Australia and immigrants

Australia and immigrants

I refer to a letter entitled On Insight Program by Irene
Fraser in The Jakarta Post on Nov. 10. It was correct of Fraser to point out that Arthur Calwell,
the Australian former minister of immigration, made the comment
"Two Wongs don't make a white" in the 1940s. Like many other
Australians, however, Fraser is in denial of the fact that
certain racist attitudes still remain in Australia -- despite how
the nation has become more multi-racial, thanks to immigrants
from Asia and other parts of the world. Just because Australia has now become a multi-racial, or
multi-cultural, society, that does not make it a tolerant place
where immigrants or Australian citizens of non-white origins are
treated with fairness, equality, or for that matter, dignity.

The reason, Professor Geoffrey Blainey points out, is that
"The more emphasis that is placed on the rights of minorities and
the need for affirmative action to enhance those rights, the more
is the concept of democracy -- and the rights of the majority--
in danger of being weakened. But most importantly, however,
Fraser was so wrong when she declared that, like Calwell, the
White Australia Policy is dead.

Let me remind her of (or give her, rather) a brief history of
Australia's racism. We needn't go as far back as the 1970s, when
the White Australia policy officially ended, or even to the
1960s, when the masthead of the Bulletin, Australia's leading
magazine, carried the slogan "Australia for the White Man"; we
certainly need not go as far back as The Magic Pudding, thefamous Australian children's book, that includes insults such as
"you unmitigated Jew!" Let's just take a trip to the period between the 1980s and the
1990s, when Arthur Tunstall, Australia's infamous senior sports
official, made racist jokes and comments about disabled athletes;
it was the same decade that saw a string of aboriginal deaths in
police custody (not many white ones); and the same decade saw the
rise of the One-Nation party led by Pauline Hanson, who all but
called for those of Asian descent to be ejected from the country,
displaying her profound international knowledge by sayingthe 2.5 billion Asians to the north "have their own language and
culture." Whatever motivated Fraser to write her letter in response to
my comments on the Insight program, she needs to know better
about her own people's history and realize the reality that
Australia is not a racism-free society.THANG D. NGUYENJakarta