The Bite in their Banter: what racism looks like beneath Australia's jolly mask

With loud mandates of equal opportunity employment and other institutionalised anti-racism initiatives, Australia can look wonderfully progressive on the outside. But a peek into the mind of the average white Australian man, reveals a rather antiquated and murky mind-set.

Australia and I are just about becoming good friends.

How do I know?

Well, it's been seven years since we've been living together and she has just now decided to show me what she really looks like on the inside. Like a beauty taking off her mask of make-up, I have been finding myself both intrigued and nauseated by the big reveal.

Since I immigrated here from Jamaica seven years ago, my friendship circle has been diverse: a mix of immigrant women like myself, ethnic Australians, Australians born overseas or who have lived overseas. But there is one sector of the population that I have had little intimate contact with: white Australian males born and raised in Sydney, who have not lived overseas.

A recent work opportunity has allowed me the adventure of an introduction. I now share an eight-hour shift with three middle-aged white Australian men. They are Sydney born and bred. None of their friends or their partners are ethnic.

Although I wouldn't say that we are friends, the nature of the job means that my day-to-day interaction with my colleagues is an odd mix of social and professional. You see, there isn't much actual work to do. It's a hospitality gig where guests come only intermittently, leaving us with hours to kill. So we have not much else to do but to talk to each other. And because we see each other for 40 hours a week, we have exhausted the over-aching introductions to our lives and have now crossed into the territory of the banal. We talk about everything from dinner last night, to the Trump Administration to home renovations (theirs of course, I'm still renting) to the weather to observations of activity happening in the thoroughfare in front of the building. It is through these seemingly inconsequential, and frankly dull, conversations that I have been afforded a fascinating and disturbing peep into this previously alien psyche.

By the way these gentlemen speak about the world, it often-times feels like they live in a little cocoon. They have been observing the influx of immigrants to Australia from behind plated glass and are not very happy about it. They express their chagrin through off-putting jokes and comments about women and immigrants.

Here is a selection of some of their opinionated office conversation:

A) Immigrants should not have the right to use public systems and benefits when they immigrate to Australia. They should be made to wait ten years before they are allowed to access benefits, like free health-care. "My taxes have paid for this and you're not just going to come in and use what you haven't paid for," was the passionate defence of this argument.

B) Passing around an internet joke which features an invented exchange of telegrams between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur set in the wake of the Japanese surrender ending World War II in August 1945. The climax of the joke ends with Truman describing “political correctness” as something “fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by clean end.”

For a full description of this joke, click here

C) The suggestion that in response to the #metoo movement, Harvey Weinstein, the American film producer with more than eighty sexual abuse allegations against him, should (and I quote) "name and shame" all the Hollywood women who slept with him, got something out of it and are not coming forward. This movement should be called the #Youtoo movement.

(As if being coerced into exchanging sex for professional leeway is something that women should be publicly punished for. )

D) When one of the of the gentlemen admitted to dating an Asian girl in his youth, another responded that he doesn't date Asian girls. But, if he did he would need to be able to call her up and order the #1, #16 and #15.

E) Oh and "I love Jamie Fox. He is great, for a black actor."

The mind-fuck part of it is that they alternate spouting these racist and sexist lines with skewed comments about equality. For example, to pad a previous wry statement they will say something like "But I do believe that everyone should be treated fairly and equally.... except for Muslims." Or, "But I do believe that we should have even more immigrants, as long as they are not refugees."

It's as if the part of their brain educated on office decorum and political correctness triggers an alarm for them to do a spastic hard-left adjustment. On some level they know it is wrong to say these kind of things, sub-consciously they just can't help themselves. So when they try to back-pedal, what comes out is weird and warped.

So what do you do when, as a woman of colour, your Caucasian colleague makes a sexist or racist remark as a joke?

Well, you would like to think that you would have none of it.

No siree, not on your watch! You would put your foot down, give them a piece of your mind and teach them a lesson. That's absolutely what I like to think I would do. But, when you're actually in the moment... It feels a whole lot more tricky than that.

In that moment often my mind becomes muddled with both anger, indignation, fear and confusion.

"Did I hear right?" I think.

"Did they really mean that?" I wonder.

I feel the compulsion to say something, but what? Sometimes, by the time I fully register the offence, the laughter has subsided and the moment has passed. Quite ironically, I question if my response to an inappropriate comment would be inappropriate.

I wonder how my response would affect my position in that small environment. While they, on the other hand, considered none of that before they blurted out their insensitive remarks.

The trepidation I experience makes me awe at my ancestors and civil rights leaders of the past. I am humbled by the balls it must have taken for them to not only say something, but to have done something. Here I am worrying about my job security, while they risked their lives.

When I do retort and challenge their comments with a dose of education and perspective of a black immigrant woman, their response is something along the lines of:

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I was just joking."

"I said immigrants ... but I wasn't talking about you."

Because I'm being overly-sensitive to what is clearly just humour, right?!

Because middle-aged white Australian men who have never been the butt of racist or sexist slurs, can't see the harm in them. The searing of being mocked because of what you look like or taken advantage of because of your sex is a wound that they can't fathom the feeling of and so deep down they believe that we are all being a bunch of pansies when we cry foul. However, they are also educated enough to know the decorum of political correctness. When they say these things, they are aware that they crossing a line but also believe that the line is imaginary and below them.

While I'm having these verbal throw-downs with my colleagues, I might be also be simultaneously scrolling through the organisation's office weekly newsletter. This is where I see posts about activities for National Reconciliation Week and job ads with bold captions about the organisation being an equal opportunity employer 'committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace.'

The irony of my work environment paints a picture of what racism looks like in modern-day Australia: it is covert. Prejudice has been bleached from official policy but it still sits in the mind of and dribbles from the tongue of many Australians. It rolls on like a lulling low-tide in the background. You have to listen closely to hear it under the cacophony of the multitude of the efforts to change this very kind of thinking. What the tide lacks is resistance in the form of exposure to people from different backgrounds. So, as I am the first black woman that these men have probably ever worked closely with, my mission, and I choose to accept it, is to be just as vehement in calling them out on their prejudice and voicing my perspective. Because change doesn't only happen through policy, it happens on the ground through diversity filtering through every corner of society. Then it happens through conversation, relationships and some biting banter of my own.

#whattoseeinAustralia #racis #racisminAustralia #politcalcorrectness