QUESTION:

Is discrimination now hiding in plain sight?

I really, really didn't want to talk about this. But I've been trying to shake the thought away for a couple of weeks now and every time I face the screen and an empty page- it's there. So here it is, only so I can move on.

Some of you might have read about my latest drama: Trying to secure new rental premises. A new 'home'- since we were given notice to vacate this one.

The area we're looking in, it's quite an incongruity: Several distinctly racially divided suburbs yet interlaced by people of all races. What I mean by this: the area we live in now is the 'Greek hub' of Melbourne. Five minutes away, we have our Chinese neighbours and a little to the left the Koreans and further from them, the Indian and Sri Lankans and a little further out the more newly-arrived Sudanese.

I love this. My children love this. There's colour (I don't mean skin- we're past noticing that. I mean in the clothing and the fresh produce and the customs) and spirituality and music and food, so much fine food!

I am a migrant. I remember well those early days. The enclaves formed back then as a means of countering this strange new land by seeking safety in numbers- they continue today. Only we are now far more 'cosmopolitan' about it. Ethnic has become trendy. We live together; moving in and out of each other's suburbs, shopping in each other's grocery stores, eating in each other's restaurants, marrying off each other's offspring. We have embraced the positives of multiculturalism and are cruising...

Are we?

I ask because a huge hurdle to our not being able to secure a new home has been... our race. I still struggle to accept this. I fight it. Were it not disclosed to me by a particular agent of this race, perhaps I'd have thought it a silly, unfitting suspicion. Not a fact.

As a migrant arriving in the European wave (aka the White Australia Policy) I have seen wave after wave of others come after me. I am now a 'seasoned' Aussie. True Blue. My kids were born here. I can therefore claim... ownership of this land. I no longer feel a visitor, an intruder, a migrant- this place is home and I am its citizen.

To be therefore denied accommodation because of my race... by a race arriving after mine- it's a curious situation. Usually, one naturally is more suspicious of 'the new' and more trusting of 'the established'. I now face the opposite of this. And I don't quite know how to respond. In fact, I stopped looking in certain nearby areas. Only so I avoid it.

The thought occurred to me: Multiculturalism... maybe is a buzz word. Maybe we're really not that united. White Australia persists still. (And I must dare say here- it is now more an issue with those outside of the policy?) Curiously though, this protectionism is now hidden within a shell of beaming welcome- instead of the racial taunts of old. Hidden in plain 'sight'.

And I considered too, that maybe... though I'd embraced the ideal of unity... others, sadly had not.

It hurt.

How is it where you live? I have to ask this.