With partners:
Student Snapshot
INTERVIEWER: Do people pick on you?
FEMALE STUDENT: Sometimes, sir. Sometimes people are racist and it makes you feel bad about…
FEMALE STUDENT: The skippies and dingoes.
INTERVIEWER: So it goes both ways, doesn’t it? You are calling them "skippies".
MALE STUDENT: They call us box heads.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think it would be good to do this [discuss cultural diversity] but have kids from other backgrounds as well, and Aussies?
FEMALE STUDENT: Yes, and Aussies, so that they can understand.
FEMALE STUDENT: And so we can understand them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think you don’t understand Aussies or do you think Aussies don’t understand you?
FEMALE STUDENT: Both
MALE STUDENT: We’re both as bad as each other.
FEMALE STUDENT: We just hate each other for no reason. I don’t know why.
FEMALE STUDENT: We should like, instead of just having Arabic people, have Aussies as well so we can understand them and they can understand us. It would be better.
Here students who do not have an Arabic background speak of their experience of being in a school where they are the minority:
FEMALE STUDENT: We have a dominant race here. And it is not just a particular culture that like is working together. They are so dominant that if you don't do a certain thing right, the sort of way they like it, they either pick on you or bully you.
A male student offers a different perspective, recognising his inability to know how to 'be' in a multicultural environment unlike any he had experienced previously.
MALE STUDENT: Some people, they judge you on, because you are white-skinned. They don't get to know you first and they think, they judge you straight away as a racist type of person. . . . There is a bit of racist [in that] but you can't expect to just walk into a school and not um show respect to them and then expect for them to yeah, it doesn't work that way . . . it took a year for me to get to know everybody properly. For me to start talking to them.
INTERVIEWER: Did you find it hard coming to this school?
MALE STUDENT: Um, yeah, I did at the start. Because it is the first school that is a multicultural school. And you turn up and there is a lot of different nationalities, you don't know what, yeah. . . . Everywhere you go, it is what you make of it. It's not the place, like the place is just a place, it is a place with a name. But yeah, it is what the people make of it.
MALE STUDENT: We're very multicultural . . . and you know there is no such thing as racism, and, if there is, it will not be tolerated. At all.
It is very safe [here]. That is the kind of feeling you get. It is safe to do, you know, just hang outside, hang around with your friends. Um, you know, just sit down at lunch time and have your lunch, relax and have a few jokes here and there. Um, yeah, you feel, you have that safe feeling of just being here and you know that if you have a problem you've always got someone to talk to. . . . There is nothing that I've seen around here that is a big issue. You know, it is just kids mucking round having fun and they've learnt the base rules of how to live basically in this community. And they all understand that, they all acknowledge it and um yeah we all live and have fun and learn in a safe environment. We've all come to that stage. (Arabic background).
Another male student, of non-Arabic background, has also reached this level of comfort. He has a broad range of friends from diverse cultural groups and sees the multicultural aspect of the school as a benefit rather than a cost:
MALE STUDENT: It's multicultural and you have like a multicultural day and we have like hip hop, island dancing, and latin dancing. And latin dancing you get, you can learn every Friday. And hip hop, I think it's on Thursday and island dancing is during the week.