21st March, when Australia’s Racism becomes Harmonious

What comes to mind when you hear the word “unicorn”? Colours, ‘funky’ music, smiles, happiness, rainbow, “hakuna matata”? That’s what comes to my mind each time I hear “Harmony Day”. If Harmony Day was an animal, it would be a unicorn…except, spicier.

Every year, on the 21st March, Australia celebrates what she calls “Harmony Day”, where the “Other” -  people of colour in the workplace are encouraged to wear their “ethnic” clothes, school children are made to ‘dress up’ in some random cultural “costume”, (or worse still, they are out of their uniforms and are instead encouraged to embrace their differences in the brightest prison orange),and traditional dancers from various Culturally and Linguistically Diverse communities (code for anyone not from an Anglo-Saxon community) get their first gig of the year (outside their own community). 

This official Federal Government initiative started in 1999, is now coordinated by the Department of Home Affairs; various institutions are invited to partake on that one day – and often for the whole week, referred to as Harmony Week – “... is about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values.”

The Day (then week) arose in direct response by the then Conservative Liberal opposition to the proposal of the Labour Government to criminalise hate speech.  A change in government in 1996, led to a research study into national attitudes towards racism. The findings of the Eureka Report in 1998 did not paint Australia in a favourable light. Those results themselves only became available following a Freedom of Information request, in 2011.  The decision was made to celebrate unity rather than combat racism. The language was radically modified to take a different approach.  Something interesting but ironic about this day is it coincides with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Why is it ironic, you might ask? I will gladly come back to this.

When I arrived to Australia 8 years ago, as an international student, I learned how supposedly “Our diversity makes Australia a great place to live”, as suggested on the official Harmony Day website, the same rhetoric promoted to us, International Students, way before we eventually learned about the Black history of Australia and how much discrimination we were about to experience based on our identities within the mainstream community. 

Cultural shock is one of the first things international students experience, followed by a constant identity struggle – wanting to stay true to oneself but feeling the need to lose many aspects of ourselves for our own survival; many of us changed our names to something more attractive to the Eurocentric ear, anxious about what we wear so as not to attract attention and being othered,  or try hard to lose our accents because regardless of our English proficiency, speaking with a non-Anglo accent would make us lose our credibility and respect. As international students, we learned very fast that the “diversity” celebrated was conditional and only on special days.

Places of work and study, as well as community organisations would often run activities on Harmony Day that would involve “ethnic” performances. I happened to be the manager and choreographer of an Entertainment crew, with dancers and musicians from various parts of the world. Harmony Day would be one of the only times we would get a gig from the City of Perth or any other suburban city council. Any other day, we wouldn’t be ‘mainstream’ enough. It felt like we  cannot be seen as performers, except to show diversity, i.e ‘different from the mainstream’. This is one example how white privilege in Australia affects people of colour in arts and other industries. Moreover, anyone taking part in one of these activities were expected to satisfy the stereotypes; our clothes need to be as ‘traditional’ as possible, as further from the Eurocentric standards as possible. It’s a day to reinforce white privilege.

In an office setting, the hypocrisy is at its finest; 364/365 days, certain clothes and hair styles are not deemed “professional”; yet, on the 21st March we are invited to “wear [our] national clothes”. The thing is, many of us in our own country of origin, due to our own colonial history, have been wearing mostly European style clothes. So, what “national” clothes are we expected to wear? The one we have been forced not to wear in our countries and ridiculed and harassed on Australian streets when we do? Are we being given permission to defy the impact of colonialism and activisticly wear a piece of cloth to show our resistance…only to go back in what is referred to as “normal” clothes the next day? What about “bring a plate from [your] country”? Are our colleagues on that day not commenting on the ‘foul’ smell of our curries? Are people not going to make cringing faces looking at our food, asking in a hesitant voice “what is this?” and waiting for an answer that sounds like “sautéed fingers of a baby hamster”? Or are the micro-aggressions going to be accompanied with a smile, for the sake of harmony? Am I supposed to lower down the spices in my food to get closer to white Australian standards so as not to have the same criticism I’ve had on a non-Harmony day or am I expected to just cook as usual because diversity is what is going to be celebrated?

Talking about food and clothing, we cannot escape talking about cultural appropriation. It’s one thing to expect people of colour at the workplace to dress in their “ethnic” attire, it’s another to encourage kids to wear “costumes”, and by costumes, they mean someone else’s culture, most preferably an oppressed culture because…oppression seems fun! Or does it? As a mother, I have seen and heard all these stories of parents getting excited to find a “costume” for their kids as requested by school for Harmony day. Culture as a costume is one of the worst subtle yet harmful forms of racism. How would one “dress as an African” for example (this has been done, except the favourite is “Native American” for some reasons); Africa is a continent, with so many language groups, so many cultures. Cultures are alive through people. How can one possibly “learn” about or “celebrate” a culture by homogenising a whole lot of cultures and reducing its people into token dresses and accessories? And while these children and [reported] adults ‘wear’ these cultures, do they also learn about how the people from these cultures have often been stolen from their communities and/or persecuted because of their cultural identity, and still currently are oppressed in this society? Or does Harmony Day mean to only focus on what makes the dominant group (i.e. white Australia) and its government find comfortable? Erasing the history and reality of many of these cultures being ‘celebrated’. Cultural appropriation is rampant in Australia and it corrupts the core notion of celebrating diversity. “Ethnic” performance opportunities are often given  to white Australians being paid for a traditional Sega dance or Bollywood dance for a Harmony Day celebration, as if there weren't enough of us out there already expert enough to showcase our own culture. How is it celebratory or harmonious when our culture is being commodified on a daily basis, particularly that day? Then worse still any economic opportunities arising from the occasion are redirected out of the impacted community.

Erasure. Have you noticed what has been missing in this piece so far? What about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders? They seem to have been completely removed from the Harmony equation. Celebrating diversity when the First Peoples of this land are not included in the activities and the focus is placed on ‘new’ immigrants is quite discriminatory and hypocritical. The Harmony Day website says “since 1945, more than 7.5 million people have migrated to Australia”; it is interesting to ask ourselves why 1945 is the chosen year here and not the year the first fleet of British invaders arrived? Coupled with this, the population of Australia is currently over 24 million, and the First Peoples of this land account for only 3%. So why are they not talking about the 23 million people who really migrated to Australia and [illegally] built this – diverse, certainly – ‘new’ nation? There seems to be great effort put into indoctrinating people with the post-colonial narrative and superficial rhetoric about the unicornish beauty of our multi-cultural harmony while completely omitting that this land was stolen and nation built on Black bodies. All while Black people are disproportionately incarcerated and killed within our Judicial system today, not just historically, while omitting their existence on the whole website or any of the ‘multicultural’ events happening this day (and week)!

 All this, on the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – do you see the irony? It feels like Australia has deliberately hijacked the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and turned it into a day to silence people from talking about the harsh reality of people of colour and First Peoples here, and actually run events and activities to combat racism, but instead focus on hand-holding, fake smiles and eating spicy food. 

This is reminiscent of the whole notion of the “model minority” the USA created to condition Asian-Americans into thinking that complying to white supremacy will keep them safe and happy; they were not to complain, and were expected to behave a certain way to get White validation, and it created division amongst various POC groups in the country. I can see similarities with the notion of Harmony Day: vulnerable new immigrants are brainwashed into thinking all is well, that they are “tolerated” – since ‘tolerance seems to be a slogan – and are different and separated from the Aboriginal People and Torres Strait islanders, are told that they are the “good” People of Color and that they should be grateful that one day of the year, they are allowed to be themselves for mainstream entertainment. I wonder whether initiatives like Harmony Day contribute to lateral oppression First Nations people here experience in the hands of other people of colour? 

Funny…or not…that all this hype is happening almost exactly two months after the infamous Australia Day, the celebration of invasion and theft of Aboriginal land, a big day (or should I say a whole month?) of being reminded that we are unwanted, that we are stealing some jobs, that we should speak English and to “f%$k off [we] are full”. Cognitive dissonance seems to be conveniently harmonious with white Australia and the need to critically examine the intent and impact of Harmony Day is continuing to be overlooked.

This piece first appeared as Barrere-Collet, M. C. (2017), ‘21st March, When Australia’s Racism Becomes Harmonious’, Damsel Magazine, UWA Press, Australia.  This edition has been updated for currency. 

we are the mainstream would like to also congratulate Christelle and family on the recent arrival of two beautiful children, Victor and Sanaa. Felicitations maman!

If there is Something that Needs to be Broken this Year

Just like that, March is upon us. In more recent years, this month has started to feel alot like December jammed with engagements and events competing for our attention.  

Along with that is all the brand attention adding shine (and glitter) that has succeeded at turning pink-washing and rainbow-washing into extreme sports, often predicated on the ability to be first to market.  One of its many victims has been International Women’s Day.

When Clara Zetkin—head of the Women’s Office of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and Luise Zietz — in Denmark in 1910, proposed the idea that every year, women in every country would gather on the same day to celebrate their achievements and press for equal rights, is this what we have today what they had in mind?  In Australia, the day has been honoured since the 1920s courtesy of the Militant Women's Movement of the Communist party. It does not have passive origins. It was a forceful movement demanding improved conditions for working women:

The Movement's activities included: organising women's conferences in Sydney and Melbourne; organising demonstrations and disrupting public meetings convened by bourgeois women's organisations; activity in the Women's Unemployed Worker's Movement and the Militant Minority Movement and running candidates for municipal and State elections. They organised the first Australian International Women's Day rally in Sydney on March 25, 1928.

In 2022, you might need to blink a few times witnessing how much has changed in this last century and how bourgeois some of the events themselves have since become. In 2013, academics Barbara LeSavoy, Director, Women and Gender Studies Program at State University of New York and Garret Jordan, Graduate Research Assistant,  published The Capitalist Hijacking of International Women's Day that following its centenary examined how far the departure from the early socialist origins of the day in working class Europe had been.

In 2017, the former Director of Communications of WHO, Christine McNab, had also carried out an investigation into an elusive and shadowy site that had emerged on the scene - internationalwomensday.com. McNab had a well established career with clients such as UNICEF, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO and UN Foundation, so was well acquainted with the role that the UN played since 1945 when the United Nation (UN) charter proclaimed gender equality as a fundamental human right. Then, by 1975 during International Women’s Year, where the UN sanctioned March 8 as IWD. The UN has been ‘guardians’ of the day since, or at least until the internet started to send everyone towards the masters of SEO success. 

The site was registered in 2001, content on it began to emerge in 2003, and by 2017 their catchy campaigns complete with visual assets and a pithy hashtag, dominated the online chatter, making up almost 70% of the online references. It is well managed, accessible and always the first to market with campaign content that has convinced the top organisations and educational institutions around the world to jump on board. 

But who is behind it all?  The site itself is behind a GoDaddy proxy. McNab, on her blog, shared the results of her investigation into the consortium behind the site. It was initially made up of mostly executives from British Petroleum (BP) along with at least 10 other corporate partners from various corporations such as EY (Ernst & Young), PepsiCo, Vodafone, Metlife to name a few. Corporations that didn’t exactly have spectacular gender equity records of their own. To further legitimise their venture, they named charity partners for their fundraising efforts - Catalyst and the World Wide Association for Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS).  It certainly helps to designate a global charity partner with 10 million members when trying to produce appealing social media content.

The themes chosen by this venture however, never align with those set by UN Women, and there is no sign of them ever having attempted to support or endorse the work of UN Women, let alone assist with funding of their programs. In fact their site goes so far to make it quite clear that IWD is “not country, group, nor organisation specific. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women's network, or media hub is solely responsible for International Women's Day. The day belongs to all groups collectively everywhere.” A statement that is no doubt in response to past interrogation of what interests they actually represent.  

On the flipside, UN Women sets annual themes that align with critical global programs such as the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, such as this year’s : Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.  A theme so critical given women are increasingly being recognised as more vulnerable to climate change impacts than their male counterparts. Their vulnerability is never more evident than representing the majority of the world’s poor and being more dependent on the natural resources which climate change threatens the most.

I am certainly willing to acknowledge the success of internationalwomensday.com: it is every marketer’s dream. They do highlight and educate on the continuing inequities that exist and make it as easy as possible for all organisations to get involved, all the while generously providing all the optics needed to being seen to support gender equity. The operations have become so sophisticated that they can even connect you with suppliers to create your events. They have even set their own standards for gender equity efforts and organisations can apply to “them” (a consortium of large corporations remember) to feature as a “Prime Employer”.  The self-serving tactics are wildly clever and unchallenged. Throw in a few kids, especially Black and brown ones, and you get the whole package.

So why does it matter? Don’t these movements evolve? Things aren’t the same as they were a century ago.  All entirely true statements, however, the question we need to ask when we are in attendance at these gatherings, eating croissants, listening to inspiring stories of women who have achieved significant success, often against the odds, is whether we are celebrating a story about “we” or is it a story about “me”? At a time when community activism and collective action has sustained populations through pandemic and economic crisis, is the next evolution of IWD a move away from individual achievement embraced by corporate interests and towards embracing the actions of those raising the tide for all boats? 

What are the questions being asked in that room when there is no one there to report it? This week at least I was heartened to hear that Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, Governor of New South Wales, while attending the European Australian Business Council International Women's Day Brunch, at The Ivy, Sydney, used their opportunity during questions to challenge the highly successful, elite business women in the room to use their power and position to raise the voices of the nurses, teachers, caregivers, refugee and migrant women etc who were not in the room. Making it clear that what she witnessed during her time in a courtroom was a very different side to society than the gathering that she was at and that these intersectional identities could not be ignored in the fight for gender equity.

We all do have a choice for showing up for International Women’s Day.  When I was recently invited to take part in a group photo featuring this year’s salute, I declined. I shared some  background as I have done here and as a team we chose to smile for a photo that recognised the work we had completed together without the gestures. 

This year could be the year you too make IWD more than a day, cupcake and a hashtag.  I hope you do.

*The commercial theme set by this entity for 2022 is “Break the Bias and the hand salute is arms held at a cross at the wrists reminiscent of one of the best films about Black Excellence ever made.

PS the only time you will see me pulling this year’s hand salute will be while affirming “Wakanda Forever”.  Not everything is supposed to be for all of us.

PPS the author of this piece is not a member of any political party.

PPPS the author acknowledges the conflict of interest they have as a member of WAGGGS and the frustration that comes with it.

we are the mainstream, with support from the Inner West Council will be taking part in a series of IWD Collab(Orate) - Learning Journeys - featuring a diverse range of interactive events and workshops that will provide an opportunity for Inner West women and girls to connect and build community. 

we are the mainstream’s annual IWD event will be online this year! Join us on March 26th.

Trans love: God is change*

I grew up in a mixed class dominant caste Sikh Punjabi south Asian household in Southall, west London. Given the rampant hierarchical patriarchy, my queer journey was a difficult and violent one, I recognised myself as trans when I was a young 32 year old and haven’t looked back (or when I do I often refer to myself as being “in drag”). I found love recently, in myself and chosen family. I then met my partner, who has met me where I am and together we are building a tapestry of a queer love story. We don’t identify as poly but we hold firm that our Chosens are not placed beneath the commitment we have to each other. Trans love dreams into the future. I take this moment to thank all the Black and Dalit women and femmes who have taught me about my privilege and I hope I can learn to be a better ally. Trans love is a fractal of all the things that were dreamt up for us. I am proud of my queer lineages and I hope to love myself as hard as I can, so I create less violence in the world. 

*Octavia E Butler

Radical love.

What would you do for loved ones and that which you love?

I began negotiating these responses with myself and partner after my children and I were verbally assaulted and threatened at the start of lockdown 2021. The shock left me housebound and unable to exercise the 5km radius privileges we were given.  Instead, I ruminated daily, fantasising about collecting and catapulting soiled nappies on the perpetrator’s multiple souped-up Commodores utes, Staffies and the rusting Bunnings furniture on their front porch.

While my thoughts of vengeance seem trivial and maybe even petty, the issue of interspecies violence and White colonisers threatening women and their children is not new, neither is our resistance or defence of it and it took me to a few different examples of the way we have continued to resist White heteropatriarchy and show ourselves and our communities radical love.

In these lands we now know as Australia, First Nations women have led this movement since early invasion. Leaders such as Cammeraygal woman Barangaroo openly refused and resisted colonial ideals of propriety and respectability, Palawa woman Truganini joined a group of resistance fighters and rejected colonial niceties and Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry memorialises this as she pens resistance and remembering and decolonising.

I then thought of the way Girmitya women who, on Feb 11, in 1920, led a series of protests against the physical, sexual and economic exploitation of indentured women in the cane belts of Fiji. Locally known as the “Women’s Gang”, I first read about their acts of interwoven self- and community-love via @badfijigyals. Led by Esha Pillay and Quishille Charan, the pair have been working to challenge heteropatriarchal narratives on the histories of indentured labour in the Fiji isles. Pillay and Charan describe their own work as one that is driven by “a mutual love for our ancestors, community and Viti”.  

From there I took a dive into my own “homeland’s” colonial history, the island now known as Sri Lanka, and discovered stories of womens’ fierce resistance throughout the 443 years of colonial involvement and violence, 60+ years of a bloody and brutal civil war, and the current uncertainty of the present. Oral stories of Tamil, stick-wielding women, ridding villages of colony-patriarchs, and others spiking toddy to make the White man sick, are whispered and then laughed about in proud defiance while reclining, post-rice and curry, on a woven palmyrah pāy/பாய்.

I would love to be able to quote from book or essay but the Jaffna library, was burnt to the ground in 1981 taking with it written histories.

We are often told that non-violence is the way forward and yet, it has been because of such radical acts of love, in which bodies are placed on the line for the places and people that they love that we have the rights and privileges afforded us. 

So today, I pay homage to the people of Hawai'i ,who defended their land and leader, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, and rendered Captain Cook dead on 14 February 1779.

Cook, an icon of colonialism and capitalism brought with him disease and dispossession, just as the Portuguese, Dutch and British had done so to Eelam. His killing was radical love embodied, not just for whoever swung the first blow, but for the entire Hawaiian community, a mutual love for ancestors, community and the future. 

Which is why the constant question of, who and what are we willing to kill off in our lives to rid us of the disease of colonialism?, must remain at the forefront of our consciousness. For some of us its family, for others its friends. It might mean giving less of ourselves at work, or leaving that job altogether.

Tuck & Yung put it plainly: “decolonisation is not just a metaphor. When metaphor enters the decolonial vernacular it recentres whiteness and theory and extends innocence to the settler”. When we talk about decolonisation it is not as a metaphor nor is it in place of anything else, for decolonisation does not have a synonym. 

Decolonisation acknowledges the need for both love and rage so that we can build a new world. It honours the hard realities that that which we once thought was good, family, friends, communities, is not actually good, nor does it serve our growth and our nourishment. Of course, cutting is always painful. But pruning brings new growth and has taught me that collective acceptance is not the end goal. Collective care and consciousness is. And that is radical love and self care.

Of course, any form of dismemberment is always painful.

But pruning brings new growth and has taught me that collective acceptance is not the end goal; collective care and consciousness is. And that in itself is radical love .