That comes from a marvellous blog entry I discovered just recently: Australia’s Secret History as a Racist Whites-Only Utopia by Matt Novak. Not so secret actually, but people do forget and not everyone is 80 like me! Or can reach back to when that song was a thing. My mother was born the year after, and her parents — Roy and Ada Christison — I of course remember very well. Here they are around the time I was born.
They score a mention in a Facebook rant I did yesterday about Matt Novak;s post.
A must read if ever there was! We cannot be complacent about where we came from and what many in our own families thought. My lovely gentle grandmother Ada for example would probably have made Pauline happy! She believed — as far as I recall things she said — that all the problems of Australia were because of the Irish, that Greeks and Italians were barely white, “lived off the smell of an oily rag”, and sent all their money overseas to bring more of their kind out. She also loved Liberace and could make a mean brawn — that’s a jellied meat thing for those who don’t know. Her husband Roy was much more open — spoke to the Italian migrant neighbours and admired them, but was still a subscriber to The Bulletin when it still had Australia for the White Man on its masthead. Least bigoted man you could hope to meet, especially in the 40s and 50s when Grandma Ada was pretty much the norm — at least among the non-Irish. My paternal Whitfield Irish ancestry was at least Orange rather than Green…. After all they were Plantation Irish — but maybe Quakers, which is a tad radical at least….
Yes I am sure they generally voted for Mr Menzies….
I say all this because a friend recently referred to the great writer Arundhati Roy’s views on Winston Churchill. And yes Churchill had appalling views on race — but so did almost everyone of his generation who subscribed to the fantasy of a British Race that science after all since Darwin had been able to prove was the pinnacle of evolution! Why they had all those skulls in the museums to prove the point — I recall even in The Australian Museum in Sydney seeing Aboriginal skulls on display! And yes Churchill had appalling views on Arabs and Palestinians. (So did most Anzacs and Light Horsemen in WW1 if you care to look.)
However Churchill never went as far down the race superiority fantasy as the Nazis did — for whom it was pure science. So obvious the Aryan Race was the pinnacle of evolution and we needed selective breeding and elimination of inferior species to save mankind and push evolution forward! Shame the Aryan Race never actually existed though….
Pity about all those dead Jews, not to mention Slavs and other Untermenschen…. But survival of the fittest rules, eh. And Francis Galton’s crackpot ideas about eugenics were regarded as scientific not only by the Nazis but by many eminent Australians early last century.
But by God we all should be grateful that Churchill stepped up in 1940! My God we should!
Facile judgements and moralising about the past can be good for our ego or sense of worthiness — but it is also dangerous ground. So read this and think. It is an excellent presentation.
Totally setting up the creep Tom Buchanan who echoes the fashionable racism of the 1920s …. not only in America!
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we ——”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California —” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and ——” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “— And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization — oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
The Rise of the Colored Empires was a real book, Well, in fact The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920) by one Lothrop Stoddard. Very popular in Germany in fact. Nowadays of course we have crackbrained conspiracy theories about the “Great Replacement”. Insanity is never far away….
And here is just a sample of what caused him to say and do this.
On Wednesday night Charlie Pickering skewered the pathetic attempt by the Murdoch media to deflect attention from their key role in stirring the pot that harboured this wicked and shameful brew.
All he had to do to prove Patricia Karvelas right was play one after the other poisonous grabs from the claque pictured on the left of screen there.
Just after the story first broke I posted on Facebook:
I watched the Coronation on 10 because they had the best coverage from the BBC. I did not want pontification or discussion to detract from my enjoyment, and as you know I did enjoy it. I think the ABC would have been well advised to separate commentary from presentation that night. It is not what I wanted, irrespective of what views may or may not have been expressed. Let that top and tail the event, talk your heads off then — no worries! I just wanted to see the Coronation so that night the ABC was not to my taste.
But I DO NOT blame Stan Grant. I deplore the comments he has been getting. I am deeply saddened by what he has experienced lately and by his decision to get out. His story is in so many ways an inspiring one, a great example to all Australians. Any who are gloating and putting laugh emojis on stories about his decision to leave are just scum.
My free e-books from ANU Press include some excellent publications on Indigenous Australian History, Emma Dortins, The Lives of Stories: Three Aboriginal-Settler Friendships (2018) being one. The three friendships are: Arthur Phillip and Bennelong (see cover), James Morrill and the Birri-gubba people of Queensland, and Windradyne and the Suttor family of Brucedale, Bathurst NSW. The first story is the best known, the third less well known by most Australians. The Windradyne/Suttor story features in Stan Grant’s excellent family story, The Tears of Strangers (Harper Collins 2002), which I read recently courtesy of Wollongong Library….
One of the finest responses I have seen to all this came from my cousin Ray Hampton Christison on Facebook. Ray is no mean historian himself.
I respect this man. I have been reflecting on the difficult conversation our nation in engaged in as we collectively confront the violence and injustice at the root of our national story. Stan Grant has been a wise, gentle and compelling voice in this conversation.
I fear that the conversation may have led many Australians of European descent to an underlying fear that they are outsiders. I was born on Eora land and grew up on Dharawal land, the fifth generation of my family to inhabit this land. I hold a deep and visceral love for this country but am fully aware of the much deeper connection and history that precedes our coming.
When I was a young boy my Sunday School teacher took our class on an excursion to Jibbon Head, near Bundeena. We walked along Jibbon Beach (to me one of the most beautiful of Australian beaches) and on to the headland. Here there are ancient Dharawal rock carvings – a whale, an octopus and the image of a man. I now recognise that image as Baiame, the creator. Back then those carvings told me that this land has custodians who were here long before the British flag was raised at Kamay or Warrung.
I am faced with a conflict. I love this land and my desire is to respect its ancient peoples. I must recognise that my family’s presence is just a blip in the 60,000 year story of this great land. I hope that as a nation we can come to a place in which the first peoples have a true say in how the nation moves forward together.
I replied:
Yes indeed, Ray Hampton Christison! Looking out every day on Mt Keira I can never forget I am on Dharawal country. According to what my father and mother told me about my father’s mother even likely of Dharawal or Yuin descent myself.
First, I recall Cronulla 05, which as a former Shire boy I reblogged, the result being here. From which, though 12 years on links may well not work:
Mind you, there have been earlier, and worse, incidents, such as this one reported in NSW Hansard in February 2001.
[Cronulla] is an outpost, an area where the population increases dramatically during the summer. As my correspondent has said, there is gang activity. On Thursday 15 February the Commissioner of Police was interviewed on radio by John Stanley. The transcript of that interview reads, in part:
John Stanley: And your problem is, if you sent more police to Cabramatta, they would be taken from areas like Cronulla, where we had all those calls last week about that gang problem, that I think you are aware of. These people are coming in from other parts of Sydney, into Cronulla and are causing big problems there.
Commissioner Ryan: They are causing huge problems there.
One of those huge problems occurred two days after Christmas. Following a dispute at a Sutherland nightclub, a gang of 30 Lebanese Australian males arrived at Cronulla railway station with baseball bats, iron bars, knives and guns. They open fired on a rival gang, spraying more than 20 bullets over a 50-metre area. Such behaviour and activity are totally foreign. The Premier would be aware of the writings of a former New York senator, Patrick Daniel Moynihan. Back in the 1960s he wrote an essay entitled “Defining Deviancy Down”. That summarises these appalling standards of behaviour. Previously, this incident would have made headlines all over Sydney…
Mr George: Throughout New South Wales.
Mr KERR: Indeed, throughout New South Wales, but it did not because it is so commonplace. The mayor of Sutherland shire wants surveillance cameras, and there is no reason why the council cannot put surveillance cameras in the places sought by the mayor, although the problem exists throughout the Sutherland shire. The Carr Government has failed in its basic responsibility to maintain an orderly society and should therefore make a financial contribution towards the cost of the cameras. On behalf of the people of the Sutherland shire I ask the mayor to indicate when those cameras will be installed in Cronulla.
While I freely admit that troubling, troubled, and trouble-making (and usually virulently homophobic) groups of “middle eastern appearance” are an unlovely feature of Sydney life, it is very important to keep a sense of proportion on this: see Tunnel Vision: The Politicising Of Ethnic Crime by Paola Totaro (2003) for such a perspective. For much more detailed argument, see (PDF file) Scott PoyntingLiving with Racism: The experience and reporting by Arab and Muslim Australians of discrimination, abuse and violence since 11 September 2001 (2004).
It should be noted that, in the ideology of racism, categorical confusions between ‘race’ (eg ‘Middle Eastern Appearance’), ethnicity (eg Arab), nationality of origin or background (eg Lebanese), and religion (eg Muslim) are common, and distinction in practice between racism directed on ‘racial’, ethnic, or national grounds is not always possible or valid. This is all the more problematic currently, for over about the last decade, especially since panics from 1998 over ‘ethnic gangs’, over ‘race rapes’ in Sydney in 2000-2001, and asylum seekers and then the terror attacks from 2001, we have seen the emergence of we might call ‘the Arab Other’ as the pre-eminent folk devil in contemporary Australia (Poynting, Noble, Tabar and Collins, 2004). The links that are made between these events, the ‘perpetrators’ involved and their perceived communities, depend on the racist imagining of a supposedly homogenous category which includes those of Arab or Middle Eastern or Muslim background. This is not a singular category, of course — it includes people from diverse ancestries and with very distinct histories — but it is seen to be a singular category. A common factor is found through blaming whole communities for criminal acts, but also in labelling as ‘deviant’ certain actions — such as seeking asylum — and a range of other practices whose key feature is their visible and threatening difference — such as building a prayer centre (Dunn, 2001).
The extent to which the categories of race, ethnicity (culture) and religion are conflated in the ‘common sense’ of racism* is an aspect which needs to be studied, especially in as much as it determines the scope of legislation and the targeting of anti-racist initiatives and resources…
Poynting’s long article has much to commend it, including some disturbing personal stories.
Nothing of what I have written, I hasten to add, is in any way meant to stigmatise Koreans or Korean culture, a point I made at the end yesterday with reference to Port Arthur. On the other hand I have seen up close less horrendous examples of the bicultural alienation some Korean-Australian students feel. Some years ago we were all shocked when one of our former students, a Korean-Australian, was murdered. We did much soul-searching then about what may have been involved. One of the more alienated Korean-Australian contemporaries of that boy opened up to me about a whole lot of things, and thanked me for some of the things I had been saying or writing on the cultural issues involved.
About that time too after a Year 12 Farewell ceremony I was, much to my surprise, on the receiving end of a big hug from one of those Korean students I had been working with for the previous six years… Additional note
A feature of the more alienated Korean students in my experience from the mid 90s through to 2005 — and I stress of some, though quite a few — was their fandom of the US star Tupac Shakur and of “Thug Life”.
The concept of “Thug Life” was viewed by Shakur as a philosophy for life. Shakur developed the word into an acronym standing for “The Hate U Gave Little Infants F**ks Everybody”. He declared that the dictionary definition of a “thug” as being a rogue or criminal was not how he used the term, but rather he meant someone who came from oppressive or squalid background and little opportunity but still made a life for themselves and were proud.
Also in that post:
Korean Student Forum 8 September 2004 at Sydney Institute of TAFE….
In the “behaviour” workshop one of the police officers said something that adds perspective. He said that if we see a group of young people kicking a soccer ball around a park we feel positive about it, but if you take away the soccer ball and have the same group a bit later at night, or at a mall, people start saying “It’s a gang.” There’s something in that.
Victoria is having a debate about gangs. Specifically, it is debating whether it is appropriate to call groups of young people who are predominantly from African backgrounds a “gang” and, so named, what should be done about it.
It’s also having a debate about race, which is being waged in the comment sections of front-page articles on gang violence, and on social media, where comments like “stop immigration until this mess is sorted” populate Victoria police’s official Facebook page.
Both debates are linked to a perceived increase in large-scale violent offences committed by young people of African appearance, most of whom have been linked to Melbourne’s Sudanese migrant community.
John Pesutto says the Andrews government is ignoring a ‘real crisis’, despite police warnings that referring to ‘gangs’ is counter-productive…
Media coverage of the issue, led by the News Corp tabloid the Herald Sun, has dubbed Victoria “a state of fear” and reported that it could undermine the incumbent Labor government’s chances in the November state election.
On Monday the prime minister weighed in, saying at a press conference in Sydney that “growing gang violence and lawlessness in Victoria” was “a failure of the Andrews government”….
So here we go, here we go, here we go… again! Moral panic time!
Despite his achievements, Deng warns against expecting all refugees who arrive in Australia to become overnight success stories.
“Refugees are not here to do miracles,” he says. “They are here to be assisted. They suffer from long-term trauma…You can’t expect them to get out there and succeed. They need help. They need personal contact. They need psychological assistance, they need counselling. They need support in terms of jobs.”…
“There is a problem in this country,” he says, calling attention to the many forms of discrimination – based on race, religion, sexuality, ability – found in the community. “Those who are on the fringe, they are people who look like me. We sit at the same table. I have to protect them. I have to voice their concerns. I will listen to them.” Deng’s brother John was also a university graduate, with a double degree in anthropology and international development. He was “discriminated against”, says Deng, and unable to find work in his field in Australia. He returned to South Sudan where he was tragically killed in 2014.
Philip Ruddock was a Minister of Immigration when he travelled to Kakuma more than a decade ago. His mission led to the mass migration of the South Sudanese refugees who were stationed in Kakuma refugee camp. During the 2015 refugee day, South Sudanese and other marginalised areas Community Association in NSW honoured Philip for his care.
Yesterday I mentioned last year’s family history project, which occupied me for much of April and May 2017. That project brought together in one place posts from several blogs. It is a rather scary thought, in that I may or may not be around — being of a certain age — but the bicentennial of my Whitfield convict ancestor’s arrival is rapidly approaching. He left Ireland in 1821 and arrived in Sydney in 1822. Here is what Sydney looked like one year on from that arrival.
That image comes from the designers working on the Barangaroo site just to the west of Sydney Harbour Bridge. There is much to reflect on in that image too, given current discussion on the suitability of 26 January as Australia Day — but I have dealt with that one so often!
Putting family history on the internet has been rewarding. I have learnt much and made the acquaintance of family members I have not met in real life. Sometimes they point out errors or omissions. Recently, for example, Stuart Daniels pointed out a deficiency in my 2013 post Family history–some news on the Whitfield front. Stuart emailed: “Neil just looked at your Blog, and you are missing the death dates for Joseph Whitfield 29 Sept 1860; James Albert Whitfield died 1958; Jane Amy Bent Whitfield died 1963. If you need this sort of information I have it ALL. I have the Whitfield tree back to1697 Stangmore Co. Tyrone.” In my post I had quoted an older version of the family tree. If any of you are interested in Stuart’s information, contact me and I can put you in touch with Stuart.
And tonight we have the Australian of the Year awards. There are many fine candidates. I will be watching ABC tonight!
#Strongwomen. "I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful - for all of it." Kristin Armstrong
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