Where do I come from?

I recently completed my census form which reminded me that since moving from Britain back to Australia , my racial classification and possibly my nationality is unclear.

In Britain , we Sri Lankans are defined as British Asian – being British Asian is surprisingly cool and on official forms, we always get our own tick box. Then we moved back to Australia and it turns out all we are here is “Not Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander”. No special tick box. Nothing.

Recently, after weeks of heated negotiations by the children, I finally agreed to help out at the school canteen. It’s not that I lack school spirit. It’s just that I can’t do maths under pressure and I am terrified of being asked to add a sausage roll, a chocolate milk and a Wot-Wot (apparently you are not allowed to say “What the hell is a Wot-Wot?” in the canteen) together, and then subtract it from $10 to provide the correct change, whilst surrounded by hungry, financially literate primary schoolers.

Whilst working, the mummies chat. According to my new work colleagues (all 5 of them White Australian, 3 of them 7th generation Australian, and none of them racist), the “Asians” were moving in: the Koreans to Killara, the HK Chinese to Lindfield and the mainland Chinese to Chatswood. This summary was offered by the mummies, not as a criticism, simply as a genuine observation. The mummies also noted that most children at local schools now are the children of immigrants.

The expression “immigrants” in Australia has always confused me, even when it is used innocuously, because I vaguely remember learning that the Aborigines lived here thousands of years before European colonisation. So to me, all people who arrived in the last 24 hours to 223 years classify as immigrants.

Instinctively I raised my hand to ask a question (we were in school) – if the above races were defined as Asian, I asked the mummies how they would define my race and my nationality. I also gave them a clue, explaining I was raised in Australia . Their answers varied from Indian to British – no one said Sri Lankan (only Sri Lankans recognise other Sri Lankans – it’s the complex facial hair on both sexes) but no one said Australian either.

That night I recalled the event to Husband who took the opportunity to ask challenging questions such as “Do other Australians think of us and (more importantly) our children as Australian? Do different races have a positive identity within a wider Australian identity outside SBS?”  Husband can be annoying like that.

We haven’t been back in Australia long enough to work out the answers to those questions, but I am fairly certain that being the Australian equivalent of British Asian isn’t cool (yet).

I wonder about the mummies at the canteen. Perhaps they all assumed I was Australian and they were guessing my racial heritage rather than my nationality. Perhaps in Australia , a country that likes to shorten every single word in the dictionary, describing some one as Australian Sub-continental is just too much. Perhaps they didn’t actually care which tick box I fit into and they liked me because I seemed like a nice person who made ham rolls efficiently. I was reassured that despite the “perhaps’s”, the mummies all definitely thought: “Races, good. Racism, bad.”

At lunch time, the children of the canteen mummies are allowed to come to the canteen and receive a free slushy. My little daughter Prima walked up to the canteen door, her smile both shy and proud, surrounded by a little posse of friends. There was L the Chinese girl, S the Indian girl, A the White girl, R the Japanese girl and Prima the most beautiful girl in the world, bathed in sunlight and smelling like strawberries. All of them so young and untroubled by definitions, they were Australian (Unclassified) and all of them thrilled to get a free slushy from Prima’s mother, who is Australian (Not ATSI, Not Born Here But Raised Here And Very Happy To Be Back Here Despite Not Having My Own Tick Box) ie. Australian (NATSINBHBRHAVHTBBHDNHMOTB). That’s “Australian” for short.

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