In the last couple of weeks of January, as non-tourists buy all manner of Australiana, an old adage often comes to mind: 'There is nothing more Australian than debating what it means to be Australian.'
Actually it was me who said that. I was on a panel at the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters Council (NEMBC) conference last November. We were musing about postmodern identities, whether 'ethnics' were in fact mainstream and not peripheral, to what extent things like food, footy and fashion amount to 'culture', and whether 'Aussie values' are in fact universal.
I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion, but part of me felt worn. It seemed to me that black and brown folks like us are actually less concerned about what it means to be Australian than how Australian we would have to be, in order to be as Australian as everyone else.
What does it mean to belong? Australia Day is certainly not an occasion of belonging for most Indigenous Australians. How could it ever legitimately be? As someone who benefits from their historical dispossession, do I dare feel like I belong — at their expense? In Australia, must a sense of belonging involve compliance with colonial narratives? With political imperatives around immigration?
It goes without saying that 'love it or leave' does not speak to how a person develops a sense of place. Ultimatums are assertions of power, and grotesque as a framework for love. Love of country is an abstraction in any case. We can only love an idea of country, and ideas of country are malleable and varied, bent into shape by personal experience, politics and socioeconomic purchase.
It does not matter how Australian a young Muslim believes herself to be if security policies and ultra-right protests make her feel separate. It does not matter how much of a life has been crafted — an education, career, family — if a former refugee is still made to feel like he has only just arrived, and must ever manifest gratitude.
Pride in mixed heritage does not matter in spaces where passing as white confers privilege.
A lack of a sense of belonging, then, is not so much a repudiation of what makes Australia good, but disequilibrium between internal and external experiences — asymmetry between reality and desire.
This tells us that belonging is not something to be conferred, nor is it the default effect of being here. In the end it depends on whether