Too many Sooks in the Kitchen

My wife is reading a buzzfeed article about Miranda Tapsell's appearance on the Verdict. On how she spoke about feeling unwelcome at Australia Day celebrations due to being an Aboriginal woman. In reply Miranda receives a torrent of online abuse labelling her a sook. "The problem with the people calling her a sook is that they don't get the irony that if they can't deal with an Indigenous person sharing what life is really like for them, then they're the ones that need to get a thicker skin," she says. A light bulb goes off in my head. She has cut through to where bone and marrow meet. I see a young Aboriginal woman speaking about the racism she has incurred for all of her life; I see Adam Goodes enduring boos and calling out the racism latent within that. I see that when the heat gets turned up there are too many sooks in the kitchen and they are reaching for the all the knives, wooden spoons and oversized forks that they can get their grubby hands on.

Adam Goodes played on in the face of week upon week of booing before he unveiled his war dance of Indigenous pride. Heck, even Jesus held himself in check as he took a tour through the temple before coming back the next day to overturn the tables of the money lenders, chasing them out with a whip. Miranda and Adam don't raise these issues on a whim or after being slighted by the smallest cut. Yet they're told to get a thicker skin? How thick must one's skin get when it takes so many hits? Like the calloused hands of a weightlifter I imagine. They know the colour of their skin. They wear their skin like an armour forged over a lifetime.

When we peel back the onion of those that want to deride Miranda or Adam for their perspectives, that's when the fragile tears come out.  Being sensitive shouldn't be used as an insult anyway. Doesn't telling others to 'man up' as you cry like a snooty brat being told to share the sandpit say a lot about what sort of a person you are?

What seems to get most of the flag waving warriors up in arms is when Indigenous people have something to say about racism or Australia Day (I have written about Australia Day before). Miranda was asked a question and replied honestly that she doesn't identify as an Australian on Australia Day, due to being labelled with racist terms. She got a standing ovation at the Logies when she said "Put more beautiful people of colour on TV, and connect viewers in ways that transcend race and unite us, that's the real Team Australia." She has also shared a story from her school days when she got up in front of the class in response to being bullied with the term half-caste. She asked them why she needed to justify her identity as students who took exception jeered through her whole presentation. Her stand against racism has since changed the hearts of some of those students in later life. So, taking a stand can make a difference.

Adam Goodes said during his Australian of the year acceptance speech that "I believe racism is a community issue which we all need to address and that’s why racism stops with me." There was nothing any right minded person could take exception to in his speech. Months later Adam watched the movie Utopia and penned a response. He detailed how much it hurt to see what had been done in his peoples past and how present Australia wasn't prepared to face its brutal past and further reconcile it. For being honest and taking up a noble cause he has incurred the brunt of Australia's racism. He is carrying a public weight that I cannot even fathom. When someone shares a pain that I don't understand, I want to be the one who listens. Just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm being accused of being racist. Just because I didn't personally commit any of the atrocities visited upon the Indigenous people of Australia does not mean that I have the right to sweep the crumbs under the fridge. Taking exception to any of it being brought up though, that's another matter.

For those planning to never shop at David Jones again because of their choice of Adam Goodes as an ambassador for it's brand; For those that think Miranda should be grateful that she won a Logie or two and just shut up; For those who see no problem with Mr Dutton sending a raped refugee back to offshore detention before she can get counselling or medical assistance; For those who walk side by side with skinheads in UPF and Reclaim Australia; For those who often say "I'm not racist, but..." If I am the sort of person that wants to be able to say that racism stops with me, then what sort of a conclusion am I meant to draw? When someone shares the general pain of their experienced racism; when that pushes a button inside that compels another toward personalised attacks; there's a name for that button.

Lighting the Dark part II

It was over a year and a half ago that Biz and I attended the first Light the Dark in Sydney and I blogged about it Lighting the Dark part I.

Here we are again, just beyond sunset at the feet of skyscrapers in Hyde Park under a sparse canopy of fig trees lit from below by the glow of 10,000 people holding candles. We are here this time in response to the death of little Aylan (the picture of the boy on that beach in Turkey). I am here because I don't know where else to be or what else to do.

The first time I came across the image of Aylan, the agency reporting it had a disclaimer under the heading warning of pictures of a graphic nature. I skipped past the image. Five minutes later it was all over social media and I saw it again and again though I did not wish to. I wasn't sure if I should be resentful towards those shoving the image in my face. Was it an invasion of a very private moment – what should be more private than one's death? Or was it a good thing because as that picture swept around the world it became harder to ignore the devastating loss of innocence and the plight of his people.

We seem to need a human story to rally around. The story of Aylan is just such – a visceral one as it reaches beyond our desensitisation and haunts us. The speakers here at Light the Dark refer to his story. Father Rod Bower speaks eloquently to his story and how it speaks to us in our shame. He asks us to look into the flickering flames of light that we hold and he shares a poem written by Ken Morris.

Father Rod Bower

sometimes a life goes out
marked in the dust of memory by
pale sad trembling lovers
and old men who weep
for loss and the passing of things
setting an unfilled place
at the table each night
this tiny red bud
of life went out
alone
in dark water


I stare into the flame and imagine it snuffed out. I stare into the flame and let the words of the poem wash through me. The poem goes on, beautiful and sad...go here for the Full poem of 'Aylan' and a reading of it by Father Rod Bower And in the stillness we listen and reflect together as the final stanzas echo out.

the hands that picked him up
were warm
and all the earth sobbed
for the loss of him
that we felt
to the burning magma heart
of our shame
we will remember aylan
tiny bright sad perfect
alone
forever sleeping
on a beach
at the shores of us 

But his story is one of many. And while our government talks about taking in Syrian refugees, which I welcome. And yet there is a hollowness to the gesture when refugees, children included, sit in detention centres just off our shores and are cruelly and routinely dehumanised. Aylan took a boat, had he survived, would he be welcome here? If stopping the boats is so vital then as the Premier Mike Baird said "stopping the boats can't be where this ends, it is surely where humanitarianism begins."

I didn't vote for him – but yes even Mike Baird gets a round of applause here at Light the Dark and I join in. He is right and I wish he'd go further in stating very loudly that unless we provide a process and a place for refugees to find safety and dignity then we have done nothing bar let them die elsewhere – out of sight, out of mind. Well the story of Aylan is in the sight and in the mind of many, not just those that are here tonight. Us 10,000 here are but a small representation of those of us who care. There are more at home unable to come, there are more in other cities holding their own Light the Dark. As many of us as there are I fear that there are just as many who do not support welcoming refugees.

How does this all sit with those that want the borders closed I wonder? They need a story to rally around as well. But their story is built on the demonising and dehumanising of the other. That is how we discuss the response to asylum seekers in this country. They spout the rhetoric that labels such people as 'illegals' and a threat to their vision of what our society should look like. There has to be an enemy. If they were ever to totally vanquish this enemy they have created how awkward would it be for them to then look around at a society that still didn't meet their ideological vision? Their ideology would be naked without their enemy – sickly pasty white, gluttonous and covered in sores. This is why I am uncomfortable with more bombing, more warmongering and offshore detention with no end in sight.
 

Imagine a world without borders

I am here tonight because I don't where else to be or what else to do. I am overwhelmed and angry and sad. I don't want to hate on my fellow Australians that I don't agree with. I don't want an outdated tribalism leading our Nation to pour funds into Border Force or Border Patrol or whatever they're calling it this week.

Father Rod's finishes speaking by saying, “May your God bless you and if you don't have a god may you bless one another”. Soon after It finishes. We stay with many though, friendly looking people, gentle people, seated on damp grass near a makeshift shrine to Aylan.

thanks to Biz for the pictures

I ponder Father Rod's words and his quoting of Richard Rohr that “We don't think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking”. How do we live ourselves into this new way in this divided Nation? How do we heal the brokeness of Australia's heart and soul? How can we hope to see the scenes like those in Germany and Austria who have learnt their lessons from a fascist history where the people welcome refugees with flowers and stuffed toys and smiles? That is what I long for.