On patriotism and what it means to be an australian
(This grew from a comment I made on this entry of shineys-are-us's, and then today I got all inspired to post it by the american election)
Having read up a bunch on racism and it's history (in Australia and elsewhere) I started thinking about patriotism, and whether there was any way for me to be proud of being australian without being complicit in the darker parts of it's history. I haven't entirely figured that out, but these are my thoughts so far.
I have a rather complicated ambivalence about the idea of the nation. As I understand it, before that in Europe power was invested in the aristocracy/clergy (who themselves felt more loyalty/kinship with their class/church than their subjects), and the nation was needed as a different idea people could have loyalty to. But once you decide that "everyone" is part of the nation then people start getting picky about who gets to count as "everyone", and you either end up with segregation (as in pre-modern "democracies", ie you only get to vote if you're greek/male/own land/white/etc) or actively purging people, as in MANY modern european nations in the 30s as nationalism took hold, from the Stalinist purges of russia to various genocidal massacres like the nazis to the white australian policy here. It seems like "everyone is equal" is a largely incompatible idea with "everyone is different", look at the way multicultural Yugoslavia collapsed once they got autonomy. As I understand it, there is a deeply depressing correlation between how ethnically diverse a country is and how much rich people resent helping the poor, to the extent that socialist democracies like Sweden etc are getting less socialist as their non-white immigrant population increases.
So there's that, and I'm not sure what to make of it: I think the nation makes a better thing to be loyal to than the Pope or the King etc, but worry that it brings a bunch of xenophobia and narrow mindedness about who "counts" as a citizen as a natural consequence.
Also, I had this hard-to-explain-without-it-sounding-obvious epiphany about the fact that there isn't just one way to be australian, and that the "normal" way is tied in to a specific experience of class/race/religion etc. For example: south east asians have been visiting and immigrating to australia since long before european settlement. After european settlement there was a large influx of asian immigrants/forced labourers. The usual multicultural attitude is to say that the Asian-australian experience is an acceptable add-on to the european default, but in fact it makes just as much sense to see them as the default an us as the exotic interlopers. And this is of course even more true of aboriginal australians. If you try to argue that since there's more europeans than anyone else we get to be the default then by the same argument rural australia etc becomes as "un-australian" as asian australians etc, as do we on the west coast (thought that's not quite so true at the moment with the mining boom). Sure they're a large part of our history, but so are criminals, and noone calls them the "true" australians. (No offense to people from the country by the way, I'm trying to include more people, not exclude you :))
To take some data from Wikipedia's page on aussie demographics, we are (nb I may have done some of these wrong. Numbers are hard):
immigrants: 24%
At least one immigrant parent: 40%
asian descent: 9%
Italian/greek descent: 6%
not urban: 9%
No religion: 11%
Buddhist: 2%
Muslim: 2%
Aboriginal: 3%
Speak a language other than english: 28%
East coast: 80% (I think)
More catholic than anglican
More single than married
In America, people try to paint african americans as not "really american", because while they've been a vital part of americas history for hundreds of years and make up 13% of the population they don't fit the traditional narrative of what it means to be american (LOL try that now). But there is no way to define that narrative as the most important without circular arguments: "normal" is what matches my opinions, and my opinion is more important because it fits the norm.
Not that one should decide who gets to "count" based on the size of their demographic, I'm just trying to point out that the "default" isn't as overwhelming as we might think.
And the solution to this isn't to try and come up with some blurred together average australian-ness we all "have in common", it's to accept that we have genuinely different, somewhat incompatible experiences (which blur together at the edges, but have no one single over-arcing thing in common apart from a shared geography) all of which are equally valid ways of being australian, and all of which have different values and histories. Any patriotism needs to take that into account. Also I'm not saying it's a good idea to take the appraoch (as in say Singapore(*)) of having a small number of strictly defined ways of being "Australian" defined by ethnicity and setting everything up to cater to them, since people are much more complicated than that, and "equal but different" very easily leads to one group being privileged and everyone else having their possibilities restricted.
All of that said: I love Australia, think it's the best country in the world, but also believe very strongly that there's a lot about it that needs improving :) I'm just still figuring out what that really means, and how to express it without silencing the voices of people with an equally valid and different POV.
Also, if you're interested in some links about race in australia have a dig through these: http://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/147685.html
I'm REALLY interested in readable and good histories of Australia in general if you know of any!
(*) Which I don't have a super nuanced understanding of, but it's the system of this type I'm most familiar with, Singaporeans are free to berate me for my complete cluelessness :) It's possible other countries have better/different ways of being genuinely multicultural.
Having read up a bunch on racism and it's history (in Australia and elsewhere) I started thinking about patriotism, and whether there was any way for me to be proud of being australian without being complicit in the darker parts of it's history. I haven't entirely figured that out, but these are my thoughts so far.
I have a rather complicated ambivalence about the idea of the nation. As I understand it, before that in Europe power was invested in the aristocracy/clergy (who themselves felt more loyalty/kinship with their class/church than their subjects), and the nation was needed as a different idea people could have loyalty to. But once you decide that "everyone" is part of the nation then people start getting picky about who gets to count as "everyone", and you either end up with segregation (as in pre-modern "democracies", ie you only get to vote if you're greek/male/own land/white/etc) or actively purging people, as in MANY modern european nations in the 30s as nationalism took hold, from the Stalinist purges of russia to various genocidal massacres like the nazis to the white australian policy here. It seems like "everyone is equal" is a largely incompatible idea with "everyone is different", look at the way multicultural Yugoslavia collapsed once they got autonomy. As I understand it, there is a deeply depressing correlation between how ethnically diverse a country is and how much rich people resent helping the poor, to the extent that socialist democracies like Sweden etc are getting less socialist as their non-white immigrant population increases.
So there's that, and I'm not sure what to make of it: I think the nation makes a better thing to be loyal to than the Pope or the King etc, but worry that it brings a bunch of xenophobia and narrow mindedness about who "counts" as a citizen as a natural consequence.
Also, I had this hard-to-explain-without-it-sounding-obvious epiphany about the fact that there isn't just one way to be australian, and that the "normal" way is tied in to a specific experience of class/race/religion etc. For example: south east asians have been visiting and immigrating to australia since long before european settlement. After european settlement there was a large influx of asian immigrants/forced labourers. The usual multicultural attitude is to say that the Asian-australian experience is an acceptable add-on to the european default, but in fact it makes just as much sense to see them as the default an us as the exotic interlopers. And this is of course even more true of aboriginal australians. If you try to argue that since there's more europeans than anyone else we get to be the default then by the same argument rural australia etc becomes as "un-australian" as asian australians etc, as do we on the west coast (thought that's not quite so true at the moment with the mining boom). Sure they're a large part of our history, but so are criminals, and noone calls them the "true" australians. (No offense to people from the country by the way, I'm trying to include more people, not exclude you :))
To take some data from Wikipedia's page on aussie demographics, we are (nb I may have done some of these wrong. Numbers are hard):
immigrants: 24%
At least one immigrant parent: 40%
asian descent: 9%
Italian/greek descent: 6%
not urban: 9%
No religion: 11%
Buddhist: 2%
Muslim: 2%
Aboriginal: 3%
Speak a language other than english: 28%
East coast: 80% (I think)
More catholic than anglican
More single than married
In America, people try to paint african americans as not "really american", because while they've been a vital part of americas history for hundreds of years and make up 13% of the population they don't fit the traditional narrative of what it means to be american (LOL try that now). But there is no way to define that narrative as the most important without circular arguments: "normal" is what matches my opinions, and my opinion is more important because it fits the norm.
Not that one should decide who gets to "count" based on the size of their demographic, I'm just trying to point out that the "default" isn't as overwhelming as we might think.
And the solution to this isn't to try and come up with some blurred together average australian-ness we all "have in common", it's to accept that we have genuinely different, somewhat incompatible experiences (which blur together at the edges, but have no one single over-arcing thing in common apart from a shared geography) all of which are equally valid ways of being australian, and all of which have different values and histories. Any patriotism needs to take that into account. Also I'm not saying it's a good idea to take the appraoch (as in say Singapore(*)) of having a small number of strictly defined ways of being "Australian" defined by ethnicity and setting everything up to cater to them, since people are much more complicated than that, and "equal but different" very easily leads to one group being privileged and everyone else having their possibilities restricted.
All of that said: I love Australia, think it's the best country in the world, but also believe very strongly that there's a lot about it that needs improving :) I'm just still figuring out what that really means, and how to express it without silencing the voices of people with an equally valid and different POV.
Also, if you're interested in some links about race in australia have a dig through these: http://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/147685.html
I'm REALLY interested in readable and good histories of Australia in general if you know of any!
(*) Which I don't have a super nuanced understanding of, but it's the system of this type I'm most familiar with, Singaporeans are free to berate me for my complete cluelessness :) It's possible other countries have better/different ways of being genuinely multicultural.