Also on the subject of Cronulla ...
I am hoping this is a link to the 2007 Tropfest finalist film, Between the Flags, which was a very funny and insightful comment on the 2005 Cronulla riots where racism towards Arab-Australian reared its very ugly head.
Can also view the film here.
The film was directed by Jayce White and features Dan Feuerrigel and
Matuse (who won a best actor award and is also a rap artist - more on him and his thoughts on the Cronulla riots). What I really like about this is how it highlights how people (even people on opposite sides of an argument) tend to have a lot more common ground than they realise.
As an aside, also worth watching this stunt from The Chaser done at around the same time which explains the significance of Matuse's Bulldogs jersey:
Bulldogs fans (a lot of whom are Arab-Australians) are always been stereotyped in the media as thugs and members of "ethnic gangs". I thought the Chaser skit was quite a clever comment on that (although it caused a huge amount of controversy at the time - including from the media outlets who were responsible for a lot of the stereotyping). Should say that we are also Bulldogs fans at the Emu household so also get annoyed at this kind of nonsense. We also think Hazem El Masri, the Bulldogs star Arab-Australian player, is a legend!
Comments
I'm tight for data allowance at the moment but I'll run these after the 1st of the month.
Anything that tackles this constructed War on Terror gets my vote
You obviously live up that way, how are things going there now?
It always amazes me when people say, "Go back to where you came from!" and generally the people they are saying it to were born here. I can think of a few indigenous people who are saying the same thing to us whitefellas. I am not sure which country I should go back to, as I have at least four countries to choose from and I don't think they want me. I guess I am stuck here.
One more thing before I leave, "Go Melbourne Storm!" this week we take on the Bulldogs ;-)
Fortunately I am not in 'the Shire', Chezz, but about half an hours drive (and a million miles in terms of demographics etc) away. Would like to think that things had moved on since then but now the Camden business makes me wonder.
As for the Indigenous perspective, the best comment I read on this came from a Koori woman in Bankstown who was comforting one of her Arab-Australia neighbours by telling him that it was just that he was the "new Koori on the block" and it would be someone else's turn soon.
I remember when I first moved to Sydney it was the Vietnamese drug dealers in the media all the time and now you never hear about them. From what I can gather in Melbourne, the "new Koori on the block" there is the Sudanese.