After Natalie’s good analysis of what is wrong with the BBC’s coverage of the Sydney culture wars, I note the “See also” box at the top right of this page links to ‘Australia’s unease with outsiders‘.
I note in this inflammatory and pernicious guff the sort of generalisations that would never be employed of “people of Middle-eastern background” (or insert desired trendy PC shibboleth):
‘They want the drawbridge raised – and the door firmly locked.
As the father explained, they had left Britain to “escape the blacks” and didn’t want to have to move again.
Such attitudes are not uncommon here.’
Ignoring the inflammatory headline, this is outrageous nonsense. The mere fact that Mr Mercer located one family in Perth with somewhat lamentable views is hardly evidence of what Australians think. I grew up in Perth (as a migrant from England) and (I am ashamed to admit) Perth unfortunately does have a lot of the worst sorts of English whingers (the equivalent of US white trash) so this sort of view can be found. To extend this to Australians as a whole is pretty silly (and that is what Mr Mercer does). One Nation is finished here electorally, and was when Mercer wrote this opinion piece masquerading as news (Hanson was finished in the October 1998 election).
Also note the standard English “convict sneer”, imported as usual where is is at best tenuously relevant:
“Competition can be fierce and many more people are rejected than accepted.
It wasn’t always like this.
In the 1820s Australia, a convict colony, was competing for new migrants with other New World countries, notably the United States and Canada.”
Australia is apparently not a modern multi-racial democracy the envy of most in the world, with a GDP in the top 10 or top 14 (depending on the numbers) – something that happened 200 years is somehow relevant. This may seem a bit skittish, but Australians have a justified aversion to English sneering about convicts (it tends to get raised too often to be mere coincidence). Imagine if the BBC referred to the Taiping Rebellion (or even better, Confucianism) every time it reported on anti-Japanese protests in China (at a deeper level, the reference might be appropriate, but the BBC is hardly a purveyor of deep and responsible historical analysis).
For completeness’ sake, White Australia is rolled out again:
‘The controversial and racist “White Australia” policy was finally abandoned in the early 1970s.
For generations, this discriminatory migration programme attempted to sustain the country’s European origins in the face of a perceived threat of a mass influx from Asia.’
This is strictly speaking correct but misleading – as the Menzies Liberal government started the first steps in abandoning the policy in the 1950s. The magic of “early 1970s” in the context of Australian history is that this was the era of the Labor Gough Whitlam, who was the great “progressive” who allegedly woke us up from a Liberal dark age.
Speaking as someone who is currently making arrangements to leave Britain to “escape the blacks” I fail to understand why such a view is lamentable. Thousands of people are leaving these islands every year for exactly this reason. It’s the fact that’s lamentable, not the opinion.
I suppose its purely a coincidence that white/British settlers and colonisers who became Australians/Canadians/New Zealanders/Americans built countries that other people want to come and live in. Ethnicity and culture have nothing to do with it…yeah right.
The white Australia policy must have been terrible thing. How wonderful for Australia to be enriched by Lebanese muslims! If the ghosts of those old white Australians could see Sydney today how their hearts would soar. “Oh why oh why did we not abandon the white Australia policy years earlier? Oh woe is us!”
The views expressed by “iman asole” (comment would be superfluous) and Lurker are at the boundary of what will be tolerated on this blog.
The comment may be obnoxious by current standards, but the sentiment is evidentially shared by the vast majority of people. Quite apart from suburban segregation, look at how lunch crowds in any major cosmopolitan city segregate themselves – 80-90% of the groups seem to be monoracial. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with wanting to live surrounded by people with similar values and appearance to yourself?
Its not nice is it but unfortunately its the situation we find ourselves in. I wish it were otherwise.
So Nat how do you propose to accomodate the muslims into western society? We could continue the multi-culti ways of Oz, UK and USA – not working noticibly I see. That could be more in keeping with your libertarian leanings.
Or we could try the French approach, currently minus its wheels and up on bricks by the side of the road.
Is there another way other than not letting them in? Israel wont allow muslims to settle in her borders, if that happened Israel very soon wouldnt be Israel it would be something else, which is why they dont allow it. Australia & Britain et al are on their way to being something else and we are supposed not to notice?
Im not against immigration itself (I wouldnt exist without it, being descended from immigrants myself), Im sure we can have a few muslims. Academics, apostates (ex-muslims) etc but we are getting demographically significant numbers.
The irony is you are marking the boundaries of what can be discussed show the same fault lines as the BBC/MSM. Dont point out who is the source of much of the conflict, dont give any show of credence to any policy which might alter the current demographic trend.
Re the lebanese muslims in Australia. They dont regard themselves as Australians as we know it, other Australians dont regard them as Australians (remember that comment by Joel). But you and the BBC do, youre right technically but not in any of the senses that matter to people only the ones bureaucrats worry about ie have you got the correct documentation.
OK I know you have to worry about the thought police, so fair enough.
What iman asshole and the Lurker ignore is the obvious distinction between “blacks” and (I am assuming) “black gangstas”.
To say that you are leaving because of being intimidated by black gangstas is one thing, but to say that you are leaving because of blacks per se (which includes all members of a group, good and bad, purely on the basis of melanin content) is immoral.
To conflate religion and race is different. Religion is a behavioural thing that is subject to the exercise of free will. Melanin is not.
It isn’t immoral at all, I personally have nothing against blacks but if someone says they would rather live with people of their own race rather than a multi-culti chaos why is that a problem?
What Lurker says is 100% spot on.
These nuts who opened up immigration in Western countries years ago have created riots in all the countries it happened in, they’ve a lot to answer for.
It is immoral in a Kantian sense.
Er…I think you’ll find ‘iman asole’ is probably a ‘leftie’ indulging in a bit of ‘moonbat bingo’.
Apologies that my forthright comments after a long, hard day have provoked such argument but…
Toby’s contention that the original reference to “escap(ing) the blacks” in his piece is racist or immoral flies in the face of what the word “black” has come to mean. The concept of “black” was hijacked years ago by the multicultural industry as a catchall description for non-white culture. It has little or nothing to do with melanin. Colour of skin is really only an issue to a very small number of racialist nutters and a very large number of multicultural enthusiasts who use it as a stick to beat the rest of us.
Toby I never mentioned the word black.
Conflating race and religion. Hmm OK lets try really hard and pretend the rampaging muslims in Sydney are really all European converts and not arabs. Here goes…yes! I, I th-think its working, Ive got my fingers stuck in my ears and Ive screwed my eyes up and…yes, it really is working! God this amazing! Im actually starting to fool myself that all the Shanes & Waynes popped down the mosque and turned themselves into good little muslims and then turned out to fight the unbeliever, race has nothing to do with it. No-one is fighting anyone else out of any sense of ethnic solidarity, oh no sir, that would just be your lying eyes, perhaps you glasses or contact lenses? Rioting, fighting, not at all thats just robust theological discourse my good man.
Sorry just signed off as “Toby”, when in fact its me. What an fool!
Dave asks, “if someone says they would rather live with people of their own race rather than a multi-culti chaos why is that a problem.” I support their political right to to free association/disassociation just as I support their political right to free speech. But by the same token I am entitled to my judgement that people who elevate physical appearance above virtue in choosing their friends are unlikely to be virtuous themselves. (All this talk of “virtue” may seem a bit over-dramatic. But I do think that affection worth the name is ultimately based on shared concepts of virtue, although of course any number of other factors ranging from shared taste in music to sexual attraction may also be present.)
Lurker asks, “So Nat how do you propose to accomodate the muslims into western society?”
We could do worse than try what did work in assimilating many immigrants from diverse cultures into British society in the early part of the twentieth century. The law to be applied equally to all. No group concessions, no group burdens. And no welfare state. The welfare state acts as a magnet, inflating the numbers of immigrants beyond our ability to cope. Worse yet it skews their assumptions and culture towards an agressive defence of their “entitlements” rather than the ambitious work ethic traditionally associated with immigrants.
Islam is in a bad state now. But it’s worth remembering that under the British Raj there were many loyal Muslim servants of the Crown. I’m not calling for the restoration of Empire or anything ridiculous like that, just saying that within the lifetime of people still alive things have been very different, and could be again.
Toby: the equivalent of US white trash
A particularly annoying and loaded phrase I’d expect to read in the MSM.
So what exactly is “white trash”?
Is it the same as “brown scum”? or even “black sh*t”?
Like most of humanity, I prefer to mix with people like me, but I am not so superficial as to judge only by the colour of a person’s skin. Reviewing the list of people I have recently seen or plan to see in the near future I find we share a roughly similar level of education; we have a wide range of tastes in music, art and literature, but are united in believing that there are such things as classics (a Shakespear play is better than an episode of Eastenders, a Beethoven symphony is better than Westlife’s current single etc.); we take alcoholic drinks because we enjoy the taste and as accompaniment to meals, not with the sole aim of getting drunk; we think all societies are comprised of individuals, but some individuals choose to stand aside from society, and this does not mean they should be excluded from the protection of law; we think the world would be a better place if people could outgrow the need for the tooth fairy, santa and a supreme being (by any name) to justify their prejudices. Politically we range from left wing libertarians to right wing libertarians, socially we range from traditional working class to old fashioned upper middle class, although we tend to think those old class divides irrelevant. Ethnically we are European or Asian (I’m including a New Zealander as European because ethnicity is not nationality). We know that not everyone shares our views, and are happy for others to disagree, as long as their disagreement is peaceful and they don’t try to stop us holding those views, or feel they have the right to use violence against us because of them. There are probably readers of this blog who don’t want to mix with me, but I doubt many of them think I deserve to be beaten or killed for these views.
Sadly there is an element within Islam that does not believe in peaceful disagreement; they believe it is their religious duty to convert us to their views. These are people who have come to a secular country for a better life. They should accept the standards of the country they have chosen to come to. If they cannot, there is a range of alternatives for Muslims, from the fundamental theocracies of Iran or Saudi Arabia to the secular but Muslim majority of Turkey. This view may make me unpleasant, I do not believe it makes me a racist.
Test
The novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ contains a rather neat portrait/definition of ‘Trash’ in the Ewell family.
Being poor alone doesn’t make you ‘Trash’ it is an attitude not an economic class. ‘Trash’ have no standards, they are lazy, slovenly and their only ambition is to ‘get by’. While eagerly taking any benefits society offers they make no return and nurse a sense of entitlement. ‘Trash’ can be of any color; white, black or brown.
Nat: Yes if someone wanted to live with their own ethnicity for reasons of purely physical appearance then thats wrong of them.
But on the other hand if someone had some experiance of living in a multi-cultural city, and also some experiance of living in a more traditional community based around a single race and culture and they stated that they prefered to live there why is that a problem? As many people seem to suggest it is.
The real test is to look at the flow of people.
If you have a society that really doesn’t welcome (and is hostile to) a particular group, members of that group generally prefer not to move there. In fact, they will actively avoid the place. This is why you don’t have large flows of Evangelical Christians moving to Saudi Arabia, or too many Jews flooding into Iran. There isn’t to my knowledge a large African population entering Japan.
Australia (like the US, UK etc) has plenty of inflows of people of non-European backgrounds. If racism really were a problem, those inflows would dry up very quickly.
One of the fastest growing groups statistically are the Australian Aborigines. Not due to a surplus of births over deaths as one might imagine. More to do with part-Aboriginal people coming forward to officially identify themselves as such in the census and other official documents (e.g. university applications), when in the past their origins might have not been disclosed, either unknowingly or deliberately. If Australia truly were a deeply racist country, would people be so willing to come forward?