For those who wonder why migrants would condemn asylum seekers one needs to
understand the position in which migrants to Australia find themselves. For a
migrant (other than those who are white and speak English) Australia is, on the
whole, a very unaccepting place. Differences are not allowed to be forgotten.
Most migrants want to be accepted and fit in and a lot of them find that if they
join in the prejudices of the locals against (other) migrants and, especially,
Aboriginal people, they are much more acceptable to the people around them.
This is why, often, you will find rabid dislike of Aboriginal people from people
who haven't a clue about our history and have been here barely long enough to
find out. Of course, not all migrants do this but there are many who do.
Trudy
The Sydney Morning Herald
Letters: Thumbs down, even from boat people
Date: 06/09/2001
I thought I would ask a couple of workmates who arrived illegally by boat
several years ago from Vietnam about what they thought of
the Tampa incident. Their reaction was unexpected and identical to mainstream
Australia, ie, we should not accept them.
As far as they were concerned, the present refugees were wealthy and not
escaping a communist regime like they did.
It appears that people will try any excuse to support their argument.
Con Vaitsas, Ashbury, September 4.
Paul Sheehan writes that in bringing in Middle Eastern migrants we have imported
racism to this country (Herald, September 5). What
he fails to acknowledge is that racism has always been alive and well in our
national psyche. How else do we account for our White
Australia policy, and our treatment of indigenous people?
I'm sure in Mr Sheehan's journalistic studies he went through editions of The
Bulletin in the 1890s. Some of the cartoons were
particularly enlightening as to our view of race, as was its slogan: Australia
for the White Man, China for the Chow.
Let's face up to our own failures with honesty, rather than just look for
scapegoats.
I, for one, would like to live in a community which has at its core a
humanitarian outlook which is inclusive and values the many
different cultural heritages which make up the Australian character.
Nina Burridge, Balgowlah, September 5.
In the 1950s we baby boomers grew up in an oppressive atmosphere of bigotry and
hatred just like today, directed not against Muslims,
but against Catholics.
Without having to be told, we knew Catholics "bred like rabbits". They were
"taking over". They were violent. They drank to excess.
They brought the problems of their homelands, especially Ireland, with them.
We believed that all Catholics "had criminal tendencies". That there were more
Catholics in prison, proportionally, than other
denominations.
Therefore, as children, we had every right to dish out huge amounts of verbal
and physical abuse towards the "bloody reffos".
Fifty year later, I believed Australia had changed. Then came the pathetic
plight of the Afghan refugees on the Tampa. On talkback radio
we hear those identical phrases, the half-truths, the generalisations and
over-simplifications. The same intolerance once directed against
Catholics is now directed against Muslims.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. And those who refuse to
learn from history are destined to repeat it.
Geoffrey Ostling, Petersham, September 4.
--
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