December 25, 2005
UNIQUE EVEN WITHIN THE ANGLOSPHERE:
On the beach: Why the recent riots in Australia should surprise no one (Yvonne Abraham, December 25, 2005, Boston Globe)
Part of the animus can be explained by familiar factors. Sept. 11 and the terrorist attacks in Bali and London have bred anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment. And as in France, young Muslim men in Sydney's heavily Lebanese west and southwest, with disproportionately high unemployment and poverty rates, are disaffected. Additionally, Lebanese gangs have committed several violent, high-profile crimes in recent years, including a series of horrific rapes, feeding stereotypes and ill will.But another part of the tension is peculiarly Australian. Despite its reputation for welcoming immigrants-30 percent of Sydney's current population is foreign-born-Australia can be a difficult place to be one. Especially if you're Lebanese. And especially lately. Over the past 10 years, Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal-National coalition government has taken a harder official line against immigrants in a quest for more conservative votes. Further widening the divisions between Lebanese and Anglo-Australians, many Lebanese youth live in more insular communities than the generations that preceded them. They are also less willing to behave like guests in somebody else's country.
Growing up in working-class Sydney in the '70s, being Lebanese was the second-worst thing imaginable. Only Aborigines ranked lower. ''Wogs," the Anglos called us, and often ''dirty wogs." We heard it everywhere: shouted from passing cars, on the playground, at shopping malls.
They could spot us a mile away. In the United States, assimilation comes relatively easily for many Lebanese immigrants, particularly for those who are Christian, like my family. When I arrived in Boston 12 years ago, I was struck by how quickly I went from being a member of an easily identifiable, oft-maligned minority to being simply white.
Folks consistently underestimate how different America is. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 25, 2005 8:46 AM
Point of clarification: The Muslim population in question isn't Lebanese. They're Palestinians who were relocated to Lebanon where they weren't welcomed and then relocated again to various places, among them Australia where they have refused to assimilate and in many cases, even refuse to speak English.
How to drive one reader to distraction:
Abraham writes: Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal-National coalition government has taken a harder official line against immigrants in a quest for more conservative votes as if she knows Howard's motive as a statement of fact. It drives me crazy.
No one actually disputes that's how Howard used immigration:
http://www.vdare.com/derbyshire/australia_refugees.htm
Posted by: oj at December 25, 2005 11:28 AMoj. Is it your contention that Howard was expedient and only pretended a position on immigration to win votes when his actual beliefs were otherwise?
Posted by: erp at December 25, 2005 6:40 PMOf course. There was an election to be won and he was trailing.
Posted by: oj at December 25, 2005 6:56 PMGo read Tim Blair for a different view of this, which is that far from committing "several violent, high-profile crimes in recent years", there has been a strong wave of violent crime for a large number of years. Why, our Australian commentator explains this as well.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at December 25, 2005 8:13 PM