Hello, Sydney?

I had a particularly sheltered weekend so I woke up this morning to the news that there were "race riots" in Cronulla.

This was all sparked by the attack on the surf lifesavers by some Lebanese men the weekend before last.

My reaction to this mess is mostly a mix of puzzlement and disgust. But beyond that, I wonder how much of this is really about 'race'. Yeah yeah, the 5000 boofheads at the beach were chanting about "keeping the Lebbos out" -- but if it weren't the "Lebbos", wouldn't it be someone else?

I'm not denying there's a problem with a subset of Lebanese young men who act like dickheads. But there seems to be quite a subset of Anglo young men who act like dickheads too, and all this seems less about race and racism and more about young men + time on their hands + booze and drugs = violence. Pissing wars between groups of young, angry blokes are nothing new, and the divisions can be as minor as which footy team you go for, to what country your grandparents came from.

I could go on, I suppose, about how limiting male roles are in our society; and the mirror of young men coming from any strongly patriarchal culture (working class Australia or perhaps the middle east) seem to become lost moving into the less patriarchal world of modern Australia. But maybe that's best saved for a later date.

BTW, this discussion at Catallaxy  raised some good points, especially about the role alcohol (and to a lesser extent, other drugs) play in this sort of situation. I like a tipple as much as the next person, but let's be honest: alcohol is a major contributing factor to violence in out society. Yes, most of us can drink without turning into violent louts but for a significant minority, alcohol is incredibly destructive. I don't know how to fix that -- I'm not giving up my odd glass of wine for anything -- but the drinking culture here is so damned entrenched.

EDITED TO ADD: I'm not really happy with this reading. The past 24 hours have seen my opinions change somewhat on the race issue, as detailed in the post above. I stand by my comments here but I do think the racial aspects of Sunday's events are more significant than I initially considered.

Comments

[anthony]

T-shirts with "Ethnic Cleansing Unit" are more than the booze. This is a disgrace and I've noted more than a few wankers going on about defending womens honour.

I was chatting with my Croat-Slovenian grandmother on Saturday about the new movie on Kalgoorlie. Her earliest experience in Australia was the Kalgoorlie riots in 1934. Her Dad had to grab his money and run before his shop was looted by "patriots". She's in her eighties and it's wrong her life might end up with bookends of racism.

Lebbos and wogs.

I was going to post on this at mine and had a long post done before it was lost. I'm too pissed off in general to get it back. That and the Mundine debacle.

[Amanda]

I apply Occam's Razor.

People are stupid and prone to mindless mob violence. The gloss changes (politics, religion, sport...) but the essential stupiditude of human beings remains.

[Kate]

Yes, anthony, way more than booze but I don't discount the role it plays in getting a large group of people fired up, people who might ordinarily curtail their stupidity to ringing talkback radio.

Of course, it doesn't change the undertow of the whole situation, which is that there is a lot of hatred beneath the surface of our society. But I don't like the way it's being framed as a race riot -- I think this buys into the Jim Saleam type analogy of the whites fighting for their rights or whatever b.s.

Your grandmother's experiences sound awful. I wasn't aware there'd been riots in Kal.

I think racism is a huge problem in this country, yes, I'm just wary of the actions of a bunch of idiots being turned into some emblem of racial relations here.