Huilin is Senior Editor of Web Student Copy for the Harvard International Review.
Are you an “Aussie,” mate?
Ben Arnoldy noted on last Wednesday’s issue of the Christian Science Monitor that Australian cultural differences are escalating into a much more daunting and imperative public issue in the land down under. Three months ago, attacks on off-duty lifeguards on the beaches in the Conulla area by young men of Lebanese descent had forced the Australian government to look at the reality of the various minority Asian and aboriginal groups that consider themselves citizens of the Commonwealth. The Lebanese gangs had been stirring up problems on beaches for some time by taunting women or instigating fistfights. Many of these men were (and still are) frustrated by the latent racism of Australian public policy and such frustration had ultimately escalated into riots of both Lebanese and ethnic Anglo Australians in December.
Prime Minister John Howard does little to improve the situation. His refusal to accept the fact that racism has been burgeoning in Australia since the end of a “White Australia Policy” in the 1970s prevents Australian federal and local governments from abandoning their static, negligent policies. The view of a self-proclaimed “tolerant and decent” Australian society has slowed down any movement toward shunning racisn and embracing multiculturalism, an –ism that the second in power, Treasurer Peter Costello, calls “confused, mushy, misguided.”
The former policies of “White Australian” are being strained as groups, especially the growing Muslim populations, seek to identify themselves with ethnic and cultural roots that are not those of the Australian tradition more and more. Older arguments advocating homogenization had been instituted to avoid distasteful behavior such as child brides of the aboriginals or the taunting of women in bikinis on the beach by Muslims. But beyond some very specific reasons, it has been hard to justify national identity and conformity to majority values as rationale for the complete suppression of other innocuous values. We know that forced integration and homogenization has never been an effective policy. Take France for example. Their restrictions on the Muslim population, in addition to smaller minority groups, have sparked anger and violence that escalated into weeks of fires and riots this past November. One burning question exists. Can Australian citizens take up a unified Australia identity and encourage nationalism without destroying diversity?
Complements to the advocates of education in multiculturalism call for the education of children and immigrants of Australian national values. Some analysts have used the model of the United States, a country much more ethnically diverse than both France and Australia, to assess this dilemma of national identity. Part of what makes someone “American” comes not from his or her “whiteness” but from the shared values that are “American.” Beyond the national language, one of the most successful factors has been the fact that second-generation citizens are “home-grown Americans” who grow up loving freedom, democracy, and other traditionally emphasized American values. Citizens of the United States cherish the Constitution and the principles of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”; thus, most avoid the tense isolation that many minority groups in Australia feel.
The establishment of firm national values and a less wishy-washy multicultural policy have been the recent tasks of Thu Nguyen, a director in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in Canberra. Nguyen said, “All of us have to observe our democratic principles, the rule of law, equality of the sexes, English as the national language – the basic democratic values we have to put first. Within that framework, people are free to observe their own cultural practices.”
Perhaps this idealistic proposal is simply that: ideal and unattainable. However, regardless of the results of such an ambitious agenda, many Australians will have trouble ignoring the growing problem of racism in an evermore diverse country.