Racism

Last month in the school holidays my family and I went overseas to visit my stepmother’s friends and family in England. It was a lot of fun and we spent a lot of time doing tourist-y England things, like visiting Stonehenge, and Hampton Court Palace, and there was one day when my dad and I caught the train from Southampton up to London to visit the Royal British Museum. The museum was really interesting and I saw some wonderful things, but from that particular day out the one thing I’ll probably remember is the man we met on the train home.

The train was coming into the station so Dad and I were waiting next to the doors, and this very white, 30-something man with a bike was also waiting in the vestibule for the train to stop. There was a little bin in the wall filled with empty beer cans and I could tell that this guy was on his third or fourth. He was pretty grumpy looking and I was wishing we hadn’t stood up so early to wait by the doors, because that meant we had to stand in this small space with a daunting man for two minutes more than I felt comfortable with.

Suddenly a security guard came up behind him and pushed gently passed him to try and walk through the carriage. He was a big man, a big black man, and he was just trying to get on with his work. He hardly knocked the grumpy guy.

But the man started brandishing his beer can and yelled out after the security guard as he walked away. “EXCUSE ME! Ya don’t just shove through like that. A little COMMON COURTESY goes a long way!”

I could understand that. He was drunk, and the guard had had to squeeze past a bit, so as loud and annoying as he was I could understand his yelling. I could understand when he turned to my dad and said, “Sorry mate. I know ya’ve got ya daughter with ya. Just a little politeness doesn’t hurt is all.” I could understand him.

I couldn’t understand him, however, when he went on with “I’m not racist, mate. I have colour television and everything. Just common courtesy, ya know?”

My dad chuckled nervously and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, mate.”

The problem with this guy is that it hadn’t even crossed my mind that he might be being racist. The fact that the security guard had been black had barely registered with me until the guy pointed it out. The guy was obviously, undoubtedly being racist and it made me so much more uncomfortable than I already was.

I think that as much as we, in our “developed” world, try to stamp out racism and shout out to everybody that will listen that ours is an egalitarian society, there will always, always be those people who judge others by the colour of their skin. And I think there are more of us that are racist than we would care to admit. We may not be outwardly discriminatory, but when we’re drunk or we think nobody’s watching the kind of yucky behaviour exhibited by the guy on the train can just leap out.

I wasn’t in London for long enough to get a feel for the general racism of the place, but I’ve been living in Sydney long enough to know that we are quite racist.

I go to a selective high school, which means you have to pass an exam to get in. Competition for selective school places in Sydney is incredibly, incredibly high and children are typically rewarded with expensive gadgets if they pass. On the flipside, I’ve heard of children being punished by their parents with more tutoring for not passing the test, and even one or two who have been grounded because they didn’t make it in to the state’s top selective school.

The media is obsessed with migrants in selective schools - this article from the Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/ethnicity-at-selective-schools-provokes-fierce-debate-20100913-159da.html

Australia has quite a high number of migrants coming in from China and across Asia. I don’t know what it is and I don’t think anyone could possibly say why, but the number of children from Asian migrant families going to selective schools is incredibly high. Like, over 50%. I’m writing this in class, and I look around and see 10 non-Asian students out of 30. And that’s pretty high. In my normal class there’s only about four or five out of 30.

My parents have all told me stories about white parents who have asked them – “How do you feel about all three of your children going to Asian schools?”

Seriously, this is when my blood starts to boil.

I think it’s very interesting that there are so many Asians at my school. I think it’s fascinating that they all seem to be pushed very hard to achieve academically by their parents. My friends and I (nearly all Asian) even joke about the ratio of Asians to non-Asians at my school. I think that’s – mostly – perfectly OK. I do not think that the number of “Asians” in one particular place should be something for the media or white Australians to worry about, because it is simply not a problem.

Just because there are a lot of Asians here doesn’t mean it’s an “Asian school”. It also doesn’t mean that it’s an Anglo school, or an African school, or whatever. Students should not be seen by the colour of their skin. People should not be seen by the colour of their skin. A school should not be defined by the colour of its students’ skins, but by the calibre and the capacity of those students. My school is not an “Asian school”. My school is an intelligent school, my school is an accepting school, my school is a powerful school, my school is a great school.

Any parent who worries about the Asians taking up all the selective school places and not leaving room for their poor little diddums child can get stuffed. It’s not the Asian children who take up the places, it’s the smart, academically inclined, pushed-to-achieve-by-their-parents children. So what if they’re Asian? That is irrelevant. If you want to worry about why your child isn’t getting in, blame the actions of the parents of the children who do unnecessarily push and push and push them towards good grades. Please do not blame them because of the colour of their skin. White parents can push and push too, you know.

This is just the racism that exists in my world. It’s a tiny little part of the amount that exists in the entire world. Racism is the hole in society that sucks us in until we can’t see the light of equality and love for the life of us. Racism hurts. I hate it. Enough is enough.

xx
Za.

Tags: Asian, education, London, migrants, New South Wales, racism, selective schools, Sydney