[-empyre-] Re: race

[fizzion <fizzion@optusnet.com.au>]

Racism is something that appals me and over the years continues to do so.
Our f***ing Prime Minister, John Howard used it as a political weapon in the
last election didn¹t he.
I¹m white, English and 61 and have lived in Australia since 1949.

Sometime in the 70¹s I went with a friend to Fiji for a few weeks. We stayed
in an abandoned resort in one of the huts there, the place was a Roussauian
tangle of overgrown trees, cane toads, lizzards and a wonderful swimming
pool full of floating leaf litter and dead dragon flies. Rained every day.

Anyway,  one day we decided to go to the beach, a bit like taking a swim in
a warm bath compared to jumping in at Bondi. We got talking to some Fijians
there, after a while one of them said ?You¹d better watch out for those
Indians over there, they¹ll pinch your stuff¹. OK, I thought, whatever.
Then a little while later we got talking to the Indians and lo and behold
they said exactly the same thing, you could have knocked me over with a
feather! Jesus Christ I thought, they¹re just like us.
It was kind of funny in a sad sort of way. You have to watch that ?they¹
thing though because really its ?us¹ isn¹t it.

Till then my attitude toward people of other races had been non racist but I
felt a kind of ambivalence, I didn¹t quite know how to relate because I
didn¹t understand their cultural background, their traditions, I didn¹t have
that in my life, it was unknown territory for me. But I started to find out.
While we were still in Fiji we drove around the island from Nandi to Suva,
we decided to have a sort of farewell dinner in one of the hotels there. We
had a steam boat, fantastic. We¹d invited a Fijian man and his wife that
we¹d been chatting to on the plane coming over. Only the man turned up, so
my partner at the time said she¹d go and fetch his wife. Right decision, big
mistake, patriarchal culture. Bit embarrassing really but what the hell.
One of my heroes now is Emily Kame Kngwarreye, one of our greatest Aust
[aboriginal] artists, what she did and the way she did it was just so
liberating to see.

The kind of culture that can give rise to animals like Sherrif Lawrence
Rainey and his Deputy Cecil Price has got to be a very sick culture. They
were the guys that were convicted of murdering 3 civil rights workers in the
Mississipi in 1964. Now we¹re a little more sophisticated, now we use
victimised Iraqi and Bangladeshi refugees as a threat to garner votes don¹t
we John Howard. Which reminds me, Tom Lehrer has a great song which lampoons
racist attitudes, National Brotherhood Week I think its called.

In the 80¹s we lived in Marrickville for a few years, you could be the only
white person walking on the street there, I loved living there, Greek
nieghbors on one side, Fijians on the other. If you want to slough off those
vague racist feelings I highly recomend living with another culture/race or
whatever. Art can build bridges in a multicultural world but I think it has
to happen in the community, where we live together. It¹s no good just being
a spectator, you¹ve got to be a participant, build things together.

I think what Dario Fo did with Comedie Del Arte was a good process, approach
where art works to liberate, strong parody, gentle parody. And story
telling. The mime Robert Shields of Union Square fame was another, getting
inside people, showing them a human mirror, compassion. The trouble is there
is so much bad TV and radio now with its soft racism and rampant sexism, its
so soul destroying.

Hey, remember that cover of COLORS [of Benneton] that Tibor Kalman did? It
featured a pic of the Queen [Elizabeth] where her face had been colored
black [negro], caused quite a stir, yeah.

Barrie