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!
