From Stan Grant to Lidia Thorpe to the Voice Referendum. Race relation in Australia has inevitably become the latest hot topic in the last month or so. There are different views, different camps, different takes, all proclaiming that they are the one and only one view that represents how race relations should be tackled. But then, is there actually a one size fits it all, blanket approach to this? Or are we creating a situation that a once good-willed approach to race relationship being twisted and manipulated by others for their own personal and political agenda?
Sometimes I wonder, what actually is race relation?
Growing up in a pretty homogenous Hong Kong Chinese society, race relation is never a huge topic in my tiny little head. The first time I actually met someone with an Indian heritage was when I went to high school. Yes, I have friends with foreign last names at primary school, but they acted and spoke like me, so race, never really crossed my mind. The situation was different when I started secondary school, and started going to French school after normal school. During these years, I started to come into contact with friends with a different heritage and background, some of them may not even speak Cantonese very well. I got along with them very well, being inquisitive and about learning their culture, and watched them play cricket in the fields (though I seemed to have a blind spot with that game as I never really understood and learnt how to play it), and after school went to French school together. For me they are my friends, just that they are not of Chinese descent. Race relation is not really a big topic for me.
I learnt about race related violence and discrimination in history books – how the Europeans colonised different parts of Asia, how the Japanese invaded China and Korea, how the Germans persecuted and killed a lot of Jews, how the Americans had a civil war because of slavery etc., but they were words on the pages of my history books. They were distant records, and they were lessons to learn. They were theoretical.
Life back in Australia opened and changed my view on this subject. I still remembered the first time I spoke to a girl of Indian descent, also came from Hong Kong, and she told me how she endured discrimination from other Hong Kong Chinese growing up. I was shocked, and I was embarrassed about ‘my fellow Hong Kong Chinese’ doing that to others, when they themselves had suffered so much during the Japanese occupation period. Racism and Hong Kong were never terms I would put together in any context before that day. But that day I learnt a lot more about the dark side of this city that I did not know – because I was part of the dominant race in a particular space.
Flashed forward in Australia, despite the lands were invaded by previous generations of Anglo-Saxons at the expense of the Indigenous people, everyone except Anglo-Saxons is the minority. We do acknowledge of the land at meetings, but in fact there are lots of people who do not feel that we need to do the ‘ritual’. To be fair and to be honest with you, despite Australia has a racist history and reputation, modern Australia is not that racist. By this I mean there is still a section of Australia championed by the Historical Racists disguised as the so-called the Conservatives, leading the charge with their White People first political and media campaigns. They apply all kinds of tactics to stay on top of the game because they think because of their skin colour and their historical dominance, they should just stay that way. Staying on top of others disregarding the current environment and the progression of our society is their innate right, and any attempts to change that status quo need to be quelled. They will go offensive with aggression while playing victim at the same time to get what they want. If I said they are not there, I am just burying my head in the sand.
However, at the same time the majority of Australia is not racist. Australia today is a very multi-cultural society, and the new generation of Australians, despite having different skin tones, they speak in similar voice and diction. For them Australians are Australians, not White Australians. And to tell this majority of the population something otherwise, it is just a lie.
For me, to continue to build a better Australia, we need to gradually move out of the Race Entrenchment that limits our world view, or our view of Australia as a country. A country comprise of a collective of Indigenous people and migrants, so we can move forward.
In one of my previous articles, I mentioned that a lady of Indian origin once labelled me as a White Supremacist because I do not agree her Anti-White approach to diversity. For her Diversity is to rid of White People because their racist and colonising history. She would lock out her productions from local Aussies because she wanted to keep it ‘diverse’. For her how White People treated India is not acceptable, but when being questioned about how India treated Pakistan and Punjab historically, she went quiet. For me, this is not going to make Australia or Australian media more ‘diverse’. We are using diversity as an excuse to disadvantage others, whether we perceived them as being disadvantaged or not. Perception and objectivity are two very different things. When diversity became a political tool to as a ‘payback’ to White People, while, in this Indian lady’s case, laying a blind eye to her mother country’s own dark history, how diverse are we? Or are we just playing a different race based game inside a different bottle?
When race is just a base for someone to use it as a tool to advance political agenda, it is just the basest of tactics to be deployed.
I personally think we need the Voice because I have heard personal stories of my Indigenous friends and their families. I personally think we need the Voice because in the last decade, when a government was being run by a bunch of ‘Conservatives’, we witnessed how they defund Indigenous programmes when they have a different voice that did not gel with the government’s propaganda, despite the same bunch of politicians claimed to protect freedom of speech. If the Australian government had consistently been doing the right thing in working with the Indigenous community, we would not need a Voice to consolidate their right in the constitution. It is because of the previous and previous generations of lip services and failings of the Australian governments that we need the Voice, so that the original people of this land will not be washed out. And at the end of the day, the Voice is about giving the Indigenous people a voice on matters related to them, not a power to veto government’s policies and bills. What the Voice gave them, is a voice that is in the constitution, so that if there is another change of government in the future, their voice will not be shut down.
Sometimes when I heard people of other ethnic group complaining about the fictitious conclusion of why giving a special power to the Indigenous group and not all other ethnic groups; or why making one racial group more equal than others; we have to remember that, it is not your land that was being invaded and taken over. Think about the struggle the previous generations of colonies fighter fighting to establish their own states from the hands of their colonisers; think about the lives that were lost to fight against foreign aggressions in the previous two World Wars, and currently in Ukraine. At the end of the day, most of us are migrants, and we came here to share the lands of the original owners, who were taken over by the older generations of colonisers. Do we need to raise a race war against them, when we are actually living on their lands? You may not agree to or understand their culture, but that is not the objective point here. The point here is as fellow Australians who came here to share this land and seek opportunities to build a better life, hence a better country, this is one of the basic things we can and should do.
Of course, there will always be people like Lidia Thorpe who wants to behave in a conscious outlandish manner for her own political agenda and attention. But at the end of the day, this is not about Lidia Thorpe, this is not about the ‘Conservative’ disinformation campaign, this is not about Labor trying to present a different point of view, and this is not about the Greens…well I don’t know what they are about now…, but the point is, this is about righting historical wrongs, and stop waging race-based wars against each other. The point is about truly making Australia as one of the most enviable countries around the world, because we have mutual respect and harmony among all ethnicities, not just irrational, extreme race wars that everyone playing victims to victimise other people.
