Looking back at all the feedback we’ve had from the Beach site, one of my least favourite comments was this one:
“There are some very good points in this website but as a teacher I have been told that I cannot use terms such as ‘Christian name’ and ‘Surname’ because it is offensive to some. Therefore I would like to see the offensive racist comment ‘When Europeans first invaded Australia’ removed from your web site. I am sure your point could be made just as simply by stating ‘When Europenas (sic) first came to Australia’. Else you are walking on dangerous grounds. Thanks and I hope this feedback helps you.“ (Anon. coded t009.)
My first responses were surprise, astonishment and disbelief, followed by confusion. i wondered how anyone could see as racist, the suggestion that Europeans invaded Australia.
I understand why someone might be offended, if they hold the view that the Australian colonies were founded through peaceful agreement and negotiation with the Indigenous people. But that view is wrong, and it’s better to offend someone than perpetrate a lie, innit?
Then comes the anger. It’s such a classic “Hansonist” comment, ignorant, reactionary, and one which ascribes to the classic (currently ascendant) “White Blindfold” view of Australian history.
Then i feel urged to ridicule the respondent; but i remember that ridicule and humiliation were the behaviours that got Paul Keating thrown out of the Lodge, allowing bigotry to resurface in the 1990’s, in the guise of ‘free speech’.
i remember showing the comment to the site co-authors, who shared my irritation, and asserted their refusal to change the text. Our position is that “When Europeans first came to Australia” is a phrase that deliberately disguises the truth of what happened. The English invasion was based on a legal fiction, the notion of “Terra Nullius” or ‘uninhabited land’.
Now, i’m thinking .. that perhaps our reader is confused about the term “European”, and doesn’t understand that we intended this to signify British people, the arrival of the First Fleet.
Perhaps this is confusing, and we should change it to British or English. Perhaps we should add “in the eighteenth century”, so that people won’t think we are referring to the waves of “European immigration” in the 1950-60’s.
But no, what teacher of Australian English would think that in the 1950’s, “the only people here who were good at swimming were the Aboriginal people”?