From the Chk Chk Boom girl to the anti-Indian ratbags in Melbourne, Australians are racist. I’ve come to this conclusion not because I’ve got three university degrees but because I’ve spent the past four decades being asked if I’m a curry-muncher.
Not in a rude or insulting or abusive way, well, generally not. But in that genial, good-natured, piss-takey Australian way.
Which is still racist, and which explains why so many foreigners – to use a popular and racist Australian term for non-Australians – regard us as such.
Often I get the inquiry in an obviously non-prejudicial way from a genial sub-continental cabbie who’ll kick things off with a “So where are you from?” inquiry, hoping the answer will be something like Mumbai or Chennai, rather than the decidedly less exotic Mitchell Park.
I also get it when I meet new people socially. Usually it’s innocent but on one occasion it came with a threat of violence, which was kind of my fault.
About 10 years ago, as the result of a drunken bet, I did a job-swap with a NSW state politician, the National Party member for Murrumbidgee, Adrian Piccoli, who had laughably suggested over beers that being a politician was harder than toiling valiantly in the vineyard of truth as a journalist.
A few dodgy expense claims later I was in Griffith, in the heart of the Riverina, where for the next seven days Piccoli handed me his diary and made me work 14-hour days, doing every school visit, every constituent meeting, every ribbon-cutting event, every inspection of potholes or bent railway track, every speech to the local historical society and Rotary Club.
It was an illuminating exercise which proved without a doubt that journalists work very much harder than politicians.
The only unseemly moment came on the last day of the experiment, a Saturday night Jeans for Jeans Day fundraising dinner at the Yoogali Club, an enormous function centre on the outskirts of town where more than 1000 of Griffith’s hoi polloi gathered to raise money for kids with cancer.
There was a funny moment when one of the prizes from the silent auction – of all things, a framed and signed Cronulla Sharks jersey - was won by a local order of nuns who had taken a vow of silence and stood mutely on stage as they collected their gift.
After the sisters headed back to decorate their convent with league memorabilia, the pagans among us retired to the bar, where a local yobbo, his eyes crossed, smelling of Bundy, spotted Piccoli and started giving him the rounds of the table.
“I’m never voting for you bastards again, you’re a pack of f…ing liars,” he opened, poking Piccoli in the chest.
“You said you’d “never ever” bring in the GST and now I’m paying it, Howard’s a liar and so are you.”
Piccoli just stood there and took it but, inspired by a few Bundys myself, I decided to pipe up.
“Do you know anything about politics mate?” I asked.
“This bloke is a state MP, he’s not even in power, he’s in opposition, and he wasn’t even in Parliament anyway when the federal government brought the GST in.”
Bundyman put down his drink and turned around.
“I wasn’t f…ing talking to you, Chanderpaul Singh,” he said in reference to the West Indian cricketer of Indian ancestry.
“Why don’t you go and pick some more fruit?”
Stupidly I put my Bundy down too and stared at him.
“Let’s go,” Piccoli said, waving the bloke away with an arm as he came towards me, and giving me the world’s sternest lecture on the way back to the car, saying that in my capacity as the fake member for Murrumbidgee it probably wasn’t a good idea to get into actual fights with the constituents.
Bundyman sits on the outer element of the Australian racist spectrum, which has been the subject of much valid debate this past fortnight courtesy of the Chk Chk Boom girl, Sol Trujillo, and the Indian attacks in Melbourne.
The now-famous “fat wog, skinny wog” construction, coined by the Chk Chk Boomer, is predicated on the remarkably casual use of low-level racism in Australia, which has fuelled popular comedies ranging from Kingswood Country to Wogs Out of Work to Fat Pizza.
It’s still racist though.
Trujillo’s claims of racism were also understandable. He’s a smart guy, he’s not even Mexican, but from Wyoming, and coming from the buttoned-down and politically correct US of A it probably stunned and amazed him that, from the get go, he’d be depicted here regardless of his performance as a cross between Pancho Villa and Speedy Gonzalez.
But Sol, poor petal, can of course comfort himself with the $31 million he received for sacking a few thousand Aussies and sending the Telstra share price into the toilet.
The Indian violence is in a different category. I don’t think anyone could or should make light of the violence that has befallen Indian students down south.
There is some confusion about what’s actually going on – the Victorian Police don’t appear to have worked out whether it’s a series of “routine” attacks which are fuelled by theft or random aggression, or a string of race-based attacks whereby white supremacist miscreants are going after Indian kids.
If it is the latter, then it’s a source of shame, and you would hope that the coppers will do everything they can through the creation of a special task force and the deployment of extra police to hunt these racist hooligans down.
And while there can be no doubt that some of the protests in Mumbai, where Rudd has been burnt in effigy, are led by a tiny and militant Hindu rent-a-crowd, I’m sure there’s plenty of Australians of sub-continental descent who regard the Melbourne attacks as the worst example of racism in our country. And it’s a spectrum which starts with nick-names whiteys regard as friendly jokes, such as Paki or curry-muncher, and finds its vilest expression in the racist violence practised by the Bundyman and his brain-dead brethren.
Addressing our casual racism would require a total change in our national psyche.
One thing Australians can’t do very well is insincerity and euphemism.
I don’t think we’re any more or less racist than any other nation on earth, but we’re really bad at pretending we’re not racist.
The Americans have turned euphemistic racism into an art form. On our honeymoon we were struck by how in cities such as Boston and New York, white folks would tell you to avoid “bad neighbourhoods” because there were “certain types of people” which meant it wasn’t safe.
If a Yank landed in Sydney and told any average local they were heading down to Redfern for a bit of a look-see, they’d be told not too because it’s full of Aborigines and white derros who are violent junkies and alcoholics.
Our knockabout honesty might be something we take a perverse pride in, but it probably comes at a cost of making non-Anglos feel uncomfortable. Between Chk Chk Boom, Trujillo, and the Indian students, it’s worth having a bit of a think about.
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