I appreciated the opportunity of being asked to contribute to an article on Harmony Day by The Big Smoke, who I work with in my ‘day job™’. The piece, Harmony Day 2025: The challenge of kindness, consideration and respect, was published yesterday. Unfortunately I was not feeling well yesterday, so I wasn’t in a position to re-share then.
Due to the constraints of space in this being a brief comment in a longer piece, I had to edit my remarks down considerably for the article (all part of the process). Upon reflection, I felt it might be worth reposting my original, longer-form ‘source notes’ here:
I’d like to share a personal story. My Dad was in the Navy. He was in active duty during a number of wars. He grew up in the aftermath of World War II. His father had worked on airfields in North Queensland during the war. He was taught from a young age that ‘foreign’ was a threat; the enemy. And he carried that into our home. To this day, he’ll describe the people that own shops in his local area by their nationality. It’s usually the first thing he says. Don’t get me wrong, he likes many of them. He’s friends with some. But, he was brought up with this simple ‘fact’ ingrained in his psyche, and so I hear echoes of this history and social up-bringing whenever we talk about his day.
My personal journey
It took me many years to untangle that, as I came to understand this hidden ‘imprint.’ First in my own life, as I had to extricate that thinking from my own mind. That ‘first instinct’ that didn’t feel right to me. Why did I think that?!? As I have grown to know and understand my Dad better in my adult life, I have come to see a glimpse of where it had all come from.
I grew up in a predominantly white community, no doubt a reflection of the White Australia Policy that was officially in place until the year I was born, and unofficially has influenced multiple generations since. I learnt nothing in my schooling about the local Aboriginal culture where I grew up, Caloundra, despite the name of the city in which I lived originating from the Gubbi Gubbi language of the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we lived.
There’s a term I’ve heard used: ‘casual racism’. It is an idea that I hear invoked to ‘excuse’ racism. That ‘I didn’t mean it’ or ‘I didn’t intend to offend, so why are you taking offence?’
I saw this play out in my own life, when abhorrently racist jokes that were told over the Christmas lunch table by elders in my family eventually translated into plainly wrong ideas and statements coming out of my own mouth when I moved to university in my late teens.
It wasn’t the reprimands of others in response that stopped me from doing it. It was the recognition of the hurt I had caused to someone I cared about, and the self-reflection that ensued, that has reshaped my thinking and attitudes. I asked myself: How did I get this so wrong? How did I not realise? Where did all that come from?
Beyond myself
Over the years, as my awareness has grown—both within myself and my increasing recognition of what is happening in the world around me—I’ve started to challenge these ideas within my own family and sphere of influence. That has resulted in tensions and arguments at times, but I felt it important to highlight how the values I had been brought up with—like the Christian value of ‘do unto others’—were not being honoured by the people around me.
Some in my community, especially those from older generations, were falling under the influence of the mainstream media and divisive personalities like Alan Jones, and our political leaders. For others, even those that in many ways were quite progressive in their values, it all presented in more nuanced, and perhaps insidious, ways.
One particular transformative insight came in the form of a documentary, Eye of the Storm, which highlighted Jane Elliot’s experiment with her school students following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I have since watched a follow-up documentary, A Class Divided, which went even further, including an examination of Elliot’s work with correctional facility staff.
These documentaries provide a visceral demonstration of both how quickly we can turn on each other, but also how those conditions of discrimination adversely impact an individual’s self-esteem and performance at tasks they would otherwise excel at. The very things that DEI programs—ruthlessly under attack in the Trumpiverse—aim to redress, I might add. (Another great example of this can be found in this thought experiment: Explaining privilege to children through a race, which I’ve seen a couple of different videos about. There’s a difference between ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ when societal biases of this nature are at play.)
Getting beyond “snow blindness”
Upon reflection this Harmony Day, a metaphor arose in my mind. I liken the effect to ‘snow blindness’—not being able to make out the landscape because you are so embedded in it and there is so much swirling around. And I choose that metaphor carefully, given the colour of my skin and the dominant culture in which I was raised.
For me, Harmony Day is a day where I prompted to remember how easy it is to fall into this kind of blindness. I’m encouraged to put on the ‘snow goggles’ so to speak, to look inward, and question what stories I have internalised that aren’t based in anything resembling my own experience, or that are incorrectly attributed to another person’s background—be that economic circumstances, political affiliation, where they live, skin colour or ethnic background.
And then to look outward to see how these impacts then play out in the world. In our workplaces. In our communities. In the media. In the rhetoric espoused by our politicians to drum up fear in the hope that a fervent response to that fear will get them votes. In their actions and policies.
But, importantly, not just to reflect, but then use this as the fuel to do the work to effect change…