The White Australia Policy and a Childhood Fear | Chapter 5 | Razor-Wire Round Our Hearts

Is it really necessary to dig up the ugly old sins of the past? Chapter 5 of RAZOR-WIRE ROUND OUR HEARTS answers: yes, for one urgent reason. So we don't repeat them. The chapter begins at a Sunday dinner in 1950s Armidale. Guests have arrived from overseas, a visiting academic and his wife, and the author, a child in the White Australia of her day, is overwhelmed by a rush of primitive fear. Her imagination runs wild. It takes days before she can ask her sisters whether they noticed anything strange. They hadn't. Then comes Margo, a new girl in the schoolyard with milk-white skin and flaxen plaits, and a whole class that falls at her feet. The author hears her own voice join the chorus, and tells a small lie she has never forgotten. What was going on in those children? Where did they learn who was beautiful, who was important, who was "other"? And what did the grown-up world of empire, church and immigration law teach them without ever saying it aloud? IN THIS CHAPTER Fear of "the other", and where it comes from A Sunday dinner, a child's imagination and a lesson in familiarity Margo, the class ballot and the pull of the mob Why angels were always blonde: whiteness in religion, picture books and the nativity play The stereotypes of the era, and the "White Man's burden" The dictation test and the machinery that kept Australia white Why it helps to remember how absurd it all was CONTENT NOTE This chapter describes the racial stereotypes and prejudices of 1950s Australia, including offensive language used to show how children absorbed them. It also refers to Nazi racial ideology and Holocaust atrocities, including experiments on children. It is told in the spirit of truth-telling. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 0:00 Chapter 5: "The other" 0:00 Why dig up the past? 0:00 Sunday dinner 0:00 Hairy arms in South-East Asia 0:00 Margo, the dream girl 0:00 Angels, Mary and the blue-eyed Jesus 0:00 The stereotypes 0:00 The dictation test 0:00 "Forewarned is forearmed" PLAYLIST Previous: Chapter 4, "The Dump" [link] Next: Chapter 6, "Greasy..." [link] Full playlist, every chapter in order: [link to playlist] ABOUT THE BOOK Razor-Wire Round Our Hearts is a memoir of race, love and reconciliation, moving from 1960s Australia to Kathmandu and back again. Its message: truth-telling can help set us free. Get the book: [link] Author website: [link] Follow: [Instagram] [Facebook] [TikTok] If this chapter moved you, please like, share and subscribe, and tell me in the comments: what did you absorb as a child about who was "like us", and who taught you? Acknowledgement: This chapter is set on Anaiwan Country. We pay respect to Elders past and present. #RazorWireRoundOurHearts #Memoir #WhiteAustralia