Australia ‘dealing’ with cultural difference?

Tuesday, July 26th, 2016

I was passing through airport security somewhere in North America in October 2001 when I realised it: I was no longer the face of terrorism, and might never be selected for one of those comprehensive “special clearance procedures” again.

Until then, that’s what a passport with a Northern Irish birthplace had got me – it happened often enough anywhere in the world, and was almost inevitable at airports in the UK. I’d be taken away to a side room, physically searched, swabbed for explosives and asked to unpack my suitcase entirely.

Sometimes I even had to unball my balled-up socks. I’d adjusted to it being the price of travel for someone with a birthplace like mine.

These days if you’re Irish, racial stereotyping skews pretty positively regardless of which side of the island you’re from – we’re affable, aren’t we? – but it wasn’t always that way.

I arrived in Australia in 1972 at the age of eight in the middle of an apparent Irish joke boom, and spent much of my lunchtimes over the next couple of years being dragged aside and read pages of Irish jokes. As fun goes, it had its limits.

But it wasn’t as bad as being the kid from the Italian family who had his “wog” lunch thrown in the bin most days, only to watch the perpetrators spend $10 in cafes 20 years later for the exact same food – focaccia and prosciutto – with no recollection of what they’d done.

And I certainly can’t say to my Muslim neighbours that I know what it feels like to be them this week.

It’s halal food that’s now beyond a lot of comfort zones. Halal tax? There is no halal tax. Halal certification creates export markets and jobs; it can even drive down the price of food through increasing production volumes.

Saying halal food costs us more is merely a way to dress up our discomfort about difference this century. It might seem slightly more subtle than the way we used to do it, but the effect is the same. Continue reading