Despite all that primary school talk of multiculturalism, people in this country can be as tolerant towards ethic minorities as your pregnant neighbour and her husband are of your weeknight parties. But unlike those disgruntled folk, we can’t just solve the problem by telling it to move to the suburbs.
Over the past few weeks, race issues have been back in the media again, from John Oliver’s comments on The Daily Show, to the plights of having an ethnic-sounding name. As an Australian-born child of immigrants, with a name apparently harder to pronounce than a list of diet soft-drink additives, both issues clearly affect me. But in fact, they affect us all.
“Comfortably Racist”
A week or so ago, The Daily Show reporter and noted podcaster John Oliver referred to Australia as “one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been to”.
But however hastily they were made, many of Oliver’s observations were funny, and mostly true; we need a reminder like this once in a while, if only to hold off our complacency toward people – of any ethnicity or nationality – who use race as a way to devalue or stigmatise groups of people.
Racism was much worse on my parents in the ‘70s and ‘80s, who’ve since assimilated almost unnoticeably, and I’m aware that people from other ethnic groups definitely have it a lot harder than I do right now. I’m an ethnically Macedonian, first-generation Australian who, for the most part, doesn’t make an issue of my genetic origins. I don’t make a big deal about where my family is from, my car has no neons or bumper stickers, and apart from my Romanesque (read: “Woggy”) nose, you wouldn’t immediately be able to tell that I’m different to the rest of the bronzed white Australians deemed “normal” in our nation. But I have experienced “casual” racism, or what LL Cool J refers to as “accidental racism” – sleights packaged as off-handed comments or “harmless” jokes – in the form of a boyfriend’s bogan uncle bitching about “bloody Wogs” in front of me at Christmas (ugh), or one of my own relatives casually slagging off Indian taxi drivers (ugh again).
This kind of casual discrimination manifests itself in unexpected ways, and sometimes it is pretty harmless. But the biggest bummer, in my experience, has been the dispiriting lack of response to my job applications, apparently because of my ethnic-sounding name. (The two things Kim Kardashian and I have in common are an Armenian surname and the butt that comes with it.)
Why Don’t You Get A Job?
Last week, SBS reported on a trend that I found unsurprising. People with ethnic names were found to need to submit a way higher number of job applications in order to receive callbacks for interviews. Researchers at the Australian National University discovered that people with Middle Eastern-sounding names typically needed to submit 64% more applications than someone with an Anglo-Celtic name. Similarly, Chinese names need 68% more applications, Indigenous people 35% more, and Italians 12% more.
Until recently, I had only suspicions that this was the case, but last year they were confirmed: a former editor courageously admitted that she had hesitated over my application for a writing internship because my name, Dijana (NB: a common Eastern-European variant of Diana pronounced “Dee-ya-nah”) Kumurdian (CF: Kardashian joke above) “sounded a bit ESL”.
Yes, the role was contingent on my ability to speak English well, but surely common sense dictates that a non-Anglo name doesn’t necessarily signify a lack of competence in the language — particularly since this country is so multicultural. Yet because my surname looks to belong to a person of Indian, Middle-Eastern or Eastern-European descent, I tend to be overlooked or judged unsuitable before the email is opened.
BBC have reported increased success when punters “whitened” “black” or ethnic names, but this too is incredibly disheartening. Like many immigrants and children of immigrants, I’ve considered anglicising my name to seem more appealing to employers, particularly since I’m in the business of words. But I didn’t want to yield to stupidity.
So many others are more rightful inhabitants of the soapbox than I am. But like, don’t we already have plenty of other reasons to write people off – like their being die-hard Community fans – rather than something like their ostensibly weird name, or their being blacker than you?
Dislike people for their irritating web presence (i.e.: motivational-meme-posting dickheads), or for their overuse of Snapchat (it’s fucking 2am, I don’t want to see your selfies), or whatever other trivial irk that makes a personal insufferable to you at the time. And yeah, maybe in thirty years everyone’s name will read like an absurd collection of words from the phonetic alphabet, a college gridiron team roll call, or a drag queen’s stage name.
Either way, my name sounds more like the Mother of Dragons than yours does, so suck shit.
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Dijana Kumurdian writes about art, design and expensive things (like yachts) at her day job at Vogue Living, and in her spare time is a freelance music writer, Photoshop hobbyist, hip hop DJ and longtime slacker rock fan.