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If you're white, you're right

By Stephen Hagan - posted Thursday, 25 May 2006


When I was an adolescent growing up in rural Queensland, frequently I heard older Aboriginal men taunt each other with a sarcastic saying:

 “If you’re white, you’re right - if you’re brown, stick around - but if you’re black, stay back.”

I don’t know where it came from but when I turned 18 and sought entertainment at the local bowling club for the New Year Celebration Dance, I soon discovered the meaning and power of that adage. On reaching the front of the queue, I held out my hand to pay the entry fee, only to be told aggressively by a finger-pointing, white bouncer that “no blacks are allowed”.

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Although devastated by this racist act, I became rather agitated when I glanced in the direction of the clientele inside the venue who were witnessing my predicament. I observed several lighter skinned Aboriginal women with their white boyfriends taking delight in my misfortune while getting their fill of alcohol.

Many Indigenous people around the country might well say that not a lot has changed since my experience in the late 1970s. I am aware today of many Indigenous people, male and female, who prefer the company of their white friends to their own mob, living under delusion they are "hanging with" the in-crowd and are readily accepted by their white peers.

That’s not to say that I’m opposed to the concept of close bonding between Indigenous with non-Indigenous people - after all some of my best friends are white. What I am saying, however, is that I object to Indigenous people (coconuts) who adopt a superior standpoint over their mob because of their association with white people - a “they like me better than you” attitude.

A quick look at history will show that certain members of the Indigenous population in the late 1800s and early 1900s were also afforded special privileges, like eating at the master’s table for dinner, while their “native” slave-labour brothers and sisters ate at a respectable distance from the rarefied confines of the homestead. Many received the symbolic tin plate emblazoned with the royal title “King Billy”. As long as they obeyed and acted on their master’s demands they were OK.

Just to make it even more formal, the colonial powers enacted legislation to restrict the movement of the Indigenous population and to let them know who the rulers were.

The most notable of these draconian policies was the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 passed by the Queensland Government. It was to remain the chief policy instrument for Indigenous people for the next 40 years, until a new Act was passed in 1939. Some amendments were made in 1901 and 1934, however the original intent of the Act remained intact. Similar racist policies were in force in all states and territories throughout the nation during the same period.

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Just to give you an idea of how determined the colonisers were of their desire to control the movement of “people of colour” living in this country, they also introduced the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. Variations of the policies were operative from the late 1880s until the 1950s, with certain aspects of the policy surviving until the 1970s.

Back in 1901, when their national population was about 3.7 million, white Australians had a legitimate concern that Chinese immigration, (“the Yellow Peril”) would have the adverse effect of “swamping” their recently acquired country. There was also fear that the “Yellow Peril” and the Kanakas (indentured or “blackbirded” Solomon Islanders) were undermining the local workforce by providing cheap labour for employers, especially in the sugar cane industry. Seven thousand Kanakas were later deported because of concerns expressed by the unions.

From Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, I discovered that it was during this time Prime Minister Edmund Barton made his infamous statement, "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman". The trade unions and their political party, the Labor Party, were the driving forces for White Australia.

Also, I noted that Chris Watson, the leader of the Labor Party (and our third Prime Minister) stated, "The objection I have to the mixing of these coloured people with the white people of Australia - although I admit it is to a large extent tinged with considerations of an industrial nature - lies ... in the possibility and probability of racial contamination".

So, in effect, the White Australia Policy was a formal strategy that was aimed directly at excluding non-white people from immigrating to Australia.

One hundred and five years later, I am still not convinced that a lot has changed in the mindset of the average Australian when it comes to race relations. Certainly, there are many non-Indigenous people in our camp who are mortified by the very notion but they are still a slowly growing group. We all remember the disturbing reference in the media last year by Macquarie University Associate Professor, Andrew Fraser, who claimed that "experience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems”.

Fraser believes that, on average, black people have lower IQs than white people.

With that history of intolerable bigotry, it did not come as a major surprise to me when I read of the latest “anti-black” immigration propaganda being peddled by a representative of the Howard ministry. Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Robb, pathetically nominated the first Tuesday in November as one of the Australian cultural values of which aspiring migrants might have to be aware to become citizens.

Patricia Karvelas, writing for The Weekend Australian (April 29-30 2006), quoted Robb, defending his proposal for a compulsory citizenship test:

It’s having a sort of general knowledge which enables people to move comfortably in the community - so an introduction about key customs, which might be that Australia closes down for a horse race each year, that might be a key custom ... there’s already a great attraction for a lot of people coming from other countries to this sense of a fair go.

“A fair go?” - What a load of rubbish!

I can cite two recent incidents involving non-Indigenous people in my own community that would discredit this “quintessentially Australian” fair go mantra. I make mention of these particular incidents as they reflect the approach adopted by most Australians to race issues broadly and to Indigenous people specifically.

On 28 April 2006, The Courier-Mail  ran a prominent story under the bold caption of “Refugees firebombed” accompanied by a striking photograph of a Sudanese mother and her seven children aged three to sixteen.

It would appear some racist hoons, under the cover of darkness, threw petrol bombs at the house of recently settled immigrants. Khamisa Abui and her children were sleeping at their rented house in Toowoomba when they heard thumping on the front door. A neighbour across the road saw the flames just after midnight.

“The flames were a metre high on the steps and the front porch and the door mat was alight at the front door,” he said.

“I pulled the burning mat away from the door and looked for a hose but I couldn’t find one in the dark.”

Mrs. Abui said she and her children had been frightened by the attack and she was mystified as to why her family had been targeted.

“I have no enemies with white people,” she said. “I have no idea why they don’t like us here ... I came here because Australia is a safe place to be.”

Mrs Abui was widowed when her husband was killed in Sudan, and she fled with her children to Egypt where she applied to come to Australia. A police spokesman said it would not be possible to say whether the attack had been racially motivated until suspects were questioned.

This story ran a day after The Toowoomba Chronicle ran a front page article, “Death Threats Force John Out - City Shop Owner Hounded by Racists”. My local paper revealed a poignant story of Sudanese businessman John Yaak who was driven from his home country by murderous militia and now had been driven from Toowoomba. Mr Yaak finally closed his discount shoe store in Margaret Street after six months of death threats and abusive phone calls from faceless racist cowards.

The Toowoomba Chronicle noted a sign in Mr Yaak’s blackened shop window that said it all:

We are now closed as we are unable to conduct our business in peace. Thanks to our valued customers and supporters.

It seems perversely ironic that I have not read any media stories of racial trouble associated with recently settled white South Africans - after all they arrived in Toowoomba at the same time during the past decade, but in greater numbers than the 750 Sudanese people who have taken up residency in this ultra-conservative community.

These stories of racial discrimination and victimisation remind me of my first painful experience with the Cunnamulla Bowling Club in the late 1970s. Sadly, they also remind me of that little sarcastic saying I heard from older Aboriginal men all those years ago and how prophetic it was.

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Article edited by Natalie Rose.
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About the Author

Stephen Hagan is Editor of the National Indigenous Times, award winning author, film maker and 2006 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

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