Head of the House”.
As kitcsh as it may be, there’s some fairly overt yet subversive rewriting of the mythical White Australia in the movie version. I think you can draw a pretty firm line from the subtly subversive Charles Meere painting in 1940, through Ray Lawler in the 1950s, to “Nino Cullota” in the 1960s.
* Nino Cullota was a pseudonym for the redoubtable John O’Grady. Where would Australian literature be without the pseudonymous author??
BTW, the book was a favourite of my (European wartime refugee) grandparents. I gather from them that they felt a lot of resonance with the portrayals it contains — and it was one of the first and only novels they ever read in English.
It’s been years and years since I read the book, so I am not confident on a lot of its contents anymore. But I would ask you to consider that the bulk of migration to this country from Italy was Southern Italian working class and peasantry who did not speak English and Nino Cullotta was constructed as a cultured Northern Italian who did. I guess I’d ask you to at this point, what is the function of presenting Nino to the Australian reading public as a cultured romantic migrant? Indeed, is there not a scene on a train where this noble figure breaks up a fight between a southern Italian with a knife and some Anglos? Does not Nino despise the Meridionali? Yes, he does and with good reason. Because Southern Italians carry around knives all the time and did in the 50′s. Why I distinctly remember my dad shining his big fat knife every morning, getting all the blood from the night before off it. That’s what uneducated southerners did. You understand if Nino does not do it for me? What kind of reality were the white Australians being presented with anyway? Fantasy. Most southerners are so far from Nino it’s not funny. And even if he was teaching the Australians proper English – do you see the class prejudice right there? Since we are godwining – Hitler thought Northern Italians were white, and Southerners were to be considered Black (Richard Dyer, “White”). What O’Grady tapped into right there was the internal racism of Italy. But that aside, he still was a parodic figure by virtue of his name. Do you know what Culotta means? It means “big arse”. Why do you think O’Grady called his main character “big arse”?
“The movie is crap, and has very little to do with the book, as with most film adaptations by people who don’t understand what fiction is or how it works.”
I’ll have to stamp my foot and disagree with you vehemently about this. Especially the bit about not understanding fiction. The director was a Brit (which is interesting in itself); Michael Powell, who is one of the greatest of film directors (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I’m Going, Ill Met Moonlight, 49th Parallel, The Small Back Room, Peeping Tom) There’s not a director better than him at knowing how fiction works cinematically. His work is peerless in its plotting of colour, sound and movement. It’s also often misunderstood because he was never a realist.
It matters not one jot whether the film has much to do with the novel. I’ve not read any of the novels, but I agree with Mercurius that the film is satirical about the habits of the strange, philistine Aussies. Walter Chiari was a major Italian actor of his day and his performance of Nino is invested with a great deal of subtlety and restraint. And he gets the gorgeous Irish girl. If you read Powell’s autobiography he’s also bemused by the locals and I think there’s a great deal of identification between him and Nino.
Powell also directed “Age of Consent” here, with James Mason and a teenage Helen Mirren. He was banished to the Antipodes because “Peeping Tom”, which is a great film about filmmaking, failed horribly in Britain and he couldn’t get any work. Eventually, he was rescued by Martin Scorsese who got him academic tenure in the States and he married Scorsese’s great young editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who’s still Scorsese’s editor and works for no-one else.
Didn’t mean to write an essay about Powell, but it hurts me to see him misunderstood.
Young man, you’re not getting any custard until you finish your overly fried chops and overly boiled vegetables.
Exactly Paul. Thats what it was still like when I was a kid!
Dont get me wrong – I love a lamb roast, and almost nothing beats a BBQ. But Johhny is a very dull boy eating that all week.
Yes, I thought I might get into trouble for that.
Casey, yes, I do remember about the Meridionali, and I thought there were two different things being mocked there: (1) Nino’s own unacknowledged prejudices and inability to see that he was behaving exactly the same way towards them as the Australians were towards him, and (2) the Australian, or if you like ‘white’, predisposition to homogenise the Other as other, although that’s perhaps universal. It’s a possible reading and it’s the one I instinctively saw it as when I read the novel when I was a kid, and that didn’t change after I grew up.
I disagree that the language stuff is about class prejudice. A fair enough view in England, God knows, but I think saying it about They’re A Weird Mob where Sydney is approvingly represented as aggressively egalitarian (and the well-spoken ‘radio actors’ mocked, BTW) is just part of the ideological box-ticking that much academic literary criticism has become, to the exclusion of all else. But I think that element of the book is about how language and translation and local linguistic knowledge work and I think O’Grady thought that too.
Yes of course I get why Nino does not do it for you personally, but I don’t think I was arguing that he should, was I?
Yes, I did know that. He probably called him ‘Big Arse’ because it’s supposed to be a comedy, but that will probably only make you cross as well. As I recall, most of the characters had ‘funny names’. So would you condemn Colin Thiele for representing his German father as a buffoon (see ‘Dad Changes the Oil’, for example) in The Sun on the Stubble, or for making fun of the way he talks, or is that different because Thiele is obviously of German extraction too, what with his Germanic father and all, and if so, why? John O’Grady’s Irish; does that in any way get him off the hook?
A bit of context: I’ve been having this sort of conversation with Europeans, many of whom (though clearly not Merc’s grandparents, I’m cheered to see) were determined to interpret TAWM in the most negative light possible, starting with Sneja Gunew, with whom I worked at Deakin and who practically invented academic multiculturalism in this country, as I’m sure you know, and was not prepared to accept anything less than total condemnation of ‘Australian’ representations of immigrants, or to admit that their motives might not after all have been purely negative. But I thought then and still do think that that novel is a more culturally (and aesthetically, in terms of layers of narration and irony and so on) complex phenomenon than you are giving it credit for.
Casey @65 you raise some very interesting points.
Ones that I can’t argue with cos in some ways that describes my life (mum white 5th gen Australian, dad black, born o’seas totally different culture) and I’m really more of a bogan redneck than many who post here and spout rwclaptrap.
I’ve some interesting conversations with my old man about it. If you want me to elaborate I will.
“I liked Bowen’s speech because it at least brings the ideals of a non-monoculture back to the table. Even if it is a fantasy, and there I fear you might be right, I don’t think it’s a sop, much less a dishonest one, and it’s better than anything else we’ve had since Howard started white-anting it in the 90s.” PC @ 67
Yeah that is an important change. Even if he “doesn’t mean it,” its about time we expressed some reasonable and decent symbolism.
I think this is one of those things where too seemingly opposite viewpoints can both be true. In fact in some ways it seems as tho there was less assimilation back in the pre federation days/early 20thC. There are examples – Sikhs in Woolgoolga, those “Chinese” restaurants that dot the country, especially in some areas outside cities in the 70s and 80s, why we call “the Ghan” the Ghan, probably places like Handorff, and many many others. There were examples of exclusion not assimilation, and White Australia, and treatment of blackfellas can’t be ignored, but its not the whole story.
My experience of Australia, even growing up in Hobart in the 70s, is that Australia is a more cosmopolitan place than people realise. Then again the old man was a lawyer, the only obviously non anglo one in Hobart at the time (iirc) – he got lots of work from non whites, and had good relations with people of (seemingly) every possible ethnic background.
So I can see how most people (including or even especially the majority of “anglo/irish” or traditional “white” “Aussies”) grow up in semi ghettoised predominantly monocultural situations. Most non anglos and more recent arrivals are aware they are in that situation, but for most of our history, and even now to a point, most whitefellas don’t realise that.
The vast majority of people in suburban areas don’t realise they are living in a monocultural ghetto of sorts. They think that represents the whole country. So they wouldn’t get the sort of exposure to cosmopolitan Australia that I got as a kid.
I admit this may have changed since the late 80s early 90s, but it doesn’t seem that way.
My experience of Australia is also that it can be insanely racist. Repellently so. And I’ve noticed other bigotries as well as I’ve got older, heaps of them, deeply ingrained, even in me. Kind of the complete opposite of the cosmopolitan place I described above.
Often the racism comes from people who are unaware just how varied the cultures that live here are.
Fine, I wasn’t trashing the director as such. I was speaking in the context of the book and the meaning of the book..
Perhaps not, but, again, I am talking very specifically about how fiction works in books — stories made of words — it’s a distinction that needs to be made clearly over and over again. I’m not saying you’re doing this and neither is Casey, but the very common perception that a screen adaptation is in some way an unproblematic equivalent of or substitute for the novel itself (‘Have you read X?’ ‘No, but I’ve seen the film’) makes me want to get out my own big fat knife and shine it.
Matters to whom, and in the context of what? It matters a lot to me, and it also matters quite a lot in the context of Casey’s argument, which was what I was addressing.
Casey @65.
Your comment seems too far from pragmatic reality, and far too black and white.
Integration doesn’t need to be 100%.
Multiculturalism and monoculturalism dont need to be pure and opposite.
It is a melodromatic choice of words to talk of minority discourses “submitting” to the “dominant” one.
It is an exaggeration to suggest that an Australian citizenship ceremony requires that people from other cultures “rescind their otherness”. Perhaps the kind of multiculturalism described by Bowen requires people to weaken (or sometimes completely let go of) their adherence to cultural practices and beliefs that are drastically incompatible with the majority Australian way of life (e.g. sharia law), but it certainly doesn’t imply the complete rejection of their otherness to fully join the monoculture (not that there is such a thing as a monoculture in a nation of 20m+ people).
I certainly don’t think that multiculturalism has failed and that it is all a “liberal fantasy” just because we are exposed to, discuss, and ultimately reject some practices of other cultures, and frown upon others.
I think you need to acknowledge the pragmatism of Bowen’s account of multiculturalism. He is criticism the simplistic view that multiculturalism is just about sticking people from other cultures within your national border. Successful multiculturalism requires the more complex action of encouraging immigrants to feel a part of this culture (but this doesn’t imply they forget absolutely everthing from before).
You could also acknowledge the degree to which the inclusion of people of other cultures has shaped and changed the majority culture here, rather than merely submitting. I think it is absurd to suggest that “nothing changes” and that Australia has the same culture now as it had prior to multiculturalism with the exception of the addition of “food stalls” and “clog festivals”. This is cynicism to the point of unreality. It is more interested in being clever than accurate, sorry to say.
“Plus ‘traditional’ Anglo-Australian culture is boring, derivative, with really shit food and no coffee.
Young man, you’re not getting any custard until you finish your overly fried chops and overly boiled vegetables.”
I’m wondering if how that’s just how most poor people ate. It’s not what I remember. Also wondering, in similar vein, if the reason Australians started to broaden their cuisine, was as much to do with their new prosperity and travelling overseas, as to what the migrants brought with them.
Casey just read your comments @ 71.
You make a good point about the divide in Italy. I met lots of Italians when we moved to melb. I went to school in Moonee Ponds and Essendon which had a thriving Italian community. My school was equally divided along Racial lines – skips vs wogs. being a black c@#$ I was on the outside of both groups. (Thats an exaggeration, not everyone played those games, but it was the dominant dynamic at school.)
The guys I’ve rented for 15 yrs (old cow cocky rednecks) are Italian, but only just, from the North of Italy and originally Austrian. If their dad had left 10 years earlier they’d be Austrian not Italian. But their old man carried a knife most of his life and knew how to use it. Arrived here in the 1900s – 1910s, pretty wild back then apparently.
@Casey – re the Ghassan Hage stuff, etc.
No doubt it is true that the state still determines what constitutes a norm to which people have to adapt, but states are part of the picture, aren’t they? I’m not sure what some sort of putatively pure pluralism or multiculturalism would look like… certainly the sorts of models adapted from the Ottoman Empire’s practice and a lot of mythology about Spain circa whenevs are not really that relevant. Imperial pre-modern models v. modern state models. There’s a lot of fantasy about on the apparent other side of this duality too.
The question of whether the *nation* state has to conceive of the nation in terms of an ethnos is a different one.
Pav @ 78. I think it matters not one jot in terms of a novel and a film being completely different beasts, with different strengths and weaknesses in the way they work. I think film needs to be judged as to whether it works as a film, not whether it’s better/worse, same/different than the novel. I think we’re agreeing with each other to a large extent. One medium can’t substitute for another.
I remember reading one novelist (and for the life of me, I can’t remember who) saying that s/he thought of the adaptation of their book as a sister to the novel. A dear and much loved relation, but very different from each other, by necessity.
“Perhaps not, but, again, I am talking very specifically about how fiction works in books — stories made of words”
But that’s my point. Films specifically can’t work like this. They work using images, sounds, editing, with real people embodying characters, as well as words.
Hitchcock is an interesting example of this. He used novels as a jumping off point, or a basic premise, for his films, but they are completely different than the novels. He also argued that bad novels tended to make good films, not good novels. Not sure I agree with that.
This is why I’m glad “The Slap” is being turned into television, not film. Television is a lot more novelistic, I think.
Left E :
I just wanted to say I love the image of the welcome mat, but also that the idea that people can divest themselves of something called culture is very strange when you come to think of what that would mean in the particular, does anyone every divest themselves of their personal history because that is really what would be required. My father arrived here speaking and writing English to a higher level than I ever attained but still lived his life in the strange in-between space of the migrant, which in his case was a permanent, melancholy rootlessness.
I can remember riding on his shoulders to the corner shop, which was owned by an Italian Romany family called Ponti where he could eat smelly mouldy cheeses with the owner while I drank the cream from a gold-top. On the opposite corner, the eldest son of the De Lazzaris, following a humourous impulse I could never unpick, delighted in calling me “Suzy Wong”, an odd nickname for a blonde, blue-eyed toddler. Being a migrant, and the child of migrants seemed to become a culture in itself and throughout his life my father gravitated, not towards other Dutchmen, but to others who also inhabitated the inbetween space of those who could never return and never fit in.
“Plus ‘traditional’ Anglo-Australian culture is boring, derivative, with really shit food and no coffee.
Young man, you’re not getting any custard until you finish your overly fried chops and overly boiled vegetables.”
I get annoyed by this trope. Not by the criticism of Anglo food, although I think that’s a bit exaggerated. I find the positive stereotype of all non-Anglos loving food, being brilliant cooks and having a stash of glorious recipes passed down through the ages, almost as annoying as negative tropes. It reminds me of the Greek girls I grew up with who were expected to be stuck in the kitchen learning how to be brilliant cooks, when they didn’t want to be. Not every non-Anglo has to love food or be good at cooking it.
“You could also acknowledge the degree to which the inclusion of people of other cultures has shaped and changed the majority culture here, rather than merely submitting.”
Okay. But could you acknowledge it first? Telling me what exactly has changed? Besides the food I mean?
I find the positive stereotype of all non-Anglos loving food, being brilliant cooks and having a stash of glorious recipes passed down through the ages, almost as annoying as negative tropes. It reminds me of the Greek girls I grew up with who were expected to be stuck in the kitchen learning how to be brilliant cooks, when they didn’t want to be. Not every non-Anglo has to love food or be good at cooking it.”
Like yeah. Multicultural discourse is replete with stereotypes surrounding food.
Elsewhere: Jeff Sparrow.
Fine that trope’s a laugh – but one which is mostly funny because its true.
Su, I agree – and I dont think anyone *can* divest themselves of their culture. But 2nd and 3rd gen in migrant families normally do acculturate. Sometimes in hybrid ways, but nonetheless.
Thats why I think this debate is misguided: multiculturalism is primarily for those first gen that simply can’t. Its a welcome mat, that actually *helps* people adjust rather than discourage it. Thats why its such a great – and completely successful – policy.
And yes: it does sometimes change the host culture over time, in small ways – but usually for the better, in my opinion.
Pointing to one or two Jihadis and saying “look!” is assinine as pointing to the existence of criminals and saying “the law doesnt work, abolish it!”.
Some people dont follow the rules – that hardly makes the rules a failure.
@89 “Some people dont follow the rules – that hardly makes the rules a failure”
. . . an interesting public policy debate. Define “some” and how “important” the rules are. As an example – bike helmet laws. Rottnest Island WA – thousands of bike riders without helmets and the cops do nothing. Makes a mockery of the law.
Two fo the charachteristics of good public policy are that the policy is supported by the voters and it is enforcable.
Well, yairs,
Even in the bad old days of assimilationism there was no expectation that everyone had to eat bubble and squeak and spotted dick.
Multiculturalism goes far beyond gushing over your next door neighbour’s tira misu.
But the question is, how far?
In reality what concessions have been made in the name of multiculturalism? When you tot them up, there is precious little.
Multiculturalism has exerted no significant juridico-legal changes. Beyond suggesting and pleading for a more welcoming and accepting set of behaviours from the Anglo mainstream, multiculturalism has asked for nothing.
Multiculturalism is simply a label that covers slow-motion assimilationism. Australia’s cultural institutions envelop and digest newcomers. Laws don’t change, religious practices hardly change, social customs evolve and are elaborated. A new flavour is joins the already rich mix.
Both pro-multiculturalism romantics and anti-multiculturalism panic merchants (both well-represented in this thread) who try to argue otherwise don’t know what they are talking about.
“Multiculturalism is simply a label that covers slow-motion assimilationism.”
My point exactly, above. Its a transgenerational policy, and one that works well. Where’s the problem, again?
The problem is that we apparently have quite a few fearful, resentful people with a searing sense of entitlement in this country who need someone to blame other than themselves.
“In reality what concessions have been made in the name of multiculturalism?.”
Well, ok: nowadays you get essential govt info in 7 or more languages upon request. Thats a GOOD thing – again, for the 1st generation migrants who arent good in English. It HELPS them understand the laws, their rights and obligations.
Again, the 2nd and 3rd gen dont need it.
There’s a mulitcultural broadcaster – which a lot of folks watch, and is now funded on a mostly commercial basis.
And YES, you can decent grub now too – and if you wanna know how dull it was before, go to the UK and Ireland and avoid the nouveau.
(I mean srsly: only a culture which is essentially more interested in getting on the piss later would raise the pie to its elevated status: its just a stomach liner for a night on the hops.)
As for the gender angles, oh please: aside from ‘returned hunter sears flesh @ BBQ’ model, the first Anglo blokes ever heard of the idea of anyone but women doing the cooking was from Mediterranean cultures.
“Two fo the charachteristics of good public policy are that the policy is supported by the voters and it is enforcable.”
True Razor. And multiculturalism passes both tests.
DI [no relation] upthread, sorry this is discordant in the middle of a very interesting discussion…but I wanted to say that not only is there a 100 year old mosque in Adelaide city, but the oldest mosque in Australia is in Marree, SA, on the Oodnadatta track. [which used to be called Hergott Springs, until everything German became not okay].
Also on the Oodnadatta track is Finniss Springs station where Aborginal people claim to be descendants of William the Conqueror. That Station has a fascinating history: http://www.aicomos.com/2010-outback-and-beyond/program/breakout-abstracts/finniss-springs-%E2%80%93-a-unique-story-of-remote-sa-pastoral-station-and-mission-life-%E2%80%93-1922-1960/
That article mentions John Warren who was a Liberal Party [?? I think] MLC in the late 1800′s – I think he also introduced a bill on woman’s suffrage, which failed.
Helen, I’m one who’s unashamedly quite fond of the mythology of the Australian outback. Not everyone who romanticises the desert is a redneck. Most people who actually go there understand why it resonates so much for them. But hey, I’m also unashamedly proud of being a suburbanite who’s quite fond of the symbolism of the southern cross. I’m not going to give up on those things just because a few idjits have attempted to corrupt or subvert their meanings.
I’m not sure what some sort of putatively pure pluralism or multiculturalism would look like…
I was not suggesting we should have this pure pluralism, rather gesturing towards the limits of the multiculturalism under discussion in the speech. This is what it is not. Therefore what is it? To whom is this speech addressed? What is it promoting? And what does it achieve? The nonsense of multiculturalist discourse becomes apparent whenever a practice offends the core values of the dominant group. Like the burqa debate recently. I think I decided this speech was a comfort narrative directed at the majority which works to allay fears of the other, which is what the O’Grady book was about too, in my view. I was watching a very interesting doco on SBS recently regarding the early post ww2 arrivals. One particular group were called the “beautiful Balts”. They were particularly good looking, white, blonde, etc, and were chosen to allay the fears of the populace who had become terrified by the first lot of dark and small black shrouded peasant arrivals. Did anyone see it? Same thing. Comfort narrative.
Katz. About the beautiful balts – well?
Well, what?
Never mind.
“allay the fears of the populace who had become terrified by the first lot of dark and small black shrouded peasant arrivals”
Good grief. We’ve just had people up thread telling us how all these people from diverse countries were here all along – why would the first arrivals of some migrants after WW11 terrify anyone?
You know Russell, it is possible that the diversity was always here AND that people were frightened by sight of migrants from Southern Europe alighting on Australian shores after the war.
http://www.sbs.com.au/immigrationnation/
Casey, it’s possible they were concerned, about things like jobs, but terrified? by the appearance of Italians?
We’re a country of many stories – my parents were practically waiting on the wharf to get someone to help look after us kids, the native-born hadn’t proved satisfactory.
Look at the link. Watch the series.
Not while I’m at work.
When you get home then. Episode Two. About 11 minutes in. Very interesting.
Oh, I get it.
Re the beautiful Balts.
Certainly the Immigration Dept under Calwell intended the BBs to be the thin edge of the wedge for the swarthy types to follow.
This sleazy spin-meistering was the opposite of multiculturalism. The BBs were supposed to make Anglo wood ducks think that the reffos to come were Just Like Us.
True, of course, in the broad sense, not not in the nasty xenophobic particulars that counted at the time and apparently count again in 2011 Australia.
Structurally, in the late 40s, early 50s, Australia needed ready hands. The baby boomers were still in their cradles and the Depression and war had deskilled millions of Australian adults.
This situation continued to pertain in the late 1970s. By then, Europe had grown prosperous, stemming the flow of migrants. The only other sources were non-white. For Australia at the end of the 1970s it was a case of either putting out the welcome mat for non-whites, or allowing Australia to become a larger, but equally moribund version of the Fawkland Islands.
Thus multiculturalism was structurally important for the viability of the Australian economy, as it still is today. Australia cannot afford to discourage immigrants if we wish to live in a dynamic economy.
I wish federal Labor would recruit Peter Beattie. He is just about the only Laborite I can think of who has the understanding and capacity to deal with multiculturalism dog-whistling and fear-mongering.
It is worth remembering that he presided over the Queensland state parliament after One Nation won 11 of 89 seats and close to a quarter of the primary vote in 1998, and managed to spike their guns and show them up as a rabble in a short time.
It may have helped that he grew up in an area with large Chinese and Melanesian populations that were ‘purged’ in the early 20th century. Then from about the 1920s had a sizeable influx of Italians and Albanian Muslims, amongst others. And elected the one long-lasting One Nation member. Whose surname was Chinese.
My recollection (and it has a regional flavour, things may have played out differently in Melbourne,is that in a relatively short space of time the people deemed less than white were suddenly admitted to the ranks of whiteness when migration from Asia and particularly Vietnam took off. The schoolyard talk no longer included calling people wogs, and those once maligned as such could join the general murmuring about “boat people”, or make joking allusion to that exotic “Suzy Wong.”
Su, down here in Melb, I recall our Italian butcher railing at the tiny, black-pajamad Vietnamese who suddenly turned up in the neighbourhood. “Too many ousiders!” he exclaimed.
BTW, whatever happened to those black pajamas? You never see them nowadays.
Perhaps Calwell should have just picked Italians, rather than that devious Balt strategy …. good looking Italians. My sister-in-law’s short, dark father came out from Italy and went to work on a farm – and promptly married the local, native-born schoolteacher. As my grandfather used to say “Oh those Italians – only good in the opera or good in bed”.
Or was that what frightened the populace?
Apart from jobs, there was a huge housing shortage after the war – probably another reason for people not wanting migrants. Look what happened to “a big Australia”!
I’m sorry. I only saw this now Pav. But really really? Well. Okay. Imma read it again. At the end of the year though. You know how it is.
Lefty E: “As for the gender angles, oh please: aside from ‘returned hunter sears flesh @ BBQ’ model, the first Anglo blokes ever heard of the idea of anyone but women doing the cooking was from Mediterranean cultures.”
Oh well, that just quashes the “gender angle” entirely doesn’t it? Yes, it seems it’s okay for men to cook in some cultures, but what about the women? Is it also okay for them to be something other than the cook and the mother and the housecleaner?
A few weeks ago a bloke of Mediterranean got out of his car, crossed the road to where I was working simply to tell me that, “a woman shouldn’t be doing that kind of work”. I’m not saying that that form of sexism is any more toxic than the versions practiced by anglo cultures, it’s just that it is a hell of a lot more blatant and arrogant.
Well, here in Germany, The Chancellor has proclaimed that multiculturalism is a failure. In Western Europe generally (and don’t even ask about Eastern Europe — although to be fair, hardly anyone is migrating to Eastern European countries atm.) multiculturalism is in retreat: Sarkozy was at the forefront, as he got his bones in the Parisian Burbs riots and hasn’t looked back since… Those sophisticated Europeans have had enough of Multi-kulti.
If I remember correctly, the term multiculturalism comes from Switzerland, a country where there are 4 official languages, German, French, Italian and Latin-Romanesque. You have public signs generally in 3 languages, increasingly in English as well, you can travel from a predominantly German speaking city Luzern to a predominantly French speaking city like Bern in a bit more than half an hour and you don’t cross borders or pass through the usual puffer zones that exist between countries over here. Switzerland has a very right wing government, in which the majority party used a political ad in the last election of a herd of white sheep standing around, while one white sheep kicked a black sheep over the border!
making [Switzerland] secure
The message was: all the black people/ foreigners (in particular ex-Yugoslavians) in Switzerland are criminals. The Swiss people are generally (and the German Swiss people in particular) are very conservative in their views. In Appenzell, for example, women have only been able to vote since ten or twenty years.
Anyway, Switzerland has a multicultural society, but all the cultures share important things significantly Christian values. Also, Switzerland is created as an alliance, so that there is a strong purpose for the joining of these different groups — the cultural differences were familiar and not as important as the security of joining together.
So, what can we learn from this single perspective on a multicultural society? As some of you have alluded to above, culture is not normative in the sense of a static set of rules, by which people live by. A simple definition of culture is simply the traditions of a group of people — their history. Culture is received wisdom about how to live and it’s not life itself (theological, etc.). Australia is a good example of that. What makes multiculturalism/ society work is a reason to live together. (Multiculturalism can also be used to describe sub-cultures and the like as well.) Cultural conservatism whether on the dominant pr minority side will cause division and conflict if it stops people from doing things together.
PS: Culture is always generalising. And generalising while necessary for abstraction and understanding is too easy to get wrong.
“In Appenzell, for example, women have only been able to vote since ten or twenty years.”
O/T sorry, but are you from Switzerland Joe, or have caught some grammatical virus while staying? No offence intended, it’s just that that’s SUCH a Bavarian/Swiss-German sounding sentence.
FB, I cant be bothered defending an ace jibe at (my own) Anglo-Celt culture from people determined to humorlessly detour from the central issue at hand; viz, our appalling heritage cuisine.
Now, if anyone wants to come out in the open and defend mint jelly, that’s a different matter. Then its game on.
omg!!! I just love it when anglo sexism is posited as preferable to, what was the assignation you used? Mediterranean was it? LOL.
What exactly do you mean? do you mean Egyptian? Greek? Italian? There are many cultures bounded by the Mediterranean. But feel free to conflate us all into ‘mediterranean’ if that suits you.
You see what I mean by the fallacy that is multiculturalism?
The ethnic Other is only integrated provisionally. It is always provisional. When something objectionable becomes apparent, one can always become, not Australian, but Mediterranean, for instance. But always other. In but out.
I suppose I could give you examples of “anglo” ‘sexism’ but bullshit to that. Here’s something for free. Sexism is sexism. Doesn’t matter what cultural flavour it comes in.
FDB–
Sorry, Language is screwin’ wid me.
They Swiss are budgie killers!
It was the keyboard. Meanwhile…
Casey your suggestion about multiculturalism being a “comfort narrative” is interesting. Did you know that the leading lady in the movie version of TAWM (she played the character of ‘Kay’), an Irish-born immigrant to Australia, went on to become one of the founding directors of SBS television? Multiculturalist discourse springs from art into life into art…
Meanwhile @ 76 PC…
…I’m not familiar with much of Sneja Gunew’s work, but I found her critique of constructed ‘Australian’ identity to be compelling. If memory serves, Gunew posits that ‘Australian’ identity is a curious thing indeed — constructed as both non-Indigenous, yet also non-immigrant!
The ideas of ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ are effectively autocultural, autodidactic and autonational —- an hermaphrodite national identity, created in a culturally sterile space — because the colonisers took no cues from the Indigenous cultures, yet the 19th century Australian nationalists sought also to reject their British/European ‘old world’ heritage in this “new” country.
Although multiculturalists would seek to portray Australia nation as “liberal and pluralist” (look at all this yummy FOOD!), in practice, Australia’s status as a nation of immigrants continues to overwhelm the Indigenous cultures, while the persistent trope that immigrants must largely abandon their cultural heritage in order to become a ‘real Australian’ limits the opportunities for cultural enrichment that immigration offers.
So the logic of Australian national discourse dictates that we must all cultivate an ‘Australian’ identity which is at once non-Indigenous and non-immigrant…It seems to me that such a discourse impoverishes the identity and literature of all who live on this continent.
And, by implication, a rich, vibrant national culture of the future will need to become some kind of hybrid of the Indigenous and the immigrant.
Well Casey, that’s true, but name-calling is not a very deep understanding of multiculturalism. I think telling someone they can’t do something, which they obviously can (because they’re doing it) is an interesting example.
Is it a multicultural workplace if like half the workplace watches AFL and the other half rugby league?
This way leads to the, should crime reports be able to include racial categories: like, the criminal is of AFL appearance…
Finally, thank heavens my grandparents’ traditional recipes did not make it into the multicultural mangle — anyone for seconds on the pickled calf’s head??
Oh yes.
I may have been romanticising TAWM since childhood. But I honestly don’t think so.
Fair enough Lefty E, I thought you were countering Fine’s point relating to the ethnic food trope and the way young women may have preferred to shun the brilliant cook thing, I thought it was a good point and I wanted to reinforce it, humourless or not.
Casey, my father was North African Jew, educated in Italy, I know what and where the Mediterranean is. I used anglo because I thought it made sense in the context of what Fine had said earlier, on reflection I was obviously wrong. The man I encountered was Italian. And I do think sexism in Mediterranean cultures is more blatant, and I don’t much care if you disagree with me on that.
Oh, and I don’t need a lecture on othering, really.
I agree, and that’s why I liked Chris Bowen’s speech. I will say this for embracing multiculturalism with all its flaws: it sets its face against said persistent trope.
I didn’t say Sneja was wrong, only a tad, erm, black and white: her position was unassailable because she was always determined and always able to find a wholly negative interpretation that demonised those who were neither immigrant nor indigenous.
What are your sources here, Mercurius? There’s a great deal been written on the construction of Australian national identity; I’m curious about where you’re getting this stuff from. History? (And if so, which historians?) Literature?
@97 – for sure, Casey, but I’m a little confused about where your critique leads…
Yes, we can talk about the realm of representation.
But from the point of view of the state (and I’m not endorsing, but describing) social peace is a good.
Hence multiculturalism as state policy basically seeks social peace along the grain through which it’s possible to work – ie shifting attitudes among the dominant culture. Given that people have said attitudes (many of which are expressed in both negative and positive day to day interactions), it’s hard for me to see how the state – qua state – can do otherwise.
My contrast, here, is with what occurs in the absence of some sort of state discourse/policy/action – which is not, I don’t think, by any means some sort of pluralistic good, at the everyday social level of interaction, or in terms of structural imbalances in power.
There are actually pretty severe limits to what work in the world speeches by Ministers can do, and broadly speaking, I think this one:
(a) is welcome and on the right track given what’s gone before;
(b) leaves open some discursive space for people to lever/take it further.
My bigger point is that there *are* dominant cultures, and I am just not sure what – in practice – positing an alternative universe in which the dominant culture is more influenced by a multitude of subordinate cultures, would actually look like. Or how we would have gotten there (given previous points about state and social formations).
We accord too much power to do and change things to both representations and the state sometimes, I think.
Errm, PC, my reading on this is a bit scattergun — can’t honestly say whether I got that from ‘sources’ or whether they were just some thoughts of my own, catalysed by the ‘sources’ I’d been reading, which could be broadly categorised as ‘literary historians’ or ‘historians of literature’ such as (in no particular order)…
…Nick Mansfield, Sneja Gunew, Rex Ingamells, Vance Palmer, Robert Young, Ismail Talib…
…and a theoretical approach informed by Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith and (if “informed” is the right word) Homi Bhabha (most of Bhabha goes over my head!)…
…Nick Mansfield examined two visions of ‘Australia’ separately advanced by Vance Palmer and Rex Ingamells who, despite their very different visions, nevertheless held in common the assumption that there was a true Australian ‘essence’ out there, waiting to be discovered, if writers could but find the appropriate language. Neither appeared reflectively aware of the possibility that they were inventing, through literature, the very thing they purported to discover. Reification of the bush myths, ‘mateship’, and so on…
But, really, this isn’t my specialty.
Mercurius, all I’ve read of Vance Palmer is the Golconda trilogy, but, just quietly, I think Nick Mansfield is probably off beam here. Palmer seems to me to have quite a reflective view of the whole bush/mateship thing, and I don’t see it as being reified at all. Maybe I’m just being po/mo and all in my reading, but I’m not even sure Palmer was in search of some Australian ‘essence’…
Ps – never heard of Rex Ingamells.
I’d return to the question I sorta kinda posed at 127 – to what degree does commentary on largely forgotten or always unknown representations of Australian-ness (if indeed they are actually so), or indeed the contested but largely if not overwhelmingly unread texts themselves, have much to do with actually existing social attitudes today?
“Now, if anyone wants to come out in the open and defend mint jelly, that’s a different matter. Then its game on.”
*stands proudly over battlements to faint strains of God Save The Queen*
*sets chin squarely, narrows eyes into sunset*
Is mint jelly an eastern states thing? We had Mint sauce … on the peas.
Kim – Ingamells was an SA poet who founded the Jindyworrobaks during the Thirties. More here if you are interested.
Thanks, TFA. The Jindyworrobaks, hey?
I like mint jelly, as long as it is accompanied by roast lamb. But I wouldn’t defend it. Actually I think only a brave but foolish man would attack it. The thing about jelly is that it can duck and weave.
Kim, I think it’s important because these constructions of ‘Australianness’ are what a surprising amount of policy, consciously or not, comes out of. Ask John Howard how important he considers the work of Australian historian Charles Bean, the man who more or less invented the so-called ‘ANZAC myth’, to be. Much policy of the years 1996-2007 (in, among other things, education, arts and, I bet, defence) can be traced back via Howard to what Bean thought Australianness was, though I admit it’s often a long and winding road. I offer it as only the most obvious example. But I certainly don’t think you can disregard the part that cultural and other history has played in shaping people’s sense of national identity. This stuff trickles down, mainly via the education system.
Rex Ingamells was a leading member of a group of mid-20thC Australian poets who called themselves the Jindyworobaks and whose mission (I’m remembering off the top of my head here) was to somehow raise the authenticity bar in Australian poetry by conscious use and imitation of Aboriginal imagery, stories and forms. So he is directly germane, and Merc citing him as a source makes it much easier for me to see where he’s coming from. Obviously the Jindyworobaks pre-dated the era when they’d get immediately slammed for appropriation. Which is, incidentally, what paralyses (rightly in my view) the people Mercurius characterises as stuck between immigrant status and indigenous ditto. The poet Les Murray, in my unfashionable view the greatest poet this country has ever produced, and with daylight between him and whoever comes second, tried in some of his earlier verse to use line lengths, rhythms and imagery derived from Aboriginal song and got crucified for it.
Grapple, grapple.
Sorry, TFA, comments crossed. I should have cut to the Wiki chase and saved myself ten minutes!
No probs PC. Was surprised you hadn’t pounced on that one & figured you weren’t around.
At that school in Moonee Ponds there was this guy of Italian descent who went back to Italy for 6 months. He was a “wog boy” and an Italian, and he left late in 1982, when Italians were going ballistic with joy at their World Cup victory.
When he came back I asked him what Italy was like and although he enjoyed it he said it was weird. “There were no wogs, they were all like skips.” That comment really stayed with me.
Really profound observation about all sorts of things if you think about it for a while.
How much of the “Australian Identity” we kind of demand people take on is really just a vague loyalty to Western English speaking culture?
Heh @ FDB.
In fact make that a double heh – and (dont try to stop me here) I’m getting the good China out.
“Actually I think only a brave but foolish man would attack it.”
à votre service, comme toujours, Mme Pav.
Pavlov’s Cat:
To use an American example, American blacks had to wait several decades for the Cosby Show because black-orientated shows were seen as too risky to air in the post civil rights movement-era.
I’ve seen a number of black actors and writers from the 1950s to the 1970s bemoan how the unsavory aspects of Amos and Andy led to the absence of the black family sitcom for three decades.
It shouldn’t be taboo for a white writer or poet to use black or brown characters and culture in their stories or verse.
Good Times was hugely successful a decade before The Cosby Show, OB – spun-off from Maude and running for 5 years. The Jeffersons spun off from All In The Family and ran for 10 years until 1985. What was truly new about The Cosby Show was it being a sitcom about a black middle-class family rather than a working class family.
Your larger point about writers of one ethnicity writing about characters from another ethnicity with which they are familiar due to shared/overlapping cultures stands, however. It certainly should be able to be done, and sometimes done very well, so long as sensitivity regarding the line between appreciation and appropriation is exercised.
@135 Yep, cheers PC…it’s funny but on a first pass when I read your comment describing the Jindyworobacks as ‘poets’ for some reason I saw the word ‘posers’ instead!
It seems to me that the blind-spot of the Jindyworabaks was that, although the Indigenous cultures pre-dated modern ‘Australia’ by millennia, they anachronistically sought to embed those ancient forms within the upstart colonial culture. That may sound like a long-winded way of saying ‘appropriation’, but I think it was even deeper than that…
…because what was the motive for appropriating Indigenous culture? I believe the unconscious anxiety driving all this was the ‘autocultural, autodidactic and autonational’ nature of Australian identity. The project of those 19th century nationalists and earlier 20th c. writers was one of hope to create a “new world” because many genuinely believed there was a great big “nothing” here…the “nothingness” existed however in their own heads…having jettisoned both the past of their own ancestors and the past of the Indigenous ancestors…and it’s almost like they wanted to fill it with words, to stifle that emptiness…
Meanwhile, Vance Palmer’s vision encompassed the masculinist ‘bush myths’ of A.B. Paterson and Henry Lawson -— ideas which were crystallising even as the day-to-day lives of Australians grew increasingly urbanised.
So much of the identity depended on consciously fashioning the inauthentic…white poets appropriating Aboriginal metre — or city folk romanticising the bushmen. When the modern nation got started on the false premise of terra nullius, it’s not difficult to see how the unresolved or unacknowledged contradictions and conflicts might, over decades and centuries, deform the myth-complex of ‘Australian identity’…
…A concrete, and stark, example of auto-authentication is provided by the Sydney academic David Brooks, in the historical record of the British arrival in ‘Australia’ in 1788. That very pedestrian claim overlooks the fact that ‘Australia’ the nation did not exist in 1788. ‘Australia’ was invented long after the arrival of the colonists. Indeed, the name for the continent was vigourously promoted by explorer Matthew Flinders and only came into everyday usage following his circumnavigation. Prior to that the British referred to it as ‘New Holland’ or ‘Terra Australis’. Therefore the very notion that ‘the British arrived in Australia in 1788’ presupposes the existence of ‘Australia’ as a cultural artefact, which is retrospectively written into history and literature. Or, as I say – ‘autocultural, autodidactic and autonational’.
….and that really is all I’ve got on this…I will readily admit to being a dilettante in this area!
Until Federation each colony’s most important relationship was with England, not with each other. Not only did ‘Australia’ not exist in any meaningful sense in 1788, it didn’t exist as a geopolitical entity until 1901.
And to get back on topic (see what I did there?), one of the most powerful driving forces behind Federation was racism. There’s a cartoon from the 1880s of five girls, labelled Vic, NSW, SA and so on, in white 1880s dresses and hairdos, standing on a platformy thing shaped like Australia with realistic cliffs at the edges and realistic sea at the bottom of the cliffs. The girls are clustered round a huge, disembodied, leering, caricatured Asiatic head with pigtail and so on, on the ground, and ‘NSW’ is holding a crowbar and saying to the others ‘Now girls, if we all push together we’ll be able to get rid of the beastly thing.’
As deflating as it may be to an Australian’s sense of self esteem, at the time of the establishment of Australia’s cultural institutions, masculinist nationalism was the only alternative to Empire loyalism or a sectarian vision based on Irish Catholicism. Manning Clark understood this well when he concluded that the struggle for Australian identity pitted Protestantism, Catholicism and Enlightenment thought against each other.
As Clark concluded, by the end of WWI these cultural paradigms had all died of exhaustion and Australia became, in Clark’s words, the first society that believed in nothing.
It is therefore not surprising that jejune movements like the Jindyworobaks should gutter into fitful life and disappear without discernible trace.
A.D. Hope ridiculed the Jindyworobaks. He was drawn intellectually and emotionally to cosmopolitan sensibilities. Yet Hope too recognised the futility of any quest to implant his sensibility into Australian cultural consciousness:
All that remains is fatalism. Manning Clark noticed that. Perhaps fatalism is the overriding feature of Australian culture. It’s a state of mind that few people feel comfortable to admitting to. And like the monotheist’s god, fatalism forbids shrines to any other deities, especially hope.
Dunno about mint jelly but I was really big on bubble and squeak.
Right Katz — so do you see multiculturalism as another ‘jejune movement’ destined to ‘disappear without discernible trace’ …just another ‘blind wind sowing the sand with sand’?
… is Casey onto something with the idea of multiculturalism being little more than a ‘comfort narrative’ for the dominant ideologies? …
…or, do you see it more, as I do, as a way out of the contradictions, the effacements and the erasures that British-Australian identity is based upon? I live in hope that we can do better than believing in nothing, or fatalism, though I concede that the reactions against multiculturalism show how strongly some Australians do wish to cling to those erasures, and how obstinately the tabula rasa of terra nullius endures in the Australian mind…
And PC…I’d still rate A.D Hope ahead of daylight, up against Les Murray in first place!
Merc, to the extent that multiculturalism is “slow motion assimilationism” then yes it will disappear without a trace.
To the extent that this appears to be the intention of official multiculturalism, the policy isn’t jejune but rather another example of intelligent concession by social and economic elites.
Multiculturalism has been around for millemia, it predates nation states, it predates western democracies and it certainly predates both the invention of “Australia” and colonisation of this continent by the British.
For many of us multiculturalism/ multiethnicities are part of our families and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Interesting that this entire debate on this page is being done via an imported/ migrant language (English). I don’t see to many nay sayers to multiculturalism learning the local language(s) of their area.
The same naysayers are also happy using non-Australian communications technology such as telephones and the net. They certainly are not purists when it comes to what is Australian.
there’s been some commentry around how ‘ethnic’ food experiences enrich us… the laksa/ curry/ falafel argument. But I challenge us to examine just how much of our food is alien, potatoes, rice, wheat, bananas, apples, citrus, tomatoes , sugar cane, beef lamb, pork, chicken etc etc Australia would not only be metaphorically poorer without multicultural food but a toatal basketcase without out picking and choosing to import cultural practices (cultivating all that food is also a cultural practice).
OK, so let’s try and put some flesh on these bones (and kinda getting back to the point that Casey was making up-thread):
Multiculturalism is often described in terms of its qualities, rich, diverse, tolerant, etc. How could one measure how multicultural a community is?
And to maybe get people thinking, what are some examples of some very mono-cultural societies and how would you describe these societies qualitatively?
Secondary question: Is globalism an example of multiculturalism? It’s fascinating to look backwards at historical examples of racism, but where is multiculturalism taking us? What will Australia be like in 30 years time?
Harleymc’s asking a very interesting question as well: How does technology (and economic wealth) relate to culture? There seems to be a strong correlation between high-tech communities and multiculturalism , you don’t hear too much talk about multiculturalism in PNG, for example? Thoughts?
Dear Mr Bollard, the Tea Partiers are a deluded bunch of people who, it’s been found, often do posess some education, but that education has sadly failed to percolate into the cerebral regions, or their suceptibility to silliness is such that it provides no protection against Ayn-Randishness.
The fact that some of them have mobility problems necessitating the use of mobility devices is not the reason to criticise them and this pile-on by the Left and society in general doesn’t reflect well on the non-disabled.
Well said, Helen.
The reason that a certain proportion of people with mobility disorders fall for the FUD line of the Tea Party is because society already treats them like shit, so when they hear that it might get worse, they get agitated. If society generally treated them less like shit, they’d feel secure enough to laugh at the Tea Party like we do.
Mint jelly is OK, but I prefer mint sauce with my roast lamb.
On the subject of anglo cooking, I remember when I was a kid having a roast at my grandmother’s place. The only way you could tell the baked vegetables apart was by shape – they were all a deep brown, and dripping with dripping. The boiled ones (even the peas) usually looked like overcooked cabbage.
Maybe there’s a direct correlation between culinary atrocities and a society based on the rule of law.
My favourite cuisines are French and Chinese. Both cultures failed to create a rule of law that respected the rights of the accused for centuries after the British created theirs.
Great speech. Means nothing, until the goernment actually does something about the mess we currently have. I will not hold my breath. Morrison is an idiot who should keep his mouth shut. Go0d help us all if he is ever responsible for the department. Bowen is an idiot who sent the kid back and is responsible for the department. God help us all. This government couldn’t make a decison without looking at polls and the Western Sydney Polls apparently are of the most important when it comes to immigration/refugees. The opposition has nothing and helps makes this government as bad as it is.
Actually tribalism and the wantok system are a very significant challenge to the ethical governance in PNG which is one of the most multicultural nations per square km on the planet.
Bigmen and Wantoks: Social Capital and Group Behaviour in Papua New Guinea
http://ideas.repec.org/p/qeh/qehwps/qehwps27.html
Multiculturaliam as a western political concept appears to have have originated more or less simultaneously in both Canada and Australia during the 1970′s as the objective situation in each country was different I’ll leave it up to any Canadians to comment on the land of the maple leaf.
If we think back to that time in Australia, we had only just emerged from the White Australia policy and Aborigines were only newly recognised as citizens.
There had been some limited ethnic diversity within white Australia (especially post WW II) but we also have a history of violent land acquisitions, forced assimilation, pogroms against the Chinese and Pacific Islander communities. There was also the history of tensions along the Catholic/ Protestant, Irish nationalist/ british empire fault lines, and curfews for Murris in Brisbane. In the atmosphere /ideology of populate or perish we needed a new strategy, as stealing orphans from Britain wasn’t going to solve our immigration needs.
It has taken 1 generation for that to all seem like ancient history, communal violence has been relatively isolated, although we can probably do better on that front. I supect one of the significant policies that has yielded such a relatively good set of outcomes has been antidiscrimination legislation, we didn’t go for quotas, we ended up with merit based approaches to hiring & promotion. From this we have all ended up in mixed/ multicultural workplaces. It’s hard to be fearful of someone when you know them well.
Ona more personal note it’s only taken one generation for our anglo-scots family to change dramatically. Mum and Dad grew up in the era of White Australia and the second language taught at school was French. Now our extended family also includes Hungarians and Chinese and family get togethers are polyglot. Similar changes are occurring in my friends’ families. I’m not sure that any amount of media beat-ups by xenophobes can reverse demographic trends.
I also don’t think it’s hurt too much being a relatively secular society.
From my perspective, sport, and particularly team sport, crosses all cultural boundaries.
And Australia being so sport orientated, actually nurtures respect for other folk, regardless of their race or religion.
In my sons football club (rugby league) i see almost all the races on earth represented,including Indian, Asian,Aboriginal, Maori, European , Even PNG.
None , to my knowledge , are ” full-blood” anything. Just bits and pieces of everything.
Being the poorest club in town may have something to do with it.
They have a respect for each other that will last for life.
They defend their team mates(and families) honour against racist abuse ( yet some of the crudest, most racist comments and jokes are freely expressed between them)
Sport ,IMHO, gets shot down too often, I see far more positives than negatives.
Joe and harleymc, The problem as I see it is that multiculturalism has been foisted on Australians without regard to smoothing integration.
A bit of communication with the affected communities as to the benefits would not go astray. The problem stems from Governments who view immigration as a cash cow rather then what as Joe@151 said, building a society which is “rich, diverse and tolerant”.
sublime_cowgirl,
yes, I guess you don’t hear much talk about PNG in general.
Tribalism though, doesn’t really fit the definition of multiculturalism, at least as far as the term is used to describe Australian society.
And I’m just guessing here, but tribes are probably very strong atomic groupings, defined along family and geographic lines. They are, I assume, the practical unit of governance in PNG. More like states than sub-cultures.
The multiculturalism that we are talking about is the kind of communities you can find in countries in Australia, North America and Western Europe. It’s a kind of consumer multiculturalism. Australia is in particular an interesting example because we’re so remote from the rest of the world, with no immediate neighbours. Our nearest neighbours, in terms of cultural similarity, are distant, which means it’s hard to compare and hence define our own culture.
Salient Green,
absolutely, the left has been unable to clearly articulate what multiculturalism is, which of course makes it impossible to declare its benefits. Multiculturalism’s “success” is in fact success by the definition of social harmony, or any other metric, independent of multiculturalism as such.
I think, multiculturalism describes something very superficial:
Multiculturalism is “animated by normative sentiments but the nature of those sentiments is concealed from the reader.”[1]
Further, multiculturalism is an example “of [something which is] a totalizing perspective that fails “to differentiate phenomena and practices that occur within modern society.”"[2]
(you shouldn’t quote like this, but this is a discussion.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas#Habermas_versus_Postmodernists
“I’m not sure that any amount of media beat-ups by xenophobes can reverse demographic trends.”
I wouldn’t be too sure. Ethnic tolerance is only as permanent as any other political fad. Multiculturalism and anti-racism are tenets which needs to be consistently and strongly promoted.
The slide always slips downwards in my experience.
Joe I think it is useful to start by looking at the issue at an individual level. You might define a “mono-cultural person” who spends most of their non-working time with people from from the same sub-culture. Think of a person of Greek descent who spends their time mixing with fellow Greeks, going to a Greek Orthodox church and socializing in the Greek club.
By contrast, you might define a multi-cultural person as someone who spends their time in a mix of subcultures. Think of a second generation Greek who has moved away from a Greek suburb, and spends some of his time in the Greek sub-culture and some of his time mixing with non-Greek friends from the suburb he moved to.
Going one step further, you might define a pure mono-subculture as one whose members are all mono-cultural individuals. By contrast, a pure multi subculture would be made up entirely of multi cultural individuals.
So a multi-cultural society might range between two extremes. A society made up from a mix of pure mono subcultures and a society made up from a mix of pure multi subcultures. Neither extreme is desirable.
The first extreme can slip easily into a country where the subcultures live in particular places, discourage the marrying of people from other subcultures and are generally suspicious if not outrightly hostile. It is this type of multi-culturism that the European leaders appear to be complaining about.
The second extreme can morph into a homogenized society because no-one is committed enough to any sub-culture to keep the subculture healthy and active.
For a healthy society we need something between these extremes. A society made up of people who are mainly people who are multicultural to at least some extent with enough people with the dedication to keep the organizations that support their primary sub-culture healthy.
The second extreme
I find it strange that so many people who know little or nothing about my religion think they can judge whether or not I and the 65% or so of Muslims in Australia who were born here can integrate. I’m an Aussie Muslim (Anglo-Celtic descent) married to an Aussie Muslim (Malay descent) with five grown-up Aussie Muslim children who, when asked how they identify themselves, say “Australian.” One of them is married to a Kiwi-born South African; another is married to an Afghan, both Aussie citizens.
So it’s an issue if some of our women prefer to use the swimming pools without men present? My wife is a member of a gym which is for women only – one of an increasing number of such facilities – and the vast majority of women attending are non Muslim. They just like exercising without any male gaze on them. Incidentally, when I was a kid in the wheatbelt the few swimming pools we had were closed to our indigenous fellow-countrymen. Not just for a couple of hours here and there but permanently. Not many of the kind of people who object to multiculturalism were heard calling for this exclusion to end. We tend to be choosey about what exclusions we like and what exclusions we dislike, don’t we?
Rais,
I know you’re not directly responding what I wrote above, but I’d be interested to know why you decided to become a Muslim? The issues you specifically mention don’t require that you be religious.
John D,
that’s a really nice analogy! It also sounds to me like you’re describing a feeling of belonging and place.
It’s interesting that multiculturalism as a process of belonging to multiple cultures is a process of discriminating, which makes sense because it’s a process of identification.