dvmplingss

I’ve debated over the last few days with whether or not I would post this because I didn’t want to offend anyone. Then I realised that I’m sick of having to tip toe around everyone else to make sure they aren’t offended when I’ve been offended by this country my whole life. Don’t get me wrong I once had a great love for this country and in some ways I still do. I was once proud to call myself Australian. But I no longer feel that way. I don’t feel like an Australian…

I don’t feel like an Australian when I’m constantly questioned about where I’m from and people can’t accept Australia as being my place of origin because I don’t ‘look’ Australian.

I don’t feel like an Australian when Aboriginal people were made to feel like their culture was wrong and ugly yet it’s suddenly become a trend for non Aboriginal people to appropriate our culture without showing respect.

I don’t feel like an Australian when Australia fails to recognise its black history. My family’s history.

I don’t feel like an Australian when Australia Day is celebrated on the day of invasion. The day genocide of Aboriginal people started. The start of ‘breeding out the black’.

I don’t feel like an Australian when white is seen as the standard for Australians and every person of colour ‘has to be from somewhere else’. No one questions where a white Australian is originally from.

I don’t feel like an Australian when destroying land for resources is seen as more important than sacred sites or preserving land and environment.

I don’t feel like an Australian when Australia treats refugees like they’re not worthy of life because they weren’t born here.

I don’t feel like an Australian when an Aboriginal woman speaks out about racism and white Australian responds with more racism and hate.

I’m with you Miranda Tapsell.

Australia, you should be ashamed.

I don’t feel like an Australian when they use the same terms to describe my ethnicity as they did for those children they took away.

I don’t feel like an Australian when they tell me to get over the Stolen Generation because “we’re all one people now” and I’m “half-white” anyway.

I don’t feel like an Australian when an Aboriginal footie player is called racist slurs on the field, and they still have to have a debate over whether it was a race thing or not.

I don’t feel like an Australian when the same people who are proud of their convict migrant heritage complain about being “invaded” by refugees and migrants.

I don’t feel like an Australian when my culture’s Dreamtime lore is read to children as fairy stories and bedtime books instead of works of legitimate cultural importance.

I don’t feel like an Australian when I’m told “but you’re not really Aboriginal, you’re not a dole-bludger or an alcoholic”.

I don’t feel like an Australian when I’m congratulated twice as much for finishing high school because it’s somehow a greater achievement when I’m “part-black”.

Because that’s - not what’s really going on?

What it actually is is “Immigrants are victims of a system set up to take advantage of them, in which employers and businesses use the fact that immigrants are more often than not in difficult, dangerous positions to strong-arm them into working long hours in often unhygienic or dangerous jobs for less than minimum wage.

“And the organisations that do that are often either the same as or in bed with the organisations that push the ‘Immigrants steal your jobs / immigrants want to push their values on the entire country / immigrants don’t deserve benefits’ narrative, because it allows them to not only socially isolate immigrants and make them more susceptible to being taken advantage of, but also to do things like refuse immigrants benefits that would allow them to viably consider not working for less than minimum wage in sub-par conditions, and to frame any attempt by immigrants to politically organise themselves and push for fair treatment as them being dangerously subversive.

“While the ‘immigrants steal your jobs’ thing is bullshit, it’s calculated bullshit pushed by politicians and businesses at a working class population in conjunction with an equally calculated strategy of enacting laws that endanger that population’s livelihoods and labour rights, at a time when the shenanigans of politicians and businesses have caused an employment crisis and a recession, because it’s easy to turn people who are terrified into bigots, and it’s politically advantageous to do so.”

…

I mean, I realise that that’s less pithy.

anyone remember this pic

this is what happened to her after it spread

like how are all of you gonna tell me that asians don’t face racism

when we get stereotyped to the point of causing mental disorders within our communities,

when our women are hypersexualized and when our men are desexualized,

when our culture is used an accessory and dismissed as simply being “pretty”,

when important traditions from our cultures are thrown away by western people because they see them as uncouth or uncivilized,

when we invented and created so much shit for the world but we are only recognized by “slanty eyes”,

when our individual cultures are forgotten and we are forced into being a messed up conglomerate of “can you speak asian?” and “are you chinese”,

when colonialism and imperialism has destroyed our homes and our culture and tainted our history but no one will admit to it,

when we are born in foreign lands but are not welcomed here,

when we are attacked and murdered because of hate crime,

when people fail to realize that asians are a portion of the community that need help as much as others do,

when no one is willing to realize the real problems we go through.