Tedious self-examination
During TRU I described myself as having "minimal contact with POC". I still think that's true, but it's qualified by two things: one, I have minimal contact with everyone; if you add up the people I normally see face to face each week, not including Jon, a quarter of them are Asian. And two, the casual contact I have with other human beings, on those rare occasions when I haul myself out of the house, includes lots of POC.
I looked up the statistics for our Sydney suburb, Ryde, from the last Census. About two in five locals were born overseas, mostly in China or Italy, and there are hundreds of local households speaking Italian, Cantonese or Mandarin, Armenian, and Arabic. About 300 people in the suburb were born in Iran - hence the Persian supermarket. And there are 40 Indigenous Australians.
I've just come back from Eastwood, a nearby suburb packed with Asian shops and supermarkets - very handy for a bit of vegetarian shopping. About half the people there were born overseas, mostly in China, Hong Kong, and Korea; the languages spoken at home, other than English, are mostly Cantonese and Mandarin and Korean. Down the road at West Ryde, the picture is similar, though with more people born in India.
Now all this is probably pretty typical for a big city like Sydney, but obviously not for the whole of Australia. For example, the Newcastle suburb where my paternal grandparents lived has few first-generation immigrants, mostly from England. The picture is similar for my parents' Sydney suburb, although there are enough people from China and Hong Kong that Cantonese is the second most spoken language at home. Other areas of Sydney have different ethnic makeups again: for example, Lakemba is about two-thirds immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Viet Nam. And so on.
On a vaguely related note, Jon and I had the interesting experience of wandering into a Bad Neighbourhood in Chicago. As with DC, the Bad Neighbourhood - ie poor and Black - was only two streets from a pleasant, leafy suburb. We ate in a small pizza place, surrounded by locals, who were talking in what I guess is a Black Chicago accent? I couldn't understand a lot of what I heard, but it has a lovely sound, it really struck me. All the words I can think of to describe it sound awful - "lilting", "musical", "rhythmic". Bleah. Anyway, we escaped without being mugged or killed in any way and compared notes on the educational experience of being the only White people in a restaurant. It wasn't scary at all. Maybe Sydney's diversity was good practice for it.
I'd love to hear from anybody reading this about the makeup of your neighbourhood!
I looked up the statistics for our Sydney suburb, Ryde, from the last Census. About two in five locals were born overseas, mostly in China or Italy, and there are hundreds of local households speaking Italian, Cantonese or Mandarin, Armenian, and Arabic. About 300 people in the suburb were born in Iran - hence the Persian supermarket. And there are 40 Indigenous Australians.
I've just come back from Eastwood, a nearby suburb packed with Asian shops and supermarkets - very handy for a bit of vegetarian shopping. About half the people there were born overseas, mostly in China, Hong Kong, and Korea; the languages spoken at home, other than English, are mostly Cantonese and Mandarin and Korean. Down the road at West Ryde, the picture is similar, though with more people born in India.
Now all this is probably pretty typical for a big city like Sydney, but obviously not for the whole of Australia. For example, the Newcastle suburb where my paternal grandparents lived has few first-generation immigrants, mostly from England. The picture is similar for my parents' Sydney suburb, although there are enough people from China and Hong Kong that Cantonese is the second most spoken language at home. Other areas of Sydney have different ethnic makeups again: for example, Lakemba is about two-thirds immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Viet Nam. And so on.
On a vaguely related note, Jon and I had the interesting experience of wandering into a Bad Neighbourhood in Chicago. As with DC, the Bad Neighbourhood - ie poor and Black - was only two streets from a pleasant, leafy suburb. We ate in a small pizza place, surrounded by locals, who were talking in what I guess is a Black Chicago accent? I couldn't understand a lot of what I heard, but it has a lovely sound, it really struck me. All the words I can think of to describe it sound awful - "lilting", "musical", "rhythmic". Bleah. Anyway, we escaped without being mugged or killed in any way and compared notes on the educational experience of being the only White people in a restaurant. It wasn't scary at all. Maybe Sydney's diversity was good practice for it.
I'd love to hear from anybody reading this about the makeup of your neighbourhood!