Australian values and the long shadow of racial fear

While politicians invoke “Australian values” as a test of belonging, Australia’s own history reveals how often these values are shaped by racism, exclusion and fear of the “other.” Frances writes Letters.

On our annual ANZAC commemoration days, is there anything that speaks louder to both mind and heart than the words “Australian values”? Weren’t our brave, friendly old diggers the perfect example of cheerful, pat-on-the-back Australian values in action?

It seems that the Coalition wants to establish these words as an official norm: the gateway to the acceptability of immigrants.

Oh, okay. Nobody wants terrorists. Of course, we will push for these friendly, egalitarian Australian beliefs to be enshrined as government policy.

The only problem is: what exactly are “Australian values”? Unfortunately, any look at our history will reveal that some are not always as honorable as they say.

From the earliest days of our evolutionary days, an ancient human wariness still lurks deep within all of us: suspicion of the “other.” Tribalism that can explode with jeers, growls, or screams. And finally with machetes and guns. Or their ultra-efficient healing, Zyklon B.

The first thing the new Australian Government did after Federation in 1901 was White Australia policy.

“The doctrine of the equality of men was never intended to apply to the equality of the English and the Chinese.” declared new prime minister, Edmund Barton.

But it was important that at least British discretion was demonstrated. To cleverly camouflage the obvious reference to “racially undesirable types,” a cunning dictation test was devised by the government. But… what is this? Greek exam? Hungarian? Portuguese? Irrationally, any European language could be invoked to deliver the knockout blow. Then, if necessary, another… and another…

An anti-Semitic Nazi activist from Czechoslovakia in 1934 Egon KischHe was refused entry even though he had passed the test in several European languages. It was only that violent ancient language, Scottish Gaelic, that finally dealt him the decisive blow. (However, public objections eventually reversed this decision.)

Another candidate passed the French, German and Italian exams, but oh dear! I couldn’t handle Romanian very well.

It’s a bit sleazy and vile, you have to admit. After 1909, not a single hopeful candidate forced to take the exam managed to pass. The slightest “touch of the tar brush” guaranteed failure.

Prime Minister during World War II John CurtinHe reinforced his White Australia policy with a harsh statement:

“This country will forever remain home to the descendants of the people who came here in peace to establish the outpost of the British race in the South Seas.”

But just the “British race”? Long after the Second World War, an Australian Immigration Service document still ordered interviewers to weed out applicants who were “not pure Aryan.” Those ominous old-world lyrics, carrying the stench of the SS death camps, were still alive and permeating our bright new world, along with the Beatles, hippies and miniskirts.

This was the trick that kept Australia white for so long. Except, of course, the real owners of the land.

One day in 1954, an archetypal figure appeared in our schoolyard: a beautiful, light-filled legend – indeed! Margo was perfect: a little Dutch milkmaid from picture books. Round, blue eyes, milky white skin, beautiful linen golden braids.

The class was dazzled. During lunch, the girls attacked him with high-pitched voices of excitement. In the vote for class president, he immediately won by a landslide. The archetypal human dream comes true! And yet…

Yet each of us was born while World War II was still raging: a war fought largely to prove that millions of years of evolution had reached its majestic culmination in the flawless face of the blond Aryan boy. During this attempt, unspeakable horrors began to well up from the dark crevices of the world’s soul.

Britain, Australia and the other Allies had directed their entire collective strength against the Nazi heresy. Yet a glimpse of her milky white skin, cornflower blue eyes and flaxen braids had us Aussie kids eagerly taking notice.

We knew Aryan’s perfect image herrenvolk girlhood. He knew the Master Race’s crowning jewel – despite the evidence then coming to light that it had been horribly distorted: the monstrous deaths; Even Dr. mengele‘s famous experiments to turn Jewish and Roma children’s eyes blue like Margo’s by injecting chemicals.

And once the button was pushed, all the hopes and fears of our tribe’s prehistory rose to the surface from the depths of our collective psyche. We responded with blind and willing innocence. We saw in that sweet, white, milkmaid face the ideal for all humanity.

Reality is terrifying and mysterious. So why did angels always have white skin and golden hair? Why was the blue-eyed, blonde girl always cast as Mary in the school’s Nativity play? In the little “sacred pictures” we children collected, even Jesus often smiled sweetly with clear blue eyes through long, golden curls.

But religion has attempted to answer serious questions about human differences. Yes, girls and boys, we are all God’s children. A little Black child in Africa is just as precious in God’s eyes as you are.

A disturbing claim that is clearly full of wishful thinking. Frankly, we were the important ones, the blessed ones. The map, smeared all over with the triumphant British Empire pink, proved this.

Africans were loose-legged, childlike rhythmic beings, who danced a lot and starved for the peels and spinach that we Australian children refused to eat. The Chinese were the Yellow Peril. The word that best described them was “incomprehensible.” The eyes of the Arabs were slippery; They were selling things in the markets and you had to be extremely rude to get rid of them. The Indians were at least playing cricket but they really needed a very firm and controlling hand.

Kipling‘s ‘newly captured, sullen folk, half devil and half child’ there was ‘Lesser races without law’. They are clearly inferior to us in terms of intelligence, judgment and creativity. In Victorian parlance, they are, ‘slave races’.

Thus, the magnificence, creativity and intellectual power of the ancient empires (Islam, India, China) slipped into a strange tale. They are just now ‘The White Man’s burden’.

Miraculously, the mechanism for extracting great wealth from the colonies was invisible and as if skillfully disguised by the piety of the nobility. Oh yes! It was a thankless battle trying to civilize these dark races, but hell! Someone had to stoically square their shoulders and do it!

We’ve come a long way since those bad old days. But although incredibly cunning, ridiculous and embarrassing, these examples of nonsense may now sound good, but it is still useful to remember them from time to time. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

Because who knows? If “Australian values” once included such ignorance and hatred of the “other”, then could we possibly return to that state?