The injustices of national days

As I write this, Australia is still dealing with the fall-out from last week's Australia Day. Due to a stunning double whammy of racism and sexism, Labour is polling at record lows and much of this is attributed to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's apparent weakness in dealing with some pretty substantial Australia Day protests.

It was a story that went around the world, due largely to an incredible photograph. Julia Gillard, leader of one of the most influential countries in the world at present, fallen and broken and in need of rescuing. What had brought us here, to such a remarkable turn of events? A comment by opposition leader Tony Abbott that the Tent Embassy, an Aboriginal political movement that has existed for 40 years outside Parliament, has passed it's use by date and should "move on". The disrespect and tactlessness of such a comment on the 40th anniversary of the Tent Embassy is another matter. What is important here is the palpable tension that this day causes, and the total lack of awareness that a significant section of the Australian population has of the continuing issues faced by the original owners of this country.

National days have always felt slightly uncomfortable to me, especially in the case of settler states like Australia and New Zealand. In South Africa, our national day is a nice one - 27 April, the day apartheid officially ended. In the USA things seem a little cleaner too, with Independence Day being a celebration of independence from the UK (although Thanksgiving is another matter). But in Australia and New Zealand, things are a lot murkier...

Australia Day is always on January 26, the day that the first English fleet arrived and Australia officially became a colony of England. Sounds harmless right? Except we all know it was anything but harmless for the people who then experienced the brunt of one of the most ruthless colonisations the English ever undertook. And the reason it was so easy to declare Australia a colony? Well that's because it was terra nullius or unsettled land. The Aboriginal people did not even warrant a consideration by the English legal system. That's why many of them call the day Invasion Day. 

New Zealand's national day is another story, as is New Zealand's colonisation story. While NZ has no official national day, the closest thing to one is certainly Waitangi Day, February 6 every year, the day that marks the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. We all know the history of that, and the broken promises that followed the signing of the document. And it, like Australia Day, can be a flashpoint for protest and racial discord. But to many, perhaps more optimistic, Kiwis the day represents something more hopeful. Perhaps it's moving on, perhaps it's saying sorry, perhaps it's the continuing special relationship the document represents.

I've been horrified at the total disdain most Australians have for the ugly history they mark every year with Australia Day. Focusing  more on BBQs, the beach and some American style patriotism, most are completely unaware of why the date even exists. Except that they like that it's in summer. Australia Day doesn't even pretend to be cognisant of the colonisation of one of the oldest and most established populations in the world. It doesn't include them in the definition of "Australian". And suggestions to change the day to something that includes more recent immigrants, like Citizen Day, or something that marks Aboriginal history, like the historic 1967 referendum are met with viral Facebook status updates (that I know have caused me to defriend a person or two).

In contrast, New Zealanders are more aware of the meaning of Waitangi Day. Maybe it's because it's right there in the name. Maybe because it was (slightly) more recent. Maybe because in New Zealand we have a more politically active, socially prominent and cohesive indigenous population. Or maybe it's because simply having a document, a signed agreement, that was breached so many times and so blatantly, makes us more comfortable with admitting our shitty behaviour. Whatever it is, while Waitangi Day is never pretty, the awareness and the reverence and the attitude is infinitely better than Australia.

I've never ever felt more uncomfortable and disgusted with a paid day off work.

Deodorant, queuing and toilets...

Every few years a right wing politician (or shock-jock) says something dumb (as they are prone to) and opens the Pandora's box that is any public discussion on immigration. Today's stunner comes from Brisbane Liberal MP, Teresa Gambaro's comments that mandatory immigrant education should involve instructions on using deodorant and queuing. 

Immigration is something that the world has been grappling with for centuries, but never more so than the 20th and 21st centuries where two world wars, apartheid, genocides, economic crises and ethnic cleansings changed the cultural and racial make up of the West as people fled persecution, violence and crippling poverty. Countries now look completely different to how they did before and people don't know how to deal with that. I couldn't count on my fingers and toes the amount of times I've heard the statement 'You walk down Queen Street/Lambton Quay/Lygon Street and wouldn't know you're in Australia/New Zealand/Nazi Germany anymore. What is this - Tokyo/Beijing/another interchangeable East Asian country?' 

While I have plenty of experience as an immigrant, and a visible one at that, I have no experience of being in my country of birth and witnessing it change as a result of immigration. It's something I've thought about a lot as I've tried to unpick what New Zealanders, Frenchies or Australians think of me. As much as I try not to let idiocy affect me, the public support of Paul Henry's comments on being a 'real New Zealander' got to me in a big way. I wondered what people thought defined a real New Zealander, I wondered whether I was maybe half a New Zealander (having an Anglo name, Kiwi accent and Maori looks), and I wondered if I could ever be a real New Zealander in their eyes. And I contemplated being so challenged by change. Change was a part of my life, I'd never lived anywhere for more than 5 years since the age of 13. Why do people hate it so much?

From the perspective of this immigrant people are challenged for the following reasons:

• White guilt - Guilt isn't quite the right word here, it's more a form of vulnerability. I think people in settler states (that is all Western countries bar most of Europe) are subconsciously aware of their precarious status as the dominant power and majority population in countries that weren't rightfully theirs to begin with. The colonisation of countries like the USA, Australia, NZ and South Africa was done with lies, broken agreements, theft, genocide and often plain old war. I think there is an awareness that if we used their 'go back to where you came from' argument in its purest form, where they came from would often be somewhere they've never been. 
• Economic difficulties - if fifth form history taught me anything, it's that racial tension is always worse in times of recession. Nazism, in part, sprung from the debilitating reparation payments for Germany's role in World War I. Apartheid, in part, sprung from the threat of cheap black labour to white economic wellbeing. We're now in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unemployment is at record highs across the Western world. And immigrants are often better skilled and cheaper to hire than locals. In short, they're stealing our jobs.
• Fear of the unknown - to the people of my generation and socioeconomic class, moving around is normal, if not expected. But people of older generations have never seen their countries this way before. All these ethnic restaurants, grocery stores and different accents are scary. Interacting with people who've led lives so different to yours is scary. Change on this scale is always scary I guess. And it isn't a choice for the locals. It is, in a way, forced on them.

It's a complex issue. I think most are aware that immigration is often, like in the case of small, population net-loss New Zealand, economically necessary for a country to survive. Relying on people for survival but being simultaneously irritated by their difference leads to confused emotions. And it leads people to say things like we need to teach immigrants about deodorant. 

For bullet point list number two, let's look at why statements like this, and NZ's very own Lockwood Smith's statements on Asian's small hands and Pacific Islander's body odour, are problematic and do not in fact 'tell it like it is':

• They create false binaries - Asians have small hands, everyone else has large hands. Immigrants don't use deodorant, all Australians use deodorant
• They group all immigrants into one group - I doubt Ms Gambaro was talking about immigrants from England or New Zealand in her comments, but comments like this group everyone else in the world into one homogenous group that doesn't use deodorant.
• They reinforce stereotypes without any evidence - that immigrants are dirty or have no concept of how to behave in a well mannered way
• They "other" people - if one person from say, Swaziland, didn't put on deodorant on 2 December 2011, all people from Swaziland, nay all Africans, nay all black people, don't use deodorant. If an Australian didn't put on deodorant on 2 December 2011, they forgot that day, or are maybe an individual with poor personal hygiene. Immigrants, in this thinking, aren't allowed the benefits of individuality that Australians are. They are the one uniform other.
• They assume Western standards are the norm - perhaps deodorant isn't such a great thing after all, perhaps queuing is an ineffective way of being served. We'll never look into issues with an analytic eye  if we simply assume the Western way is the right way.

So I'll continue to watch the saga  of Ms Gambaro with interest. I must admit that I've had the complete opposite reaction to this saga than I did to the Lockwood Smith and Paul Henry sagas. I don't really know why. Maybe because I don't intend to make Australia home for too long I'm less invested and more distanced. Also I know that with my new accent and my new passport, I'm in a pretty privileged position as a model minority. I'm now identified as a New Zealander. Full stop. No questions about 'yes but from where originally?' like I used to get in NZ. So I know those statements don't refer to me. It's a pretty plum position to be in, I may get used to this model minority business actually...