Where are you from? by Gunduz Kalic

Often I am asked where I am "from". I usually say "South Brisbane". This answer invariably causes my new acquantance to chuckle - and to try the question again: "no, really, where are you from?" This time, I respond "Queensland". My inquisitor smiles, but persists with words to the effect of "No, before that". I come back: "Well, primarily, I'm a Territorian". This brings a giggle - and a rephrasing of the question: "you know, what nationality are you?" "Australian", I say. My new acquantance has a good laugh. And then demands, as if to say thank you for the joke, thank you for the fun but seriously now: "where are you originally from?" "East London. I'm a Pom." More laughter. And then, finally, "no way, c'mon, what's your ethnic background?"

The "answer" to this question, for me, is a bit of an anticlimax, because I am a "mongrel"; a genetic blend - mostly, but not entirely - of various ethnicities residing in the region between the Black and Caspian Seas. To further complicate the picture, my parents, however, had both migrated from different parts of this geographic area, and met elsewhere, in Istanbul. I do not by any means wholely "identify", as if I am thereby ethnically pigeonholed, with any of the cultures and nations from which I spring. Thus, I do not quite know what to say when asked where I am "from".

Suprisingly, perhaps, my own, seemingly exotic background is not so far removed from the Australian experience as one might think. To date, it has not been widely appreaciated that our nation's demographic dynamic is unique in the Western world. The mixing of migrant populations with one another and the host culture is much more pronounced in Australia than in either Canada or the United States, the two other settler countries in the West, for example. Nearly half of Australians have three or more ethnic backgrounds - some individuals have as many as eight. In fact, despite the inflammatory race debate, a highly positive new Australia is in creation before our eyes, crying out to be recognized - and celebrated.

As many have said, there is no way back to an idealized anglo-celtic Australia of yesteryear. Yet, as a migrant myself, I believe that the prevailing concept that today's Australia is 'culturally diverse' is inaccurate and is dangerously misleading us as to "who we are".

According to the dean of Australian demographers, Charles Price, thirty three percent of Australians are currently of "mixed" anglo - celtic and non anglo - celtic background. Fourty two percent of the population are of "unmixed" anglo celtic background and twenty five percent are non anglo celtic. Significantly, the "mixed" anglo celtic/non anglo celtic category is by far the fastest growing sector of the population.

The unheralded reality is that a new Australian "mainstream" is being born, here and now, driven in part by the fact that eighty percent of children of migrants marry outside their own ethnic group. By the second decade of the next century those of us who are of "mixed" anglo celtic/non anglo celtic origin will form the largest grouping within the Australian people. As Price puts it, "the ethnic character of the Australian population is not one where separate ethnic people live side by side...it is a bold, even foolhardy ethnic leader who speaks as if 'his' ethnic group is going to remain forever as a distinct and pure ethnic group".

As a father of "typically Australian" mixed anglo - celtic/non anglo - celtic children I think that the ideology of multiculturalism has obstructed Australians from having a clear picture of who they are - and who they are coming to be. People have indeed come to Australia from many, many nations, but this in itself does not mean, in the real world of suburbs and shopping malls, that Australia contains "multi" cultures. Rather, via intermarriage and lifestyle, migrants to Australia, are for the most part, inexorably integrating into the Australian mainstream. And thereby, certainly, irrevocably causing that mainstream to change.

The simple and pragmatic fact of the matter is that we Australians are boldly - uniquely - pioneering the integration of ethnicity and culture. It is our remarkable, even astonishing unity in this project - rather than our diversity of background - that ought now to be emphasised. However, over the past decade and more, many of the adherents of multiculturalism have done us a grave disservice by creating the strong impression that our nation is increasingly dissolving into myriad rigidly separate ethnic groups all clamouring for special attention. This nonsense has tended to blinker our awareness of who we really are - and thereby did much to trigger the divisive race "debate", with its simplistic focus on "real Australians" and "others".

As one of millions who have migrated to Australia, I have come to love an intangible but distinct "ethnic identity" which people round the world call "Australian - ness". And I observe, very slowly, myself and other migrants becoming "more Australian".

This 1997 article was unpublished.