I have two family members, through marriage, that have different cultural backgrounds than I. A brother-in-law whose family is Italian, and a sister-in-law who is Korean-American. I am always conscious of the remarks people make (be they positive or negative) about blacks or Africans, because my child shares those ethnic and cultural roots. I am less attuned to the comments made about other groups, though I feel I am always sensitive to racialized or stereotypical or racist comments.
Today I found myself "outing" myself as part of a multi-cultural extended family when I was in the company of some people who were talking freely about both the (strong and distinct) Italian community and neighborhoods, and the Korean neighborhoods, here in Sydney. The comments weren't fully racist, but they were stereotypical. When I purposefully yet casually mentioned that I have Korean family members, the speaker looked startled and said "oh really?" The speaker was a teenager so I understand this his social skills are still developing. When he started going on about the inter-ethnic African on African violence happening in the neighborhoods in Perth (his hometown), his aunt, my recent acquaintance, started to reel him in and told him to be careful with what he said.
It was a strange situation. I found most of what they were saying to be borderline inappropriate. However, within Australian propriety, the young man must have crossed a line that his aunt recognized, yet I didn't. Or perhaps she stopped him because the statements touched on my son's heritage and she knows that he is a biracial black American? Both people were connected to the Italian community themselves, so I assumed that the statements they made about Italians are culturally appropriate.
This move is providing such a unique opportunity to sit back, zip my mouth, and suspend judgment. It is fascinating (and tiring) to re-evaluate every conversation and innuendo as having different ascribed meaning here. The trickle-down affect is hitting every part of my life.
For example, cloth diapers. Back home, cloth diapering was an environmentally conscious choice. Here, where there is a water crisis, and we are just allowed to wash our cars again, but still can't spray down our patios, cloth diapering is not an environmentally conscious choice. Here they make landfills into parkland, growing native plants, and installing playgrounds.
Anyway, back to my initial thought, it's not every day that I communicate my status as part of a multi-cultural family, aside from my immediate family unit. Doing so today was interesting, but I am still looking for the social queues that other people can so easily read.
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