Dance of difference(s) – 6 – Indians, and Other(s)

Dance of difference(s) – 6 – Indians, and Other(s)
March 31, 2010
Torrey Orton


I wondered recently what I could say about Indians and us that everyone might agree about. I couldn't come up with a thing, since obvious ones like that there are two nationalities, Indian and Australian, would be open to the minimising argument that we are all the same or the relativising one that they blend indecipherably into each other. Let's start by noting at least three good efforts to cover the contentious ground in the last two months from three different perspectives which overlap in some detail – (1) the state-to-state, (2) long-term local and visiting Indian, and (3) local Australian socio-cultural.

• Hanson and Medcalf's 18/02/10 The Australian op-ed "Clear the air with India" which is concerned with relationships between leaders as representatives of gross cultural constructs like Indian and Australian.
• Tony Walker's 6-7/03/10 AFR article "Anatomy of an Indian tragedy" which picks up the Indian perspective from inside Australia (long-term Indian residents /citizens and places of origin of students).
• Kate Shaw's …19/02/10 SMH article "There is little that is black and white in attacks on Indians" which covers the explanatory territory well and proposes social systems interventions for change.

For a socio-cultural counterpoint, look at Amrit Dhillon's "Untouchable Prejudice" in THE AGE of Feb. 27, 2010 which presents the historical social structure of the place called India as it affects the least powerful there now.


Yet, I feel a need to try a few things in this ongoing saga of public distress about private happenstances. Some things have been left out, or brushed by in the story so far.


Darkskin Lightskin
For example, we both want to be some other colour than we are. Sales of skin whiteners in the one place and darkeners in the other place, especially to women, are a marvel of the counterintuitive for racists. If you like what you are, and disapprove of others for not being what you are, as the light skin folks sometimes do, why at the same time would you be trying to darken yourself, even to the tune of taking a solarium bath which endangers your health with high certainty? Darkskin folks, like lightskin folks can tell when a foreigner has arrived on a darkskin patch, especially in a lightskin defined ghetto like Redfern, Harlem,…or a cabbies protest in Flinders Street.


Simple racists?
The Indians (yes, I know, there's really no Indians, just self-identifiers) wanting to look more like 'us', is an aspiration which they share with many Asians as far as I know – that is to be lighter (so as not to be confused with peasants or others who work in the sun). What are they really thinking? Are they racists, too? I guess so, in the simple meaning of the term. So, there's another thing we all share – we're racists in a simple meaning of the term.


What, then, does that meaning offer us about Australia's problem with recently arrived Indians, and the Indians problem with being recent arrivals? Well, let's try this: visible difference is a quick way of imagining we are in the presence of a challenge to our basic understanding. This challenge arises anytime a culture gap of sufficient magnitude opens around us. The step from colour to accent to foreign language, mediated by foreign coverings and behavioural exceptionalities (a local's viewpoint from a distance) is a progress of distancing, with unreachability the ultimate feared outcome. One effect is what the impact of unexpected and unusual difference is on an existing 'community'. I think it can look something like the following.


Difference for a change
At the local level, the personal level where most of us live (not the state to state, institution to institution level, where pollies and interest group leaders parade in the public discourse), if a change happens in our neighbourhood too fast about too many neighbourly things like management of the local 7-11, washNdry, newsagent, cafe….we may feel alienated from our home grounds. If the change comes not only fast but in such great numbers that the passages of everyday life are increasingly occupied, or even blocked, with what will soon be perceived as invaders (because we didn't invite them to be in our yards, did we?) a rational response and an irrational one may soon be indistinguishable…and no one wants to hear it do they because it's racist to say I am uncomfortable, feeling dispossessed, overwhelmed across all my senses by the influx…and the parading public discoursers didn't ask or tell us this was coming because they didn't care, didn't know, couldn't imagine…were, in brief, incompetent to think below the level of spinnable generalisations like the economy and the industry and lucrative and…nor did they tell the new arrivals in their hopeful learning plumage covering residential expectations that there were things to know about our open and free and democratic place that locals know – dangers of various kinds (who goes down to King Street at night to play, or walks home through dark parks?).


It all runs on for us a bit like that - one sensation / perception into another with only our past to guide us, our leaders having abandoned us to market forces, and 'get with the action' Rudd mantra and struggles across great distances for the moral head space of their respective masses, all the while knowing that we all have more or less racist moments and systems and sensings but unable to speak that truth when it's appropriate because there are moments of fear of difference(s) the denial of which insures their eternal return, partly because the very ones who mouth the 'we are one' platitudes are the same who use the racist (in the deep institutional social structural senses) levers to manipulate! And, partly because we cannot change an embedded perception and belief without some pain.


Whose out group?
So, we (the Indians and Other(s)) also share knowing when we are in group or out group in our respective societies, and respond to the perception that we are an out-group, indiscriminately for some Other(s), with the fear and trembling that is appropriate to an attack on our identities. And, we also share the idea of having some purpose for being, which is prior to our right to be in terms of its moral or human interest (as distinct from the abstract interest of our right to be - a fallback position for the possibility having purpose, but not a replacement for it). Purpose is what we make of the opportunity that right has given us, or that we claim in the absence of right!


In my first blog on difference 12 months ago I wrote:

We are entering more dangerous times for difference. As many threats, and a few promises, assail us, our room for response contracts. This will lead to uses of difference (stereotyping, demonising, etc.) which make normal engagements with difference unmanageable, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy of difference's distastefulness and, eventually, punishment worthiness.

 

I think now that the most manipulative users of differences of usually kinds are always those the furthest from them – the politicians, party organisers, big bosses and their associated support machineries of spin'sters in their variegated plumages.

 

Manipulate the manipulators

And what do we know about the psychology of times which dispose us all to manipulate and be manipulable in this way? We know that they are times like ours – times in which at the individual, family, workplace and societal levels we are chronically assaulted by multiple physical, social and spiritual stressors. We experience these in emotional overwhelms more or less consciously. As a result, our feeling/thinking becomes increasingly regressed, appearing in actions which are formally rigid and emotionally florid – too hot or too cold to handle. These are the instruments of racism on the playgrounds of social and personal disorder. Exposure and debunking are the first treatments of choice for them.

Dance(s) of Difference – (4) “Indians told to keep low profile”

Dance(s) of Difference – (4) “Indians told to keep low profile”
In THE AGE Feb. 19, 2009; pg. 1

Torrey Orton
March 19, 2009

In public life the inability to adopt a balanced position about the reality of differences and their underlying similarities, is the source of much pain. This matters more now than any time in my life (65+ years) because the conditions for clear thinking and moderate feeling about differences are disappearing. At increasing speed, various intensive and extensive calamities - economic, food, climate, fuels - are quickly upon us, sharply and inescapably affecting us.

The Indians as a group are just a current example of the experience of other identifiably non-Anglo immigrant / refugee groups which have arrived since the Vietnam war, and, with appropriate variations for different times, the European influx post WW2. These experiences are also not merely local Australian ones. The following story, in various forms, is probably happening in towns, cities and villages across the industrial world on as many axes of cultural difference as there are migrant and refugee ethnic groups, and established local populations receiving them.

The Frozen Cup stand in Bellerose is a marker of changing demographic expressed through foods, dress, languages, religions and races in the borough of Queens, New York City. The story of this change ends with the local political aspirations of the new community. The aspiring Indian local representative Mr. Singh said,

“Pizza-eating people have representation,”… “Burger-eating people have representation. Bagel-eating people have representation. But roti has no representation.”

These new neighbours are identified alternatively as South Asians and Indians, with the latter being the most used in the article. And their food of choice is “roti”, which is as good an identifying characteristic as are those of the other three groups.

In Melbourne we are again being treated to a another flare up around cultural differences and crime. Not strangely, there is also a colour line in the discussion. Not, this time, an African one, but an Indian one. Not refugees, but students. I first saw the flare on February 19th – THE AGE frontpaged it, upper right corner. As I am writing four weeks from that date, the flare is bright again.

In relationship terms, it’s a civic event, with intimate implications (it touches us quickly and deeply in sensitive places) and instrumental overlays (it occurs in various levels of the commercialised world of our everyday). The latter appears in the shortcomings of the first paragraphs on page one – where fire and smoke are to be seen but the fuel is implicit. The manner of journalist Jewel Topsfield’s introduction almost ensures that the smoke and flame increase. My purpose here is to show how this occurred, what followed and what should be done to reduce gratuitous increase of intrinsically volatile matters by THE AGE.

The inflammation started with the title - “Indians told to keep low profile” - a statement of fact with so many alternative readings as to suggest confusion is intended. It did not have to be written that way. So I suspect sub-editorial inflammatory intent, driven by a general editorial policy to attract attention everyday in any way to THE AGE. So we may wonder: Who are the Indians referred to? Who told them to keep a low profile? Why are they being told to do so? …and, Who is the intended (expected?) audience for this article and the following ones?

Who are the Indians referred to ? Those Indians are the victims of street crime in Melbourne’s west. I am still confused about who all the others are – the Indians that is. Five or six different Indian-named voices are heard in sequence but no particular order except to contradict each other, or other authorities like the chief police representative for these matters – Inspector Mahony. One article acknowledges that “Melbourne’s Indians are not a homogeneous group and do not all think alike.”

I am confused about what the Indianness of ‘Indian’ is. Who speaks for that? Who should I treat as authoritative? If no one, then there are unfortunate consequences for Indianness, since it is left to be merely a name, an identifier on the outside of the identified. This is the pathway to stereotypes and profiling – both negative and positive (think food as typical positive stereotype material).

Who told them to keep a low profile? After reading eight articles and four letters in THE AGE over 28 days, I remain unclear. It seems the police told them, but that the police were told to tell them by some other Indians. However, yet other Indians said the first bunch shouldn’t have told the police that. See above for confusion effects on me.

In the meantime, some people watching from the sidelines got the idea the police were up to their reputed habits of disregard for some foreigners of colour / indisputable difference (combinations of colour, language, food, music, being noisy or too quiet ( inscrutable?), etc. (this sub-story goes back thirty years to boat peoples)). So they called in an ex- state minister to excoriate the coppers for being Australian, or something. The ex- minister was one of the earlier arriving, indisputably foreign (in his time), types himself. He has risen to fully Australian, giving hope to more recent thems (Indians, Sudanese…) that they too can eventually do so – that the “roti” will eventually be heard!

Why are they being told to keep a low profile? Why was all this done? To introduce the notion of a “hate crimes unit”? This was the sub-head to the second article. In the middle of all this was a not half bad idea from an Indian student counsellor about providing new arrivals with basic cultural background info, especially about differences that may matter to them and to local inhabitants. One such is where in Melbourne displays of wealth (in locally defined types and degrees like Ipods, watches, etc.,) may attract criminal attention. This is the kind of information one knows about ones own home town, but it is not easy to pick up in another’s since the locals will seldom tell you without asking, and how would you find out to ask before it is too late? Imagine that info in a new arrivals handbook! Who could both know it and would write it with relative impunity? Imagine the outcrys from all manner of ‘interests’ at such truth-telling. We do know not to go down to King Street at night, don’t we?

What actually happened? Why does it matter that 30% of a victim population (the victims of muggings in the west) were of a certain identity? We can’t really tell from the various articles because the types of data required for a comparison aren’t available (or were withheld?). More likely, they just were never imagined as relevant or were harder to access than the KPI’s of the journalist warranted. That mugging matters to the victims is always important. But, is this 30% a real number? That is, given the acknowledged shortcomings in police recording of such incidents, what is it 30% of, what is the actual number? How many unreported muggings occur? How many punch-ups were really muggings, and so on?

Who is telling the story? There are at least four levels of ‘voices’ here: a) journalists, b) letter writers, c) individuals quoted by journalists and referred to by letter writers, and d) the wordless masses who the journalists referred to as ‘Indians’, and the letter writers are presumed to speak for – the Indian ‘community’.
Four journalists are involved in the bylines, two twice each. Another four letter writers got an airing, one of whom – Inspector Mahony – was a must publish. And there was a collection of short takes from Indian ‘community’ members, chosen (?) for mention due to being figures in culturally or socially relevant organisations, or bearers of personal tidings about the mugging experience, first hand or second. Just who is representing what and who about low profiles and Indian victimization is a wonder.

Who is the intended audience? Here’s the underlying question, since its answer(s) provide the rationale for the take off point – the mysterious “Indians told to lower their profile” of Feb. 19th. My guess is there are two audiences; the Indians themselves (the ‘community’) and everyman/woman (another ‘community’). In newspaper sales strategy, the Indians by size don’t warrant a front page position, as don’t specific subsets of African refugees (Sudanese, Oromia, Somali, Nigerian…). So, what in everyman/woman could the sales target be? Fear, generalised anxiety, perceived global vulnerability (broad spectrum vulnerability to global forces). A good way to get attention. All papers do it except the financial rags, who don’t need to. Their freight of fear and exhilaration is self-evident.

What last? Well, on March 12 we have the escalation of the dynamics to straight racialist protocols, aimed at the police. And in tandem a lifting of the game from words to demonstrations, though now aimed at police service provision – eventually the State government. And finally, the March 17 announcement of a “National probe into discrimination against Africans” brings the discussion full circle.

How could all this be done better?
One thing THE AGE should do is provide a rounded treatment of such issues from the start of the reporting cycle on them (a start may be when an issue occurs which warrants a front page or page three article placement for the first time). A well-rounded treatment would include great care about presentation of culturally volatile subjects to ensure:

• Information reliability and credibility of its sources – who is telling the story and why?
  a) journalists,
  b) letter writers,
  c) individuals quoted by journalists and referred to by letter writers, and
  d) the wordless masses who the journalists refer to as, eg., ‘Indians’, and the ‘community’.
• Acknowledgement that these source(s) interpretations are disputable from different perspectives / interests associated with them
• Statement of purpose(s) of the reportage – where it is attempting to sit in the public discourse and who is the intended audience(s).
• Especially, explicit acknowledgement of the tenuous nature of generalisations arising from the information, OR, giving rise to searches for new information eg, the assumption that increased or decreased numbers of crimes of certain types are predictively significant for public security
  

These publication criteria would largely apply to within-culture issues of high volatility, too. They often overlap with inter-culturally volatile ones, since the core volatilities for all humans are roughly the same. We have the same core needs. Imagine reporting on life entry and exit issues in a rounded way.

Neighbouring* subjects & issues: social policy, intercultural communication, crime and policing, difference and learning, power, Indians, stereotyping.
*neighbouring = historical and conceptual factors which give perspective to the blog topic