On race(2)
Last night I carried a young couple from a budget hotel in the City to Merrylands, near Parramatta. They were Fijian Indians who live in Vancouver, Canada and were in Sydney on a short vacation to visit a cousin.
The woman remained silent as the bloke talked about Canada and Fiji, his business plus general tourism stuff. Although he avoided mention of racial tension in his homeland I couldn’t help but recall my visits to Vancouver in the eighties.
Back then there was lots of resentment from Canadians to the sudden influx of Indian immigrants and I heard many stories of tension and skirmishes between groups of young people from both clans.
These conflicts have some resemblance to the bashings of Indian students in Sydney by Lebanese punks.
Twenty five years ago I judged the trouble in Vancouver to be primarily motivated by race. However viewed from the perspective of the Sydney assaults I now believe those conflicts were more likely about territory disputes between locals and newcomers.
The fact these groups involve different cultures seems purely incidental. Canucks, Indians, Lebanese, Fijians...whoever, just 'not in my back yard'.
We arrived at the address, a block of villas, to find a large group of people gathered around a heavily smoking barbeque in the common driveway.
When we couldn’t see any Indians in the group the bloke got out to confirm the address, thence returned to inform his girlfriend that his cousin and family were also there having dinner with their neighbours.
The neighbours were of 'Middle Eastern' origin.
Hi Adrian,
Nice profile in todays Sydney Magazine.
AG
Posted by: AG Canberra | June 25, 2009 at 04:05 PM
Yeah, thanks AG, did this interview a couple of months ago so the 30 hours per week quote is somewhat dated. Hope to pick up the slack soon.
Posted by: adrian | June 27, 2009 at 04:42 AM