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OT: Human Rights Framework 2-May-2010 At 5:44:08 PM Hendo

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On 2/05/2010 Wendy wrote:
>Being white and speaking English as a first
>language doesn't automatically make a person "like me".
No of course not, but to me often a good start.
> I also quite like
>things that are different too, because, otherwise quite frankly, the world
>would be a little boring. If Australia's only influence was Britain, we'd
>be stuck with things like bangers and mash and brit pop. Thank god some
>other cultures brought decent food and music into our country.

In some sense it is a matter of perspective, if you didn’t know these things existed you probably would probably make good of what you have and it wouldn’t seem so boring. Imagine all the radical alien culture you are missing out on, how boring is all this earth stuff! I often get a sense that Australians think they have nothing to offer and we have to import all this stuff. I’m interested in these things too but would like to have some faith in Australia, give it some room and see what we can come up with too, which is difficult in the onslaught of things coming from overseas. And before anyone gets the idea, no I am not proposing a ban of any kind of cultural import.

>Multiculturism is not silly and is not about giving up part of your home
>to other people.

Ok, maybe ‘silly’ was a bad choice of word. It does involve sharing (and hence giving up) part of your home.

>It's about saying it's possible to live side by side
>and respect and learn from other cultures

This is a very ‘happy’ way of viewing things and there are positives, but there are many potential problems. I don’t think it is sensible to just assume or hope that with having all these different people everyone is going to play nice and it is going to work out. Before I went to university I guess I hadn’t been around the city so much, but at uni I was alarmed that all these varieties of ethnic people would come up to me and ask ‘what etho are you?’. At first I didn’t even know what they meant by ‘etho’, I always just considered myself and them as Australian and it was a bit of a shock to realize that many of them consider themselves something else first, Australian second, and even if the other way around, clearly as different to myself and other groups. I have met a number of people of different ethnicities who I have talked to once but otherwise don’t know at all that have very openly told me they hate and avoid particular racial groups (I don’t want to pin this on any particular groups no I won’t mention which exactly) that conflicted with theirs in their parent’s country, despite being born in Australia, having spent very little time in their parent’s country if at all. This is clearly a problem associated with allowing communities to set up.