I attended a networking event the other night in Sydney during which an American friend and I struck up a conversation with an older Australian man. We were talking about a pretty bland topic – Australian television – when the man said he had a joke for us.
“An Aboriginal man walks down the street wearing only one thong. Someone calls out, ‘You’ve lost a thong!’ The Aboriginal man says, ‘No mate, I’ve just found one.’”
An uneasy look crept across my friend’s face and my guts started churning. We swiftly changed the subject. I made it my mission to distance myself from this man for the rest of the night.
Incidents like this one have played out in many a public setting since I moved from America to Australia in early 2010. There was the random man in Woolworths who thought it appropriate to tell me Indians run all the 7-Elevens; an old roommate who called Lebanese people “Lebos”; the friend of a friend at a rugby match who made comments about the indigenous players. The proliferation of jabs at or generalisations about minorities takes on a new level in the land down under, at least for me.
The subject of whether or not Australia is “racist” as a whole has been debated heavily over the years in major newspapers and on news shows throughout the country. Part of the concern stems from actual statistics. For instance, 36 per cent of Australians do not think certain Middle Eastern and Asian groups fit in with Aussie society, as reported in a 2009 survey by VicHealth. The same report said one in 10 Australians does not think all races are equal.
Most countries practice some form of racism or ethnic intolerance, and Australia is not necessarily worse than the others. Both Australia and America mistreated certain indigenous and minority groups well into the second half of the last century. In my experience, however, Australians seem to be more permissive of derogatory mentions of race or ethnicity than Americans. And that makes me uncomfortable.
The last place I lived before Sydney was Philadelphia, a city that, while diverse, still harbours its fair share of racist people. I remember the ex whose elderly father still used the “n” word, the kids in heavily Caucasian areas who shouted racial slurs at minority classmates, the fellow reporter who made sweeping generalisations about certain ethnic groups and races in the newsroom. But in this corner of America, I less often heard out-of-the blue jokes about race spewed from the mouths of strangers at a happy hour or other public event.
In Sydney, such comments are almost like an ice breaker. Words like “chocko” and “Abo” are as accepted in the vernacular here as “mate.” The political correctness that has come to permeate my mother country is sorely missing from conversation in Australia.
That’s precisely where I stumble. Should I, as a non-native resident, attempt to correct what I deem inappropriate language used against minority populations inside and outside Australia because I come from a country where it has become less OK to talk this way? Will it really help encourage any type of consideration among Australian citizens regarding the things they say? Maybe when you’re an expat, you learn to just accept the place you’re in instead of trying to change it.
Something tells me I’m nearing the end of my tolerance for intolerant speech, though. Every joke or comment left hanging in the air with my silence only furthers the idea this type of language is acceptable among certain Australians. And while I may not be able to change the way people speak in my adopted country, I can let them know at least one person won’t stand for it.