The White Australia Policy

From 1901 to the end of World War II, Australia used language tests, otherwise known as the White Australia Policy, to prevent non-whites from migrating to Australia. In total, the policy ran for around 50 years; less than a 1/4 of Australia's urban history. Unfortunately, some historians have deliberately mis-told the reasons for the policy, and also ignored some of the positive race relations either side of the policy. As a consequence, they have used history to divide races in Australia. One such historian is David Day, a white research fellow at LaTrobe University. According to Mr Day:

"The law was passed with hardly a voice raised in protest, although there was discussion as to the best way of achieving its objective of racial purity." (1)

While Mr Day has his reasons for his interpretation of history, his conclusions are not consistent with reality. Racial purity was not the objective of the White Australia Policy, and it was passed with plenty of protest.

Foundations of the White Australia Policy

Unlike America's colonial era, race was relatively insignificant in Australia's colonial era. In America's founding era, whites constituted the majority of the population, and were the first class citizens. Blacks were the disliked minority. On the other hand, nearly two generations into Australia's urban era, nearly 80 per cent of the population was a Convict, Emancipist, or of Convict descent. As a consequence, the majority of the population were second class-citizens, and the exclusive free settlers were the disliked minority. Race was insignificant compared to the stigma of criminality, and the majority of the population shared that stigma together.

Billy Blue

The unique social dynamic allowed non-whites to be celebrated in Australia in a way that they could never be celebrated in America. A good example comes in the form of the black emancipist Billy Blue. In the early 19th century, Billy Blue became what could be defined as Australia's first celebrity. He was admired by the convict class, and dined with the governors. Newspapers of the time didn't even refer to his colour (much like black sportsmen like Andrew Symonds and George Gregan aren't referred to by colour.) In tribute to Billy's legacy, many streets, landmarks, hotels and businesses in Nth Sydney were named in his honour. These include Blues Point, William Street, Blues Point Road, The Commodore Hotel, and the Billy Blue Design School.

More examples of equality for all races came in revolutionary ideals of the 1850s. At the 1854 Eureka rebellion, Raffaelo Carboni, an Italian migrant, called on the crowd, "irrespective of nationality, religion and colour", to salute the Southern Cross as the "refuge of all the oppressed from all the countries on earth". Later Carboni wrote:

"The maiden appearance of our standard, in the midst of armed men, sturdy, self-overworking diggers of all languages and colours, was a fascinating object to behold." (2)

Of the 13 men arrested and tried with treason after the rebellion, two were black. Carboni, a Jew and a large number of Irishmen were also arrested. Perhaps the government deliberately targeted non-English for prosecution in order to erode support for the stockade. If so, the plan backfired, as a jury found all thirteen men not guilty, and they became national heroes. One of the black men, John Joseph, was carried around the streets of Melbourne in triumph by over 10,000 people.

The egalitarian sentiments were again reflected when the colonies of NSW, Victoria , Tasmania and Queensland framed their constitutions in the later 1850s. The colonies gave the vote to every man over the age of 21, regardless of race, religion or class. (Aborigines included.)

As free migrants poured into the colony, the social dynamic began to change. Migrants started forming unions, and campaigned against any kind of labour that undermined the power of their unions. Initially, the threat to the unions came in the form of Convicts. Businesses could import them, and not have to worry about them joining the unions, or dying on the job. Once Convict transportation came to an end, businesses started importing Chinese and Pacific Islanders. The Chinese were under contract to those who paid their fare, and this contract prevented them from joining unions. As for the Pacific Islanders, they were sometimes sold by island chiefs, and therefore they were culturally bound to do as they were told.

In response to the non-white threat to their power, unions started campaigning for a federated Australia with uniform immigration laws that could keep out the non-whites.  A Federation poster appearing in Punch magazine contained an old man advising a youngster:

"Right, my boy, your worthy of your sire. In the old days I stopped the convicts in the bay. And now you must bar out the yellow plague with your arm."

In 1901, the federation of Australia became a reality and the Immigration Restriction Act (White Australia Policy) was implemented.

Although some politicians said extremely racist things to justify the exclusion of non-whites, others argued that the claims were nothing but a distraction from the real intention. Bruce Smith of the Free Trade party said:

"The foundation of the bill is racial prejudice. The whole thing is a bogy, a scarecrow. I venture to say that a large part of the scare is founded upon a desire to make political capital by appealing to some of the worst instincts of the more credulous of the people." (3)

The Labour Party voiced its opposition to the racial overtones. James Fowler arguing:

"Many of these peoples are at least our equal in all that goes to make up morality, or even intellectual or physical qualities. We should not, therefore, argue this question upon such grounds." (3)

Even the chief architect of the policy, Alfred Deakin, conceded that non-whites might be superior, and it was belief in their superiority that necessitated that they be kept out:

"It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors."

Just as there were many positive examples of race relations prior to the implementation of the policy, there have been many since it came down. At the end of World War II, around 800 Australian soldiers married Japanese women and insisted on bringing them home to Australia. It said a great deal about the soldiers' characters that they would marry a people that had been accused of terrible things, and subsequently risk community outrage by bringing the enemy people back to Australia. Likewise, the willingness of the Australian people to break an immigration policy to accept the women, and forgive the Japanese in general, also showed a strength of character worthy of admiration. Other nations in the eastern hemisphere have not been able to forgive the actions of the Japanese, men or women, as readily as Australians.

By 1958, a revised Migration Act introduced a simpler system of entry permits and abolished the controversial dictation test. The revised Act avoided references to questions of race and so allowed well-qualified Asians to migrate.

With a completely open immigration policy once more, Australia was able to demonstrate many of the positive examples of its race relations culture that had defined the early 19th century.

At the end of World War II, Australia's population was 7 million. In 2006, migrants constituted 22.8 per cent of the Australian population of around 20 million. The accommodation of these migrants has largely come without the conflicts seen in France and England, which only have a migrant population of around 5.6 and 4.8 per cent respectively, yet still haven't been able to integrate the migrants in a harmonious way. Both England and France have suffered some very serious minority-led race riots that have not been seen in Australia.

Mixed in with the relatively harmonious migration have been some very public displays of support for non-whites. In a uniquely Australian event, Frank Worrel's 1961 touring West Indian cricket team played well-above expectations and won the hearts of Australians in the process. Although losing the series, 90,000 Australians lined the streets of Melbourne in a ticker tape parade biding the Windies farewell.

In rugby union, another sport that is often portrayed as the bastion of white establishment, the record of most caps as test captain is held by a blackman, George Gregan. As well as being popular with selectors, Gregan was popular with the Australia public; as evidenced by his frequent appearances in endorsements and communication campaigns.

In music and stage, Marcia Hines became one of Australia's best-loved performers. In the 70s, she had a string of top-ten hits, was dubbed "The First Australian Lady of Song" and became the first black woman to play Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. In the new mellenium, she became a judge on Australian Idol and released more successful albums.

While the white academics have their reasons for misdirecting people in regards to the White Australia Policy, their misdirections come with a few unsavoury consequences. One unsavoury consequence is that the inaccurate perceptions have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. The perception of racism causes friction between races in Australia, as well as between Australia and its Asian neighbours. This friction in turn fuels racism. Another unsavoury consequence is that it elevates whites as the enlightened group that controls political power. This white empowerment was explored by Kay Schaffer, an Associate Professor from Adelaide University. In regards to white intellectual's dominating the racial debate, Schaffer wondered:

"Or is this present controversy yet another example of some prominent and influential white Australians talking to and among themselves in the name of a national debate in a way that maintains the exclusion of the nation's others? " (4)

If there is one institution that can rightly be accused of discrimination then it is the field of humanities in Australian universities. Despite making lots of noise about the virtues of diversity, it is the least diverse institution in Australian society. It is dominated by white men that mostly ignore non-whites, and also women. This was very evident in a 2005 survey of intellectuals by the Australian Public Intellectual Network. The survey asked 200 scholars to list 10 important and influential thinkers. The list they produced had 8 white men in the 10 most influential Australian intellectuals. Men occupied 17 of the top 20 places. Not a single Australian with African, Asian, or South American ancestry made the grade. (5)

While the likes of white academics like David Day like to show their "open-mindedness" by denouncing a short-lived government policy that has long-since ended, that doesn't change the fact he operates in the most racist institution in Australian society today, and is a product of his operation in it.

More

White Australia's myths
Keith Windschuttle
The Australian
December 6, 2004
http://www.sydneyline.com/White%20Australia's%20myths.htm

The influence of Chinese on the Australian accent

The Australian strain of English is very musical. Tones are very important, and with the abbreviation of words to emphasize the stressed syllable, Australian English follows the general pattern of how English sounds when it is sung. In 1911, an English woman, Valerie Desmond, released a book titled The Awful Australian. In the book, she speculated that the tonal aspect of Australian English may have been the result of Australians mixing with Chinese. Irrespective of whether she was correct or not, her observations of a great deal of communication occurring between the Chinese and other members of Australian society paint a very different picture to that painted by modern day white historians. Her words also reveals how the pro-British sections of Australia felt towards Australia and non-whites.

"But it is not so much as the vagaries of pronunciation that hurt the ear of the visitor. It is the extraordinary intonation that the Australian imparts to his phrases. There is no such thing as cultured, reposeful conversation in this land; everybody sings his remarks as if he was reciting blank verse in the manner of an imperfect elocutionist. It would be quite possible to take an ordinary Australian conversation and immortalise its cadences and diapasons by means of musical notation. Herein the Australian differs from the American. The accent of the American, educated and uneducated alike, is abhorrent to the cultured Englishman or Englishwoman, but it is, at any rate, harmonious. That of the Australian is full of discords and surprises. His voice rises and falls with unexpected syncopations, and, even among the few cultured persons this country possesses, seems to bear in every syllable the sign of the parvenu…The Australian practice of singing his remarks I can only ascribe to the influence of the Chinese. During my stay in Melbourne, I spent one evening at supper in a Chinese cookshop in Little Bourke Street, and I was instantly struck by the resemblance between the intonation of the phrases between the Chinese attendants and that of the cultivated Australians who accompanied me."

1)David Day, A political whitewash. 5 December, 2001 http://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/David-Day.htm

2)Carboni Raffaello, The Eureka Stockade http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Eureka-Stockade2.html

3)Keith Windschuttle,The White Australia Policy http://www.sydneyline.com/WAP%20Sydney%20Institute.htm

4)Kay Schaffer Manne's Generation: White Nation Responses to the Stolen Generation Report Australian Humanities Review http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-June-2001/schaffer.html

5)Richard Nile, First cohort for thought, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20459801-25132,00.html

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