Flagging racism

It's not often that a raging antipodean controversy coincides so neatly with my environment here. While the virtues of the Australian flag as a symbol of national pride is debated downunder, Our glorious High Commission over the road is this week festooned with flags in preparation for Oz day. More than twenty fly like bondi blue spinnakers, capturing the chilly breeze (as if in anticipation of an inter-embassy regatta). They're quite striking on the eye and transform a decadently non-descript building into an identifiably Australian palace.

My views on the flag debate itself are simple. It's time to consider a new one.

National pride is neither all bad, nor all good. How it manifests itself owes much to the framing it is given by opinion formers - quite a responsibility. Our flag can be a symbol of inclusion only if all are able to feel included, or it can be framed as a symbol of exclusion if the slightest license is given for a negative association to be created (a la the caped crusaders protecting their beaches). Once created, a negative association is extraordinarily difficult to shift. This I fear is what has happened to our flag. Where I used to see sporting success, I now see Crunulla. Where I used to see optimism I now see hubris. Where I used to see multiculturalism, I now see white Australia. Where I used to grudgingly accept the flag's heritage I now see it as a symbolic anachronism. It's time to change the symbols of 1900 into the symbols of 2007 - a lot has changed in our country.

Yes, I'm a friggin ex-pat latte sipping chardonnay chugging socialist and my views are less worthy as a consequence, but I can't help but feel that the majority of Australians are also a little uncomfortable about the tangent our flag has taken down Sutherland Shire way. The explosion of flag-caping since Crunulla suggest that the flag is increasingly worn as a political statement (of the "we choose who... blah blah.." variety). How many post-white Australia policy immigrant communities feel like flying the flag at the moment? Not many I'm guessing. The image of a Muslim woman caped in the flag is only noteworthy for its implied protest - if it were an inclusive symbol nobody would notice.

Two anecdotal snippets. A Canadian of Maltese descent who I study with, was recounting a discussion with a young Australian of Maltese descent as both visited relatives in Malta. My friend was struck by this young Australian's views about immigration, and how openly he discussed them. Though from a recent immigrant family, he was anti-immigration. However, despite this, he had been worried that the rampaging Crunulla brigade may mistaken his Mediterranean skin for Lebanese. Complex identity issues in modern Australia.

The second experience questions whether racism in our country is dormant or on the march. Last year a close friend from South Africa visited Australia for the first time. A highly sophisticated gallery curator, who invests in edgy art, works cocktail parties like a movie star and travels the world consulting, he is as black as a gloriously moonless Kruger sky. We took him to the footy (Swannies vs Freo at the SCG) and then to a smoky pub in Surrey Hills (bearing a Barry Hall badge and matching swannies scarf). As we walked home through prosperous streets, he talked on his mobile to his wife in Johannesburg (thank goodness!). A couple of drunk young blokes began screaming at him to "piss off home you b***k c***. I've never wanted to hit someone so much in my life. He never heard (I think), and they swayed off down a laneway to piss in someone's letterbox. But I'm still completely mortified by the memory. They may as well have been wearing capes.

Anyway, I blame those who neglected to frame our nationalism in terms of inclusion, and failed to call racism by its name. Racism is simply evil, and no half-way solution will overcome it, no matter how electorally unpopular such a simple repudiation may be. People need to feel bad about expressing racist views, and challenged to be more tolerant. And if that takes ripping the flags off exclusionary thugs at rock concerts well so be it. Bravo to the BDO.