YOUR COMMUNITY VOICE
Jose Gonsalves
African Communities Foundation Australia
WHEN the federal Attorney General George Brandis says: “People have the right to be bigots, you know” – I didn’t see that coming.
It has a massive impact especially coming from a person in a position of power.
An ordinary citizen can think ’what can stop them from doing the same’.
In 2007, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said the African migrant intake would be cut because Sudanese people weren’t integrating.
That played as an endorsement to attacks against us at the time.
The general sentiment was that Australia prides itself as treating people equally but, all these statements, specially coming from high profile politicians, can be interpreted and perceived as blunt reinforcement of old prejudice where its believed that some people are more equal than others.
It touched a raw nerve. We come here hoping to start afresh, start a new life. People are trying their best to integrate.
One day, while doing our outreach program, I asked a very active young man why he drinks too much.
He said to me: “You have to remember I have to assimilate with my peers.
“I have to drink to be accepted in the group, and drinking seems to be part of what young Aussies do,” he says.
He was embracing a cultural value, but by doing so, he was also turning into an alcohol dependant.
I told him that he should be wise enough to embrace only the values that would enrich him as an individual and as a valued member of a community. You have to choose the values that you should embrace.
On the other hand, men in some cultures behave in a certain way, which isn’t in line with Western, or even some African values, that the woman and the man have the same rights.
That attitude should be dropped towards our wives and children.
We should be brave enough to challenge cultural values and prejudice that goes against universal human rights.
As migrants, we should also be brave enough to protect those good values and to drop those bad ones.
The Greater Dandenong community is more vulnerable during debates like this because of its diversity and sensitivity to bigotry and racially offensive language.
Just recently a report was made public about racial profiling by police. It was so encouraging to see police taking a very humble position that errors were made. We saw that as a beginning of a new dialogue.
We were prepared to move forward to change attitudes in the Victorian Police force and attitudes in the community towards police and the justice system.
And then the Federal Government sends in this bomb, that sets us back again. I hope this is not a prelude of what is yet to come.
