For most of my life, the biggest part of being “Chinese Australian” has been proving the second half of that hybrid identity. Cumulatively, I've spent thousands of hours learning what it means and how to be an Australian, and that effort always felt wasted whenever I thought white Aussies were writing me off on appearance as 'just another chink.' From the school yard cricket pitch to Czech backpacker hostels and Australia Day gatherings in Washington DC, whenever in the company of Caucasian Australians, I've often been compelled to prove--just that little bit more--how much I belonged. On my most recent trip back to Australia--eight years since the last visit, 13 years since I'd originally moved away--I felt that long dormant need to prove my bonafides rise once more, hours before I even left American soil.
Sitting at an empty, sterile gate within the exhausted bowels of LAX, I was soon joined by a group of squabbling retirees who had been RVing around the States, as ocker as meat pies. Immediately, part of me eagerly wanted to launch into blokey mateship with the one sitting closest to me. But this time, another voice inside my head stirred.
“So what if they think you're just another Asian? Who cares? You know who you are!” self-assured and multi-cultural Mark admonished.
“Yeah, you're probably right,” admitted Aussie flag-waving lapdog Mark, and it felt like a small moment of self-growth on the identity front. No longer fretting over acceptance into the cultural clubhouse, my years of travel and work had shaped me into a slew of terms that nativists love to hate: 'third culture kid', 'post-national'…God forbid, perhaps even a 'global citizen.' In recent years, in response to the inevitable question of “Do you feel more Australian/Chinese/American at this point?”, I have even come up with a tongue-in-cheek percentage breakdown:
“49 percent Aussie, 49 percent American, a smidge Chinese.”
And yet, traveling around Australia over the last three weeks, I felt that old urge to prove my Aussie-ness to white Australians lingering, rising momentarily from the pit of my gut to wrestle with my nobler self. Irrational, unnecessary, perhaps even a little pathetic, it would manifest itself in a slightly-heavier Aussie accent when speaking to staff at the museum counter, or as a cultural reference dropped within earshot at a hipster cafe. In not-so-subtle code, it proclaimed: “Don't confuse me for one of those FOBs*...I'm one of you guys too!”
The truth is that Australia is 'Asianizing,' and increasingly rapidly (the 2006 census had Asians at 7%, versus 1.1% in 1976). There were times as I wandered through downtown Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane where it felt palpable, with new Asian districts, Chinese businessmen, Korean tourists, and Indian cabbies. It seems inevitable: a large, wealthy island of 20 million people sitting at the bottom of the continent, with several billion people above them, eager for a piece of the pie. I asked a friend, a progressive White Melbournite in his early thirties, what he made of the most recent influx--of mostly wealthy mainland Chinese--into the country.
“People have to accept that Australia is part of Asia, and that eventually White Australians will be the ethnic minority,” he told me. This sounded like a radical vision of the country's future, quite startling to imagine, even to me. “We have to start considering all the benefits they bring to Australia from their own cultures too.”
“But what do you think the average White Australian makes of this scenario?” I asked.
“Oh they're totally against it. They want to keep Asians out.”
I'm not sure what general opinion is, but an actively anti-Asian policy is not new by any means. The 'White Australia' policy actively strived to keep Asians out of the country until basically 1966, not dissimilar to the US Chinese Exclusion Act, which ran from 1882-1943. My family grew up in an environment of brazenly open discrimination. My mother was not served at the news agency, we were accused of eating dog while riding a hotel elevator. Mine was an assimilatory country town, where epithets flew thick and fast, and the promotion of multicultural identity fell on small-minded ears. And while it's certainly somewhat easier to get by in metropolitan Australia, where most Asians reside, a friend from Sydney has regaled me with similar tales of racism during her childhood. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and while nine times out of ten their behavior suggests ignorance over malice, too often it has been the latter.
Which is why I am grateful to have spent some of my formative years in the United States, which has gone through its fair share of racial tension, but at this point has traversed so many generations of immigration that I think today's American identity is an ethnically ambiguous one. Nobody questions the American-ness of Tiger Woods, or Jennifer Lopez, or Margaret Cho. By comparison, the images of the archetypal Australian coalesce far more homogenously: a bronzed and blonde-haired Elle Macpherson, the swarthy tradesman/Russell Crowe, the crocodile hunter…all of them white, largely British in descent. In America, I've never felt my race make an iota of difference to how I am accepted into society; in Australia it has always seemed at best a point of distinction, if not tension, at worst directly antagonistic. I think this will change over time. Already, I've noticed how much more race-inclusive and open-minded my generation of Australians are, orders of magnitude beyond their parents and grandparents.
Walking around Fitzroy--Melbourne's bohemian district--I passed two young African boys outside what appeared to be a largely East African housing project. They were discussing how to avoid their mothers' wrath while continuing to play outside, in deliciously diphthonged, unmistakably thick Aussie brogues. I imagined my own brother and I sounding similar at their age. Across Australia's waves of immigration--Aboriginal, English, Irish, South European, Middle Eastern, Asian, and most recently African--several uniting threads seemed to have helped weave its diverse makeup together. Undoubtedly, sports, meat pies, and a love for the beach have played their part. But more vital, I'd argue, have been the values of democratic representation, egalitarianism, hard work, camaraderie, and most importantly, fairness. Those are the values I treasure most about being Australian, and I am confident that they will live on, regardless of the country's ethnic makeup.
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*FOB: slang acronym for “Fresh Off the Boat”, used to describe immigrants that have arrived from a foreign nation and have not yet assimilated into the host nation's culture, language, and behaviour. (Wikipedia)
Interesting article on Australia's Asianization: http://www.academia.edu/1355630/Australia_China_and_Asian_Regionalism_Navigating_Distant_Proximity
