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Leo Louis

Fixing racism with kebabs

By Leo Louis, Melbourne High School

 

I am extremely lucky. While I’m a first generation immigrant, from a country and culture that xenophobes set their sights on, I still have, as the government calls it, “a fair go” I am here, in Australia, as a product of 2 wars. The first was visceral, long lasting, and one of the most brutal in recent history. The war on Iraq was, at its core a war fraught upon by prejudice, an idea that there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq poised to destroy the American dream.

Of course, these weapons never existed. The second war is still being played out today.  It’s still a war based on prejudice, A war against the Australian fair go, a war being fought on every street in Australia, propagated by people in the highest seats of power. It is a war of race, culture, and xenophobia. It is an evolved form of racism far more casual, expressed  in backhanded jokes and snide remarks. I was a 13 year old boy coming home on a 9:30 evening train having just lost a debate.

A better adjusted person may have moved on and accepted the loss, but not me. I remember being filled with this sense of self pity over what was in incredibly minor loss, and I also distinctly remember how quickly everything I felt turned into this very primal sense of fear as I saw him.

He was tall large man, with an average face and unkept stubble,. He lumbered towards me with a palpable manner of aggression that caused my heart to pump and my ears to throb. Sitting across form me, he said “you’re a wog aren’t ya.” He said this with so much hatred that I was physically taken aback.

“Filthy lebo pig.”

“Kill yourself.”

“Go back to Syria.”

This man, who I had never met in my life, was now barraging me in an overload of racist vitriol delivered with unimaginable aggression. He truly hated me, in a manner more visible to me than I had ever seen before. For the first, and only time in my 13 years of life, I was fearful, and ashamed of my own heritage. The only thing I could fathom doing was just repeatedly saying “yes sir,” Of course sir,” “absolutely sir.” The train stopped, while this man was hurling racial abuse at me, and I immediately ran out of the train and onto the empty station.

Outside, alone, in the cool night air, i felt this indescribable sense of shame, both at my own identity, and at my total submission to this man. As this fear, slowly subsided, I came to realize the irony of what just happened. This man, while attacking my Arabic identity, was simultaneously enjoying one of Arabic cultures greatest inventions.

While verbally abusing me, due to my Arabic heritage, this man, this self-proclaimed white supremacist, was eating a kebab.

And this got me thinking, Why? Why was he eating a kebab? And the only real answer could be that either he was so terrifically ignorant as to believe that kebabs are an Anglican invention, or that he was in denial about the hypocrisy of his belief system. I believe it’s the latter. Because what you come to ask, after a while, isn’t WHY racists and xenophobes act in racist or xenophobic manners, but rather HOW these people obtain these belief systems.

It seems absurd though, doesn’t it, to think that in today’s day and age these ideologies still exist. Because, we are being routinely told that people are born equal, that racism and sexism is unjust, and that discriminatory actions  ought to be punished. We’re told this so much, that I believe that this is essentially indoctrination, enforced by the government, authority and the general public.And it works. Contrast this to a few centuries ago, where owning slaves were seen as normal, and a genocide killing millions of Jews was launched. Our society has certainly progressed.

Yet racists still exist. And these people are not changing their minds. That is when I realized, the way we think about racists is counterproductive. What I learn that day, 1 year ago, was that these racists, aren’t malicious, but rather, stuck in a bubble preaching racism. These people distrust the authority figures in front of them, and choose to trust other people instead. These “racists”, like the one I encountered last year are nothing more than a broken record, preaching beliefs that come from people they trust, as opposed to the anti-discrimination rhetoric that authority provides.

This is, at it’s core why we are dealing with racists in the wrong way. Racists are only racists because the men and women they trust are racist. It’s why that man was so in denial about his belief, it’s why he was eating a kebab while denouncing Arabic culture. This isn’t just unique to my experience. Tom Metzger, a leading white supremacist in America has Peruvian friends, and routinely benefits from multiculturalism.

Eddie von Maltitz, a Boer self-proclaimed “proud racist”, has South African friends because quote “they are racist too”.Roger Kelly, a powerful member in the KKK, befriended a black musician named Darryl Davis. Clearly, illogicality and hypocrisy run rife in xenophobes. So why don’t people realize this? For xenophobes to admit the hypocrisy of their actions, it also means that they need to admit that their trusted connections are also hypocritical, and that’s nearly impossible.

For racists to snap out of their tunnel vision, and start acting rationally, they need to abandon their entire identity, which is terribly difficult.

We tell racists that their ideology is wrong and they ought to be punished.

But the problem isn’t with racist ideology, the problem is with the human connections that racists have.

I learn that racists live in a state of denial, because to live otherwise would mean that you would have to break most of your human connections. And ostracizing racists means that these people recede into their own insular communities, creating a feedback loop of racist ideology that is extremely hard to break. This is where extremism is born.

In order to get these people to change their minds, the solution is simple.

Build your own connections with people, showing racists the best you culture has to offer. If that means giving racists delicious kebabs that you could have eaten yourself, then so be it. Those acts of generosity, the continuous kindness leads to new connections being made. That kebab, and the conversations that follow. That offer for dinner, and the discussion that ensues leads to a bond. And only with that bond can minds be changed, and harmful ideologies be pulled at the root.

I was a victim of racial abuse last year. But instead of shaming me, it opened my eyes to how racists are made, to how racism is continued and how decades long ideologies can be shattered.

Sometimes all it takes, is a good hot kebab.