Natalie Fairlie

For me it started at school age. In a year level of around 200,  there would have been maybe five to ten of European background, and of that five to ten, there were probably only two or three that were females. I found the male Europeans were like a mob, a pack and they stuck together, and they were almost dismissive of the Australians because they seemed so together and supported. They were really good with me in being inclusive, but when it came to defending one’s position, I found myself on my own because I didn’t have this power and this voice behind me whereas the boys did. I felt they really respected me, but its not like they would have necessarily gone into battle for me when sometimes things happened. I copped it all, like my parents were really strict according to others. I associated that strictness with my culture, because that’s how my parents were raised, as a very Italian conservative family… I copped a lot of stuff about that, so much about food and events, there were a lot of social things I could not do because I always had something on socially with the family, and people were really dismissive of that.

The other thing I found, especially from talking to some Australian Vietnamese people who grew up in Australia, that the prejudice they felt was just always feeling different, and often that different feeling, feeling isolated, not different like ‘I’m unique’, different as in ‘I don’t belong’, or ‘I’m not part of this group’, or ‘there’s just something a little bit wrong with me in this environment’. Looking back, did I feel that? Yeah, absolutely! I pushed it away though. I tried to rise above it. I was never going to let it stop me, but deep down at certain intervals, it really got me, and it was quite evident, quite evident in the number of students, there wasn’t a lot of diversity in our year level, I don’t think I’ve experienced that lack of diversity again; lack of racial diversity. I experienced other prejudices later in the work place, but not like that, it was quite amplified in my school life. My parents were not cognisant of that (I don’t think I ever mentioned it) I think they thought, again it was my parents story, my grandparents story, it wasn’t going to be mine; I was born in Australia, how could it, why would I experience that? I never sought any help because I didn’t think they would understand, so I just battled on as best I could.
 
 
I look at where we are and I think we are incredibly fortunate, because our children arrived in Vietnam at ages eight, five and three, and so they’ve entered a country, never been to Asia before, and straight away went into an international school. My youngest daughter is the only one in her current class with English as a first language, everybody else speaks another language, the curriculum is taught in English. They don't have friends where there are more than two of the same culture, so they have got so many different cultures. The diversity is incredible. Every year they have this international culture day where it’s basically an opening ceremony of the Olympics. Everybody dresses in their home country, they have a flag, a flag bearer, the country name, and everybody walks around the field and then at the end, everybody and their parents make some food from their home country. It is amazing! Its huge! When we first arrived the principal said “ there are more countries here represented, than the United Nations has at their councils” it was incredible and I thought if you really want to see diversity of culture come together and merge and operate and have to work it all out, an international school does it, because there are just shy of 70 different cultures. PHENOMINAL! The first thing we had to do was buy a map, we bought a full world map because the children needed to know where their friends were from. Then there were other things they learnt which were in stark contrast to my school life; one of my daughters came home and she said one of her friend’s name, who was Korean, and as she was talking about them, I mispronounced it, we were walking home from school and she stopped dead in her tracks and she said “you need to listen to how I’m saying this, it is Dongsop, please don’t call him anything else, he gets really upset, learn his name”. I was speechless and I thought to myself 'wow'.
Properly pronouncing someone’s name is a sign of cultural respect, don’t shorten the name, don’t nickname it, don’t say something that’s easier for you, learn it! I have learnt so much more about adapting and understanding through the children’s experience and I really hope this is informing them about prejudices, but more so than that, that its informing them about solutions to those prejudices or mitigating the prejudice. What are the little things you can do? I’ve been in a meeting before where I’ve mispronounced a name and they corrected me and if you ask they have full respect, and its ok if you get it wrong but practice it until you get it right; its little things like that that make a huge difference.
 
The diversity of culture and language was really celebrated, it was really desired, our children came home wanting to know more about their cultural background because they felt its value and that it mattered because they were seeing it all around them.
 
If we say 'well there is no prejudice or there is no racial prejudice because everything’s fine, because I’m not being nasty to anyone', that’s not quite enough. Because actually, rather than looking at the prejudice let’s look at the diversity. Is there diversity? No? Well guess what, you’re probably going to have some issues if it’s not there, because you don’t know, you don’t know the difference yet, because if you’re surrounded by everyone that’s just like you, whatever that is, you don’t have to accept any challenge to that motion. For me, I think the key to this is promoting diversity, having more difference, because if you’ve got that, you’ve got a better chance of knowing that just because everything seems fine for me, doesn’t mean it is fine for that person.