Many summer schools at Cambridge and Oxford – and one at Harvard – have been lights in my life.  One or other university in England used to ask questions about what I suppose might be called my ‘race’.  Fortunately, they gave me the option of declining to answer.  This was just as well.  It’s not just that I did not know what the answer was – why was I even being asked?  I could not give a hoot about what label about race someone may seek to pin on me – but why would someone even try?

I suppose an exception would be if someone tried to pin me as being ‘Aryan’.  That would be deeply offensive – like calling someone – of either sex – an acolyte of Ayn Rand.  For that matter, I would be unsettled to be called ‘white’ – what decent inquiry could that be a response to?

As best I can see, I am a common garden Australian – in the name of God, anything but ‘Aussie.’  My dad’s mum was born in Scotland – hence my middle name ‘McPherson’.  On one of my trips through the Highlands, I got into the heart of the territory of the clan McPherson and visited the clan museum.  I went in thinking I might make a donation – as a member of the family, so to speak.  But I was informed, and not apologetically, that I was disqualified because the alleged clan connection was through the female line. 

‘McPherson’ means ‘son of a parson’.  My wife was born Clark and said to be Irish.  Clark meant ‘cleric,’ and the Scot thought she may have a stronger claim to being Scottish.  At that point I decided that they could stick any donation in a place happily made more accessible to those wearing a kilt.

That is a full account of any inquiry into my ancestry.  (But I was glad to hear years later that the McPhersons had a claim to fame.  Culloden was the site of the battle where the English toweled up the Scots once and for all.  My lot, I was told, were a day late.  Smart bastards.)

I was reflecting on this the other day while going to see my podiatrist.  He is Indian.  How do I know?  Because he is a person of colour with an Indian name and accent and we naturally discussed his background when discussing cricket, which has the power of religion in India.  Like so many from India, he is a passionate follower of cricket, especially when India is involved. 

We discussed a recent Test Match in England when most of the crowd was said to be Indian.  Perhaps I should say ‘of Indian extraction,’ since most of them probably lived in the U K.  We laughed at the difficulty of imagining such a scene in the land of any other former imperial power – like France, Spain or Holland.

When I lived an hour out of Melbourne in the sticks, I was occasionally heard to mutter that the problem was that there were too many white men.  In Yarraville, our needs are mostly met by people from every part of Asia.  The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and the Greek and Italian cafes now look very Establishment, and if you cross over to Footscray, you may wonder what part of Africa or Asia you have landed in.

But in what instances might it be appropriate to talk of the racial background of someone?  If I say my mate Joe is Australian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Muslim, White, Coloured or Jewish – what does the epithet add to the conversation?  (I put to one side instances where the epithet may have consequences for the times of the meeting or the food to be served.)

If I say Joe is Aboriginal or Jewish, I am I think making a statement about his racial antecedents.  When might that matter?  Put differently, when might a statement about the race of a person become racist?

The Australian Constitution contains on my search only one reference to race.  Section 25 refers to persons of any race being disqualified from voting by the laws of a state.  ‘Race’ is not defined, but had its own meaning in the Imperial Parliament of the Empress of India.  The primary criterion was colour, even when Disraeli was Prime Minister of the U K.

Nor is the word defined in the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975.  Its operative provision (s. 9) refers to ‘race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.’  Those terms are not synonymous.

A glance at the Macquarie Dictionary (7^th Edition) shows what a minefield we have.

race…. a group of people sharing genetically determined characteristics such as skin pigmentation or hair texture…. the differentiation of people according to genetically determined characteristics…. a group of people sharing a language or culture or traditional beliefs or practices….

racism…. the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others…. behaviour or language…. either demonstrating an inherent prejudice without specific hostile intent or, alternatively, intended to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate…

Jewish: of or relating to or characteristic of the Jews; Hebrew…

Hebrew…a member of that branch of the Semitic people descended from the line of Abraham; an Israelite; a Jewish person….

Perhaps I should set out s. 9 of the Commonwealth Act:

 It is unlawful for a person to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of any human right or fundamental freedom in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

It is apparent that the Commonwealth regarded the qualifier of ‘race’ as being at least potentially different to the qualifiers of ‘colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.’  ‘National’ looks to be in a different kind of field to ‘race’, ‘colour’, ‘descent’ or ‘ethnic origin’.  But if you are speaking of ‘national origin,’ that may be as hard to shake off as ‘ethnic origin’ or ‘race’ ‘colour’ or ‘descent’.

But when might any such distinction matter – decently or at all? 

As I recall it, the Irish got justifiably sick of being on the wrong end of tasteless slips or slurs.  There is no doubt that England’s ‘Irish problem’ began many hundreds of years ago because they regarded the Irish as racially inferior – they had about the same level of contempt for indigenous peoples in Ireland as their successors would show to indigenous people in Australia when they settled here.  ‘Beyond the pale’ was an exercise in apartheid in the fourteenth century.  (The English had similar feelings of superiority toward the Scots, but the Scots were armed and dangerous to the people of England in their own homes, and accordingly were treated with less obviously lethal contempt.)

If you can afford a Zegna suit, a Panerai watch, or a Ferrari, you will be said to enjoy ‘Italian flair’ – and pay heaps for the privilege.  The Germans on the other hand have not had a good press since Dante or even Tacitus – where they are treated as a nation of drunks.  But they also meet more sinister and persistent aversions.  When I started following F1, Michael Schumacher was preeminent.  He was also guilty of misconduct – that I was, and am, prepared to make allowances for.  Then I read a sensible analysis by an English journalist who said that Ayrton Senna was much worse.  But his misconduct was mere ‘Brazilian flair,’ whereas Schumacher showed ‘ruthless Teutonic efficiency’ – and ‘Teutonic’ has shades that go back to the Dark Age.

Here was a typical case of how we slip back to prejudice through a combination of haziness, laziness, and nastiness.

If I talk about Joe’s beliefs, these are matters that Joe can, at least in theory, change.  But that is not the case if I am talking about qualities ascribed to Joe at birth – race, colour, or descent.

The real vice in each case is the same.  I am allowing an incursion into Joe’s dignity or worth that arises merely from the fact that he is human.  If it matters, the person who most clearly stated that opinion was a German named Immanuel Kant.  It may be described as a masthead of the Enlightenment – which was in large part driven in Germany. 

The other disservice I do Joe in looking at attributes he might be said to have been saddled with at birth is that it may appear that he has been denied the benefit of the movement, in what we call the civilized world, by which our rights are said to derive from Contract rather than Status.

And if we find that status is in some way genetically determined, at what point might we enter the verboten world of caste?

The upshot is that I see little or no point in talking about my race or that of any other people.  There are of course some harmless exceptions – like the wonderful capacity of Pacific Islanders to play rugby, or the endurance of Africans in long distance athletics, but they are exceptions.

And I am happy enough to live with ‘Australian’ as my only relevant signifier of my background or standing in my community.  If I had been embraced by the McPhersons at Newtonmore, and become a devoted self-proclaimed Scot, with the zeal of a convert, could I perhaps have got to the stage where I felt being called on to decide which was my best call sign – Australian or Scots? 

Or perhaps I may have reflected on The Divided Self written by the Scot R D Laing who said that if you put up a front long enough, you might wind up with nothing left behind the screen.  (At least, that is how I read it a very long time ago at university.)

As for religion, most people believe that religion holds nothing for them – except the one they subscribe to.  That is my view, except that I have no exception.  I have no faith in any religious faith.  Others can do what they like that is lawful, while I hope that they do not get in my way, either politically, or so as to cause me grief when it comes my time to go.

If you want to know why I am so cool about God, consider Deuteronomy 20:16-18.  The passage begins:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them….

As I follow it, the three major faiths to come from the Middle East give some credence to the book that contains this command from God to annihilate tribes other than God’s chosen people: ‘let nothing that breathes remain alive’.  Can you  imagine anything more lethal?  On a bad day, it might lead me to believe in another venomous proposition – Original Sin.

Since I was born in 1945, I came into man’s estate in Australia in a democracy crippled by the strife within one of the two major parties.  That strife was in no small part driven by forces out of Ireland and Rome – at least, that is what I was taught as a God-fearing Protestant.  The bigotry was both hurtful and harmful.  To my mind, it showed a national immaturity that only ended with the steep decline of religion. 

When the English and Irish strife arrived here, both sides were holier than thou, and my country right or wrong.  But it was beyond doubt that England had treated Ireland appallingly over the centuries, at first just on racial grounds, and later on both racial and religious grounds.  We don’t need to see anything like it again, and I am relieved that my children know nothing about sectarian or foreign division within Australia.

As I recall it from the mists of time, there were two twists in the tail for the Irish diaspora and the sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics here in Australia.  One was that if people here wanted to identify with people in Ireland, they were entrusting their standing to forces beyond their control.  What did they have to say about terrorism and the IRA? 

If I claim to be identified with a foreign regime because of some perceived genetic connection with those who run it, I may bring down on my own head unwelcome imputations if that regime behaves inhumanely.

The other issue with the Irish was that of divided loyalty.  This erupted in Britain with the Reformation, the Act of Supremacy, the Spanish Armada, and Guy Fawkes.  It was settled in the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  The result is that under the English constitution, and therefore relevantly ours, we cannot have a Catholic head of state. 

I wonder if we could pass a law to that effect now.  A key part of our inheritance from the United Kingdom would be against the laws that we presently have in place.

Well, then, in the year of Our Lord – anno domini – 2025, why do any Australians feel any need to get tied up about their ancestry?  Isn’t being Australian enough? 

After all, have we not enough on our plate already in dealing with the oppression of our indigenous people in the years that have elapsed since Governor Arthur Phillip ran up the Union Jack at Sydney Cove in 1789, and commenced the process leading to the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia? 

It helps to remember that Australia, as it now is, started off as a jail for the rejects of Britain – and those in charge were not much better than the convicts.   And not one of either had an ancestry to write home about. 

Not much of a rock to build a bloody nation on.