People of Colour - let's adjust the narrative

 

TRIGGER WARNING - discussion of racism

By Helen Said

When we migrated to Australia in the early 1960s, we were the only family for miles around who hailed from Egypt. This was the height of the White Australia Policy era. We stood out for having a dark skin, a Greek-Egyptian connection, a mixed ethnic background and for being Catholics in a government school. What’s more, we weren’t unintelligent or non-English speaking, as migrants were expected to be at the time, and some people found this threatening.

Many people at Dad's workplace resented him, as a migrant, climbing the career ladder. He copped so much nasty workplace politics that he developed an extra strong heartbeat that kept him scared during the day and awake at night. 

In 1964, in grade 1, I was automatically put on the slow learners’ table with the other migrant kids, even though I could read well and speak English. I complained loudly to the teacher who ordered me back to my seat. Realising why I was being treated differently, I screamed and cried all afternoon until a senior teacher came in and moved me.

Long after I worked my way up to the brainiest kids’ table, and proved myself top of the class, as soon as the substitute teacher came in, she would immediately order me to go back and sit with the slow learners. This was one of many life lessons that taught me I could never relax and I would always need to keep proving myself. Obviously, skin colour segregation was then the norm in many Australian classrooms, and my ascension to top of the class was a threat to the substitute teacher.

In the playground, I would be confronted by angry older children demanding to know, “How come you’re so brainy? The Greeks are supposed to be dumb.” Kids at school, people I met and sometimes even complete strangers would regularly harangue me about where I was born, because of the colour of my skin, and when I truthfully answered “England” they would continue harassing me, thinking I was lying to avoid admitting to being a "wog". They would become agitated when there was no one word answer to describe my ethnic background and their questions would become more insistent, disapproving, trivialising of my parents' birthplace of Egypt or sometimes they were just angry because they couldn't pigeonhole me as either a Wog or a Pommie.

There were no anti-discrimination laws back then, even the term “racism” itself was unknown, and racist abuse, nicknames and jokes were commonplace. I was told I had to just ignore it. Every week, the teachers would call out to the Catholics in the class to line up in front of the other kids to march us out of the room to attend Catholic religious instruction. We would stand in a row, facing the rest of the class, while they sneered, pulled faces and taunted Catholics! Catholics! right under the teacher’s nose. We would have to endure this for several minutes until the teacher decided we could leave the room. The rest of the students remained in class to receive Protestant religious instruction. Non-Christians were assumed to be non-existent in our school during this era. Religious instruction in government schools continued until Gough Whitlam came to power.

Each year, the class ran a Christmas pageant. The blond kids, all of whom were Protestants, were given glittering costumes and cast as angels. The Catholics of my colour, who never received Migrant English classes because they were assumed to be slow learners, were dressed as cows and donkeys. I was one of the kids who could sing in tune and I was in the choir. By grade 1, my (Autistic) analytical mind was already pondering the question about why all the angels were blond when the Catholic religious instruction teacher assured us that we could all enter heaven with pure souls - it seemed God needed me to prove myself again and again as well.

Teachers regularly confronted me, in front of the whole class, about why my parents didn't attend evening English classes. Actually they had attended English schools in Egypt and were well educated. When I told the teachers my parents could already speak English, they didn't believe me, and they would attempt to shame me, in front of the class, about my parents' non-attendance of nighttime English classes again and again. Other students were told by teachers, in front of the whole class, to stop speaking their native languages at home and to tell their parents to speak English.

My father eventually left industry and became an ethnic community leader during the Whitlam era. He has since earned an Order of Australia Medal for his contribution to community, although his advocacy was considered controversial in his day.

In the early 1970s, Dad worked for Footscray Council as a community development officer. One of the first cases he had to deal with was when a group of Greek children were locked out of an Anglican church hall. The hall had been hired as a Greek language school, but a new minister had taken over the church and he had locked the Greeks out of the hall and was refusing to allow them in. As a Greek speaker, Dad rushed over to the hall to negotiate on behalf of the Greek parents. He asked the minister to allow the Greek kids to use the hall, to continue their schooling, until they found alternative accommodation, but the minister said, “I would rather burn the whole place down than let them use it." He said this right in front of the Greek parents. Even though they couldn't speak English, the Anglican minister's racist hostility was plain to see. He then reported my dad to Footscray Council, for challenging his authority, and Footscray Council backed up the minister!

Many years later, I documented these and other experiences in my father's biography, "Five Egyptian Pounds - the story of George Said." The book can be purchased by emailing FiveEgyptianPounds@gmail.com

As a teenager in the 1970s, I began taking an interest in my dad’s campaigns, going with him to multicultural meetings, writing letters to newspapers and TV about their racist coverage and getting involved in student activism. I was a painfully shy, undiagnosed Autistic, but I found my voice in these campaigns. My activism remains vital for dealing with the putdowns and stress that I experienced in my formative years, during the White Australia Policy era.

These days most Anglo Australians readily accept that discrimination occurred and recognise how hurtful it has been, but disappointingly a small number of my fellow migrants and second generation Australians are not so sympathetic. A small number of People of Colour (POC) have difficulty coming to terms with the fact that people like myself or my dad, who have European ancestry, could ever have experienced comparable racial discrimination at the hands of other Europeans.

It is worth noting that, while I was growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s, most white Anglo-Australians did not identify as Europeans; in fact the word "European" was regularly used as a racial slur.

I think some People of Colour overlook the impact that the Frontier Wars and the White Australia Policy had on the development of our local anti-racist scene. They perhaps expect our multicultural scene to mirror anti-racist movements found overseas. 

Australia has a long history of genocide and dispossession towards First Nations peoples, resulting in very small numbers of First Nations people living in our outer working class suburbs in the southern-most states. Added to that was the White Australia Policy (Immigration Restriction Act) which limited non-British and non-European migration from the time of Federation in 1901 until the time of Gough Whitlam's Government in the early 1970s. 

The combined effect of colonisation and the White Australia Policy was to produce an overwhelmingly white population, which largely lacked racial and cultural diversity. After the Second World War, when large numbers of migrants from the European mainland arrived, these migrants stood out, amongst the mostly white English speaking population, and became the targets of virulent racism. Post-war European migrants were exhorted to give up their customs, clothes, foods and languages and assimilate as "New Australians" and this was oppressive. 

During the early 1970s, when large populations of Black people in other English speaking countries, such as the US, were leading anti-racist movements, we too had plenty of racism but we did not have large populations of Black people in Australia. Apart from the Indigenous Land Rights Movements, our anti-racist movement in Australia became known as multiculturalism, a term popularised by the late Al Grassby, Minister for Immigration during the Whitlam era. Local multicultural initiatives were organised and led by Europeans who had been prominent targets of racism for many years in Australia. 

In the 1970s, after Al Grassby, Australia's "father of multiculturalism," declared that the White Australia Policy was dead, many more People of Colour were allowed to migrate to Australia. They quickly became the target of hysterical racism. When confronted by People of Colour, white Australian racists suddenly realised that they must in fact be Europeans after all. While directing their hatreds towards People of Colour, they began cultivating migrants from mainland Europe as their allies, in much the same way that the English and Irish had begun overcoming their differences in the face of the postwar European immigration boom. 

Judging by the number of neo-Nazis in our suburb whose families hail from mainland Europe, it is clear that some Europeans want to distance themselves from their families' migration experiences and be accepted as privileged whites. But many Europeans do have good memories. We relate to the difficulties and prejudices we, or our parents, experienced as new migrants and some of us remain active in multicultural causes. Until recent years, many People of Colour were not so well established in Australia and Europeans remained prominent as multicultural leaders. But thankfully this has now changed, the multicultural movement is more representative of newer migrants, as it should be. Many multicultural leaders are now People of Colour, with Europeans still being represented.

It would be fair to say that most Irish Catholics who experienced religious hatreds in Australia would be long dead, however it is important to note that Europeans who have experienced racist discrimination in Australia are not historical relics. As someone who experienced religious taunting, skin colour discrimination and classroom segregation, on the assumption that I would be less intelligent due to my ethnic background, I am still, at the time of writing, a working aged person. Those Greek kids in Footscray, who were locked out of the hall by the Anglican minister, would now only be in their 50s. 

I have always been extremely enthusiastic about POC getting active in the local multicultural movement, and the overwhelming majority of POC are happy to have Europeans participate too. Unfortunately, from time to time, a small number of POC have tried to exclude Europeans from some multicultural spaces where POC are now in the majority.

This has been quite disturbing, to go along to what appears to be a safe space and find some people lumping all Europeans together as “whites” and trying to vote to exclude us. I consider this to be an attack on my identity as a multicultural Australian. After growing up with such overt skin colour discrimination, it became impossible for me to think of myself as white. I can clearly see that I am a Brown woman when I look in the mirror but this isn’t welcomed by a small number of POC - my dual identity, as both a Person of Colour and a European, disrupts their “us and them” narrative. 

It is ironic that some people who so loudly question the male-female gender binary now seek to impose a European-POC binary onto the entire population.

When I share my viewpoint, on occasions, I have copped some nasty labels and self-righteous responses from a small number of POC. I am sometimes upset by this but I have not been intimidated into silence. I intend to continue speaking my truth and being active in forums where I have passion and life experience.

As an articulate CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) person who lived through the White Australia Policy era, and was brought up in a multicultural leadership family, I have a right and a duty to join multicultural forums and speak up for issues close to my heart. There are a lot of CALD people, especially those experiencing intersectional issues, who need this advocacy. For example, I am one of very few older CALD Autistic advocates, who also has Autistic offspring, who can participate in CALD Autism research co-design. I am currently advocating for research into the needs of CALD Autistic adults, both in conversations with researchers and through political channels. This is research which has never been done before in Australia.

As a CALD Autistic who grew up during the bad old racist, sexist days, I have been greatly affected by discrimination and my advocacy helps me heal from these experiences. It is ridiculous that some people think I do not need the right to continue my CALD activism because there are now some Greek Members of Parliament, and therefore Greeks are represented. Autistics have a right and an inborn passion to actively participate in social justice, and not just to be represented in parliament. 

It is ironic that, while calling for historical acts of racism to be acknowledged, a small number of POC seek to downplay or erase Australia's history of anti-mainland European racism.

Even though most of the racial discrimination I experienced happened many years ago, it affected me during my vulnerable formative years when there was no legal redress. As an Autistic, I have a very long memory and I am a problem solver. 

Racism is a problem that has left a mark on my life and it continues to blight the lives of others. My conscience compels me to remain active in anti-racist forums, even if some people think I should just be cooking pasta or playing bingo by now.

While the overwhelming majority of People of Colour welcome Europeans in multicultural spaces, it is draining and irritating having to deal with the small number of POC who would prefer to exclude us. Certainly, there are many issues in which People of Colour should come to the fore, eg Black Lives Matter and colonialism. The fact that some important issues centre around POC should not disqualify European CALD people from continuing our decades long activism in multicultural spaces. After all, Al Grassby, widely knows as “the father of multiculturalism” was a European himself. We owe a great deal to both the young People of Colour movement and older European multicultural leaders, so I respectfully ask the small number of People of Colour, who promote the construct of a European-POC binary, to rethink their narrative.