The Moral Universe is not Bending Fast Enough.
I was 11 years old when I was violently confronted by the fact that there was something wrong with the world I lived in. I say violently, not because I suffered physical violence, but because what I saw and became aware of in that short space of time, forever shredded my ability to see the world as a place of justice.
We were walking through the streets of Calcutta(Kolkata), India, the city in which I was born. Though walking is probably not the correct verb. My mum was on a shopping expedition and they were never slow. She hated shopping and was laser focussed on getting to her destination. That left myself and younger brother Kenneth, racing to keep up with her.
Dad was a Scottish ship builder. He had completed his apprenticeship in one of the River Clyde shipyards during the war. His experience and sense of adventure had taken himself and his new wife first to India, and then later to Singapore.
I was born when they were in India, Kenneth in Scotland in the gap between India and Singapore. Iain didn’t arrive till we were in Australia. The majority of my primary schooling took place in Singapore.
We were now on our way to Australia. Mum’s family had all migrated to Australia and had taken up residence in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. There were a lot of them.
The trip from Singapore to Melbourne was a very exciting one. We flew from Singapore to Bangkok where we had a few days, then again flew to Calcutta. This was the 1960s so we are not talking jumbo jets and short hops. But the flights were fun. In Calcutta we were staying with our Uncle Stanley, a good friend of Mum and Dad. After that we would fly to Bombay (Mumbai) and board the P&O Oronsay to sail to Australia. It was a wonderful experience.
On this day in Calcutta though, most of those experiences were yet to come.
It is worth making the point that a child’s view of the streets is different to an adults. My view could not miss the beggars, the children leaning against fences, faces and extremities eaten by leprosy. It could not miss the small boys chained to older blind men, trying to collect a few rupees to buy food. In the 56 years since then the images I collected are as vivid now as they were in 1966.
It was a long time before I was able to get language to frame what I saw. Before I came to understand colonialism, cultural imperialism, colonial guilt and racism, but I knew there was something wrong. How could this be? Children, many of them the same age as me, lined up along the footpath. The difference in our life experience was beyond my comprehension. Nothing I had seen or experienced provided a framework that allowed me to make meaning of this.
I did however make a promise to God that when I grew up and got rich I would build a big house that all the children could live in. As I said, I didn’t yet understand colonialism.
Then we arrived in Australia. Moving into the middle class, completely white suburb that was Dandenong in the 1960s. And for the very first time I encountered the abomination called racism. I was only 11, so it did not happen overnight, I am not 100% sure how I became aware of it. But by the time I was 12 or 13 years old I was searching the libraries for books about it.
Over the next decade I read Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Griffin’s Black Like Me, Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Haley’s Roots. I also became aware of anti-semitism and other expressions of injustice based on colour and race. I have collected literature and information about the Raj and British occupation of India.
This led me to the history of Australia and British settlement. I could read almost anything I could find as there was no-one monitoring the content. Though when I started writing stories about it my dad did ask if I could write about happier things.
‘Racism’ was my issue. Despite being very aware of the limitations placed on me as a woman, I was late to the feminist cause because I was caught up in racism.
As you have probably and correctly deduced that my family had domestic servants in both India and Singapore. From my ayah in India to Ayah, our amah in Singapore, there were always adults of different races in our home. And if I had, for one nano-second, spoken to them or even glanced at them without proper respect I would not be here today. I have no memory of there being any difference in the way people were treated, though I do remember dad reminding me that we were always privileged.
About a week ago there was a post on Facebook with the iconic image of a little Ruby Bridges being shepherded into school in New Orleans by federal marshals. She was the first coloured student to attend an all white school in the United States. And we are the same age. We are 65.
Why are we still waiting for things to get better?
Yes, there have been some positive advances in both racism and feminism, but why are we still having this conversation? Why haven’t we got past this? Why is it that in some things we seem to be going backwards?
We have safe surgical procedures that can replace hearts and lungs, and repair internal organs. We have been able to assist with the propagation of life in laboratories. We can travel around the world in larger, safer and faster aircraft. We have created technology that allows us to have contact with people in all parts of the world. So why can’t we understand that every human being is created equally?
Why are there still people who believe that they are superior to others based only on the colour of their skin? Why do we treat others with suspicion simply because they belong to a different race?
Why are indigenous Australians overrepresented in our jails? Why is it that they are more likely to be randomly stopped and questioned than their white friends? Why are their options for the future more limited than for white Australians.
Why have we not got better?
To my friends and family who ask whether the BLM protests are irresponsible in the context of Covid-19 I can only say this, there are some things that are so important that they transcend sensible. Every time, every single time, that we silence the voices of protest we enable the oppressor.
I am 65 years old now and we are still fighting these same battles against injustice. It has been exhausting, but we can’t stop. We can’t stop fighting, stop challenging the unconscious biases and systemic injustice in our world, because if we do, then all hope is lost.
When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was asked how long it would be before social justice was achieved in the United States, he famously replied by quoting 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker:
‘How long? Not long because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. How long? Not long.’
It has been too long, and it is bending too slowly.
We need to get better.
