The Australia Day parade was from 11 - 12 and cuts through the middle of the central business district from north to south, across a bridge. I did not want to attend the parade, but had arranged to meet friends for lunch at 12:30. We were meeting north of the bridge, but my tram was coming from the south. I arrived just south of the bridge at around 12:20 and the trams still couldn't get over the bridge, so they stopped service there. I began walking north toward and over the bridge. A lot of parade participants were still around, making their way home or wherever.
Just north of the bridge is the intersection of Swanston Street and Flinders Street. This is a major thoroughfare. A big train station is on one corner, Federation Square on another, and something like 10 different tram routes go through the intersection as well. All traffic was absolutely stopped. Actually non-existent, because the entire intersection - two lanes of traffic each way plus two tram lanes just packed with people assembling for a counter-parade protesting the racism that protesters saw as rampant all over Australia. It was a little scary, just because I really couldn't move for a few minutes, but also impressive. The protesters were re-imaging Australia Day.
I asked one of the protesters if I could take his photo for my blog, and he readily acquiesced. He invited me to join them, "All are invited to march with us." If I hadn't been meeting people, and already late, I would have. The march started soon afterwards with chants and raised fists, and they made their way south across the bridge. There was other similar protests in Sydney and in Brisbane that day.
After I got home from lunch, I read some op-ed pieces in the Melbourne newspaper. Many were critical of the whole premise of Australia Day, calling it not only racist, but an excuse to get drunk one last time before summer was over rather than a day that celebrates the unity of all Australians. One writer suggested moving the date to January 15 and calling it Federation Day instead (The actual Federation Day, the day Australia became more independent from England, is January 1 and gets lost amid the New Year celebrations). Another suggested we abolish the holiday entirely. Many comments followed the op-eds, with dozens saying, "If you don't like it, go back where you came from."
Australia in general, and Melbourne and Sydney in particular, are very diverse. But there are pockets still that are very white and very Christian, and within these groups I have encountered more racism than I did in most of my time in the U.S. I have also found people more confused about Judaism here than in the high school I taught in in Baltimore, whose student body was almost entirely African American.
There are so many examples, but here are just a few: There is a fairly large group here called "Reclaim Australia" that wants to go back to the time when Australia had a "whites only" immigration policy, and they want to expel all Muslims from the country. There is a group of people protesting and boycotting Halal food certification, saying it funds terrorism (It doesn't - fees paid to Halal certification authorities do contribute to Muslim schools, but not madrasa-type schools. In case you were wondering, Jewish groups are in the staunchly pro-Halal camp, because of course if they come for Halal, the next attack will be on Kosher certification. In comments on Halal issues in the newspapers, people occasionally already mention Kosher certification as "unacceptable" as well.) A few months back, the government said it was going to have officials wandering the CBD looking for anyone who looked "foreign" and demand to see proof that they are in the country legally. This freaked me out a little, because the kids and I definitely don't sound Australian, and I don't go carrying passports and my visa around. The action was cancelled by the uproar of protests calling it unconstitutional and questioning the authority of those checking to carry out the action.
So many people are entirely comfortable using stereotypes and rudeness when confronting people from other cultures. Once on a tram with a group of fairly drunk 20-somethings, the tram conductor announced we were approaching Richmond Station. He had an Indian accent. The 20-somethings yelled, "What? Speak English!" and laughed uproariously. I had a colleague look over my class list and say, "Wow you have a lot of wogs in here." When I told my class at my first school I was moving to my second school, they said, "That's in Box Hill. You'll be teaching a lot of Asians." And there is huge resentment from many Australians toward Chinese people due to their recent domination of the property market.
People often say that Australia is in many ways about 30 years behind America. I can only hope that progress won't take 30 years. Clearly there are many who are already there, but others who have forgotten that practically the entire population are immigrants of one type or another.
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