Ganging Up

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a girlfriend’s birthday at a Parramatta restaurant. When I told a mate about these plans, he scoffed at the choice of venue, saying that as if he’d go hanging out in Parramatta when there was a significant chance that he’d be shanked by virtue of his nationality/cultural background. I laughed. Until I kind of realised, the bloke had a point. And it was a point that was more devastating than scary.

The last time I checked, we were not living in present day Iraq. But we weren’t living in Oz either, because in my Australia, people don’t get bashed to death at airports, and no one wants to burn the flag. In my Australia, we give everyone a fair go, and our flag is our pride and joy.

Unfortunately, my Australia is changing. Bikie gangs are not so much of a secret world anymore, racism is open – and worse – hostile, and we’re going all spastic in our finger pointing of blame. Young people are fighting race wars on the street, collecting weaponry and making you-tube videos of anti-Australian commentary, almost as if they are waiting for a full-on, all-out open war to begin.

And I don’t think this war is all too far away. In the last ten years, the media has ensured that Australians have seen a lot of gang related crime. Crime that it points to the Middle-Eastern community. Crime that is sometimes racially motivated, or as a result of cultural misunderstandings. Religious extremism, riots, gang rapes. Crime that now challenges traditional bikie-gang rules of ‘let’s keep everything under wraps.’

The media tells us that the Middle-Eastern community is to blame. They talk about Lebanese boys and un-Australian behaviour. They use words like ‘us’ and ‘them’. They pit us against each other, brandishing stereotypes and fuelling the misunderstandings even more.

For people like me, caught between the blur of two cultures that they love very much, it’s an identity crisis, a life crisis, a chaotic fit waiting to happen. A very high profile writer recently wrote about ‘Lebanese girls in Burquinis’ at Cronulla beach, and the fit threatened to emerge. I’m a Lebanese girl, and I don’t wear a Burquini. A Thai girl might wear a Burquini too, because that’s what Muslim girls do. And to be Muslim, you don’t have to be Lebanese. Just like you don’t have to be an American from Utah to be a fundamentalist Christian.

Everyone’s so scared about what we might be getting up to but they don’t know who we are. Do you see where I am getting at? Maybe not, because I am typing manically at a keyboard where the fit is getting closer to taking over me, and I doubt I am making sense. But I do have a point to prove.

I am not saying that the Middle-Eastern community is not to blame for the crimes attributed to it. Actually, I am – because it is certain members of the Middle-Eastern community that are responsible, and they are the ones taking the rest of us down.

So much so that there’s often an awkward discomfort and shuffling of feet when I admit to my cultural background. I can see the people judging me, wondering if I have pictures of Osama Bin Laden on my wall at home. (I don’t, in case you’re wondering. As a devout Catholic, my mother has decorated our house with pictures of nearly every saint known to man, much to my father’s chagrin, who thinks his home is starting to resemble a church). But I am straying off track again.

My point is that they judge me because somebody else told them to. Before they even bother to get to know who I am; because they lumped me into a category I don’t belong in, into a gang, into a group targeted by the Middle-Eastern crime squad, a group that attributes rape to the way a woman dresses, a group that has weaponry stashed all about their homes and workplaces.

I guess when the images are all around them, they have no choice. I mean, it’s not like we’re doing anything to quash what they’re thinking. We’re capitalising on our gangsta connotations, making movies, causing fights at said movies, then relying on an introduction from the writer of the aforementioned film at the start of every screening to say “hey kids, listen up: violence is not the answer”. Well, derr.

But then I start to think about what some of these junior gang members have gone through. How they’re always the last ones picked for things at school, how as children their parents never made it to parent-teacher nights because they couldn’t speak English or they were doing low-skilled, assembly line at factories or packing-shelves-at-woollies style jobs, how no matter how hard they tried, they we’re never “in”, because when they went overseas, to Lebanon, or Egypt, or Gaza or Jordan, they were the Australians, and when they came here, they were ethnics.

I’ve been dating a cop for almost four years. I never break the rules or laws or anything. I am the biggest goody-two-shoes under the sun and I have this massive innate sense of justice about me. I’ve always believed there is no blurred line between right or wrong, so please don’t mistake my above theory for trying to explain criminal behaviour. I am just contemplating one tiny matter: if these boys lived the above life as children, where they were always second class, and always felt inferior, they’re naturally going to crave some sort of group membership, and a gang, where they can defend themselves and who they are all about, can start off as the answer. Like most teenagers, they won’t discuss things with their parents, so their parents will never know what’s going on. And soon, that gang goes from petty street fights to anti-social behaviour. And as they continue to be hated on, then they’re just going to continue to preach hate. It’s a circle of life in a life of crime in a culture of death, and there’s no way out.

I don’t feel for anyone who burns the Australian flag, because if I could make a Ginger Spice style dress out of it and wear it down the street, I would. This country is my home. If I weren’t such a pansy, I would go around personally to these gangs and ask them why they are hating on a country that gave them opportunities their parents never dreamed of. A country where car bombs don’t go off every day, where the government will not support a group kidnapping a loved one and leaving your family to wonder if they’re ever going to see them again, where a war with a neighbouring country is never imminent. A country that gives you free public education, a Centrelink youth allowance, a $950 cheque in the mail for doing the right thing and lodging your tax return.

But maybe when you’ve been judged for so long, and lived life on the outside, those things never cross your mind. So many thoughts rushing through my head, so many what ifs and how comes. A fear that one day, I am going to have to choose. Between my beautiful Lebanese blood, traditions and food. And my beautiful Australia in all her secure-for-my-future (and damn, I am so grateful for it) glory.

In a sense, I feel for them, because they’re never going to get the chance to embrace what it means to be an Australian in addition to whatever cultural background they hail from. Instead they will continue to preach fundamentalism, hate and a life against the rules. Running from the law, and running from the chance to re-write all the injustices that came their way and all the injustices they’re inflicting on people. You know, while the rest of us hang out with snags on the barbie watching a footy game and thanking our lucky stars…

They might be in a brotherhood where there’s a one for all and all for one philosophy going on, but in some cases, that all for one and one for all philosophy could be the thing that screws up in the first place, because when one member of the community ruins their life, the rest of us have to cop the flack. And its not flack worth copping, because if you step into a true Lebanese person’s house, you’ll find yourself in one of the most hospitable places known to man. You’ll be welcomed like a king, fed like a king, embraced into the kingdom like a member of the family. But the media will never point that out to you, because that’s not criminal gang behaviour and thus it’s not going to fit within their brandishing of stereotypes.

Late last year, I enrolled in one of my life’s biggest challenges to date: a doctorate degree at the University of Sydney, where I will be analysing the media’s role in glamourising gang culture in Australia, with the Middle-Eastern community as my focal point. At the time of my enrolment, I was freaking out about reaching the 100,000 word limit. Not even four months later, I’m worried about whether all my thoughts, opinions and research on the matter can be contained in that word limit. So much information, so much goings on, and nothing being done about it. Are we waiting for things to escalate into a full-on war between cultural groups? Or are we waiting for ignorance to pass us by, in which case I need to advise everyone that it’s just not going to happen.

The Middle-Eastern community itself is as diverse as a small western country. We don’t all speak Arabic, and of those that do, the dialects are very different. We don’t all believe in the same things either. Our religions span from various Christian denominations (Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, and Baptists to name a few), to various Islamic sects (Shiite, Sunni and Alawite), to others such as Judaism and Druze.

We’re being lumped together in an attempt for people to understand who we are, but that’s just not going to happen. And if we keep hoping that it is, then our concepts of multiculturalism and nationhood aren’t exactly going to work, because racist gangs are still going to be able to recruit, preying on those who feel like they’re misunderstood or don’t belong. We need to stop playing the clueless game and really start trying to understand one another, because there’s so much at stake and we just keep sinking down an ignorant hole on one side, and an anti-social, criminal minefield on the other. We’re not fighting for Advance Australia Fair, because everything we’ve believed in for so long is starting to collapse and it’s more like Advance Australia where? Australia’s going down a path it should not be going, and we are the generation that can make or break that prospect. We don’t want to be the generation of race riots as much as we don’t want to be the generation of killing people at airports or on public streets, because what will that be leaving for our children, especially considering that for some migrant families, these are the kind of lives they left behind to make for us something entirely different.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to be nominated to attend a youth leadership forum held at Parliament House, Canberra. In that incredible weekend, I met, listened to, and engaged in amazing debates with not only our nations political leaders (including our Prime Minister and Opposition Leader), but also some inspiring Australians and even more aspiring Gen Y-ers, who, like myself, held high hopes for our society and all that our country could be. Their dreams, ideals and ways of thinking, although sometimes different to my own, gave me hope for the place I plan to raise my children, and made me believe that everything Australia stands for is yet to fall by the wayside, despite some evidence to the contrary.

Outside on one of our breaks, I noticed a plaque emblazoned with our nation’s coat of arms and the words ‘The Commonwealth of Australia’. Behind me, a young pastor explained that we are so officially named because of the wealth of our people in making our country what it is. And it’s a plaque that says more than any news article, you-tube video, or gang manifesto could ever say.

That’s because the plaque outside that building is a testament to the value in all of us as a group of various individuals bound together by a collective dream. A diverse people whose common trait is the wealth that their difference brings to the place they have in common. A gang of sorts, with allegiance to the ideal of the ‘fair-go’ whether they fancy meat pies, enchiladas, curries or kebabs. Different people, varying backgrounds, far and wide belief systems – come together to form The Commonwealth of Australia, and for me, the only gang worth fighting for.

Cover image by Pigeonpoo on Flickr

Images in order:

Here’s Kate on Flickr

Pigeonpoo on Flickr

brimfulofsasha on Flickr

Warren Hudson on Flickr

Richard Gifford on Flickr