Joshua Sim

It’s a question so innocent and trivial, yet so invasive and traumatic. How it pushes deep down into the wound, and into scars of empire.

If anything, this remark has proven to me - time and time again - the legacy of White Australia within today’s society. You see, the composition of this question begs the assumption that I am not’ from here’ – the luxury of never having to be labelled ‘foreign’ is reserved only for those deemed to fit the description of what it means to be from, White Australia.

It solidifies the ongoing narrative that is constructed within our media, within our politics, and even our day to day lives. This narrative is perpetuated by the government, the police, and the history of this country. As if to say that individuals like myself, cannot be categorised as ‘Australians’. The same ‘Australians’ protected by the police, privileged by the government – this ‘us’; I am constantly reminded that I do not belong to.

Instead, ‘micro-aggressive’ questions such as ‘where are you really from?’, serve only as a way for me to be thrown into the realm of ‘them’, becoming ‘the other’; an exotic object, fetishised, and criminalised. Never a subject with autonomy. This society is still hungover from the intoxicating attitudes of the White Australia policy, which was only a couple of generations ago; where this important of question of ‘belonging’ was only reserved for the ‘fair dinkum Aussie’. Which alienates the black and brown faces whose powerful presence in this country is found only in the shadows. The same black and brown faces who devastatingly had to sever ties to their own culture, who lied to themselves to survive on this land, only to find out that for White Australia, their sacrifices will never eclipse the skin on their face.

It’s an especially poignant remark for people like myself, whose childhoods were marred by a slurry of both displacement and alienation. Growing up with the omnipresent feeling that there is no ‘home’ for people like me; for here in this land, we were always too ethnic, too brown, or too foreign for the conventions of Australia. Yet upon returning to our home countries; idealised as our true home – a gateway to belonging – we’re met with the same confusion and struggle assimilation, due to our ‘Western’ conditioning

You see, such leading questions then, serve as a constant reminder that my presence within this country – this colonial fantasy – is one that is only temporary and without any roots. A nightmare to the Australian dream.

The same can be said about the lands of my ancestors – to whom each day I try to reconnect to, due to an inability to access my culture within the hegemonic narrative of Whiteness in this country. 

In reality, I’ve come to conclude that my upbringing has left me without a home. Scholars call this phenomenon the ‘Third Space’, or ‘Third Culture’; a box where people like myself can fit into. We are supposedly suspended between two different worlds; never truly belonging to one, and so we have a third category defined by our estrangement from the mainstream.

I’ve realised that even this term fails to encapsulate my personal experience growing up mixed-race, between two identities that have been devastated by the impacts of colonisation. You see, my lived experience is impacted by my inability, to never truly be ‘Indian’, or ‘Goan’, ‘Chinese-Singaporean’, or ‘Peranakan’. I look in the mirror to only be met with confusion – for inside I am with a Western soul, but defined from the outside as an ‘exotic’ figure.

Once again, it’s questions like ‘Where are you from?’ that only affirm my otherness and alienate me further. Despite my upbringing, citizenship, and education on this land, my contribution here will never be enough to fit the White-Australian fantasy. Despite all this, I will always answer this damned question with actions; I’ll point to the earth and say: ‘I’m from right here mate’.