“Go home you bloody wogs!” “Go back to your country!” “We don’t want you here!” “Go home!” a group of kids yelled one after the other at some other children which included me. I was five-years-old and did not understand what they were saying. Go back to your country? I was born here. I had not lived anywhere but here.
This is one of my earliest memories of school in an inner city suburb of Melbourne during the mid-1970s. Unfortunately, it was also my first experience of racism which was very common and far more overt back then. Even though I did not understand what ‘wog’ meant, the vitriolic way in which it was expressed made it very clear that we were not welcome here – we did not belong. Many years later, I discovered that the word literally means a bug, or virus; in Australian slang it reflects a deep-seated contempt of foreigners, especially those of Southern European heritage.
The paragraphs above are taken from the beginning of my article with the same title as this blog post. You may read the entire piece on my Self Help Articles page. I posted it before the days of my blog, so people could not comment on it. I did receive a couple of emails from people thanking me for writing it. It was the most visited page on my website for about three years after I created it in 2008.
It is a long article and an eye opener for those who believe that Europeans do not experience racism.
Helen
